Managing the Digital Age:
Why Your Company Might Need to Hire a Freelance Digital Marketing Manager

If you look at the intersection between business and technology, one of the things you will inevitably run into is people talking about the ubiquity of the internet. The internet is an unavoidable part of everyday life, so it’s inevitable that businesses are going to try and make the most of it. One way to get the most of internet everywhere is being able to place your digital ads nearly anywhere. However, digital marketing differs from regular marketing, which is why many places hire a freelance digital marketing manager to run their online campaigns. But how exactly can a digital marketing manager help your business grow, how much do they cost to hire, and is hiring one worth the money?

What Do Digital Marketers Do?

The first question you might ask is what do digital marketing experts do that other marketing specialists don’t. After all, if you already have someone that’s good at traditional forms of marketing, why hire someone else to do your online marketing? The answer is there are a lot of different facets to digital marketing that are not part of traditional marketing. Digital marketers not only need to know how to create advertisements that appeal to their target audience, but also how to get those advertisements in front of their target audience. This not only means knowing what websites are best to run ads on, but also understanding how search engine algorithms produce results and how to get your company as close to the top of those specific search results as possible. It’s especially important to know how to get those kinds of results on Google, since they are the biggest search engines go; your company is much less likely to be found the further down on the search results it is, and, as Bill Mattern of US Farm Data puts it, “If you’re not on page one of Google, you’re not a real business.” While that’s a bit of an exaggeration it does show how important search engine optimization can be for growing businesses and is emblematic of how important digital market managers are. It’s tough to make it to the top of the search engines but you’d better make sure you’re there if you want people searching the problems your company solves to know about you.

Is it Worth the Price?

If you’re looking to expand your business, yes. If you want your company to have an online presence, a digital marketing manager is essential. At the very least you need them for getting your online marketing campaigns started. Still, just because you need them doesn’t change the fact that it’s expensive to hire a new person. Most of our clients say, compared to the revenue they generate they are very cost effective, even affordable.  This is especially true when compared to traditional marketing managers.  One way companies manage the cost is by hiring freelance digital marketers, but, according to Indeed.com, even their rate averages to about $33/hr, which, if they were full time at your company, would be almost $70,000/yr. Even if you were to go for an entry level digital marketing manager, they average $24/hr, which is still a lot but they won’t be working full-time so your expected costs for that new hire will be significantly less to start.

Isn’t Digital Marketing Cheaper?

One advantage to digital marketing is due to its targeted nature, it looks significantly cheaper than traditional marketing, especially considering how much better targeted the ads can be. However, in the experience of Bill Mattern, those costs can be deceiving. “Clients will say to me, ‘Mailing 1,000 postcards may cost up to $550, but sending 1,000 is almost free, right?’ and I say yes, this is true. When we look at results though, the cost to acquire a new client really doesn’t change that much from traditional media to digital media. If you were paying $2,500 for a new client with your old approach, you can expect to spend $2,500 for a client online. This is why we tell our clients and their agencies to manage acquisition costs and blend approaches, online and offline. It works best.”

Is Hiring a Freelance Digital Marketer Worth the Money?

You get better results from expertise and for that reason it’s worth the added investment to hire freelance digital marketing help. For smaller, local businesses, traditional marketing might seem like a better fit since those businesses are probably not trying to reach markets outside of the zip code or town they live in.  Even then we think online marketing expertise will make a difference. Targeting the right people with the right message at the right time is the goal of all marketers, whether local or national. For this reason, a digital marketing manager is definitely worth the cost.

US Farm Data’s in-house marketing agency LeadGen Compass can help your marketing team.

Whether it’s advisory help, freelance help, or training staff, learn about how LeadGen Compass can help your unique situation.

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