The 9 Best Ways to Use Freelancers to Scale Your Business
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Matt Harrison, VP of Strategy at FreeUp.
For modern businesses, success and scalability go hand-in-hand. It’s not enough for a brand to just grow. From the get-go, your company should be equipped with the right tools and talent to adapt to the changes that result from exponential growth.
To be scalable, your business should have the ability to adapt, expand, and upgrade over time. This way, you’ll be able to handle any increase in market demand and increase profit margins without being hampered by your available resources.
Unfortunately, scaling a business is not a one-man job. There are various aspects of scaling that you may not have the expertise for. Thankfully, you can tap into the freelance economy to support the exponential growth you seek.
Here we’ll run through nine ways you can scale your business with the help of freelancers. Let’s get started!
1. Create and Share Blog Content
Blogging is one of the best ways to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. By becoming an authority figure in your niche, you don’t have to chase after customers because they’ll be the one coming to you.
With the help of a freelancer, you can churn out valuable and engaging content that increases your conversions and profits as you scale your business up.
2. Leverage SEO Techniques
SEO remains one of the main pillars of building a successful modern business. However, it can be complex and confusing for the uninitiated. With the help of freelance SEO experts, you can leverage proper SEO techniques to grow your visibility and increase leads, conversions, and sales.
3. Connect with Influencers
Influencer marketing is word-of-mouth marketing on steroids. Working with influencers who can champion your products or services means massive exposure for your brand. Hiring a freelance social media manager can help you reach out to industry influencers to create mutually beneficial partnerships.
4. Setup and Maintain a Social Media Presence
Social media is one of the most useful platforms for scaling a business. No matter what industry you are in, being present on social media helps you connect to a wider audience, raise awareness about your brand, and improve the visibility of your products and services.
A freelance social media manager can help you in several ways including:
- Creating and publishing social media content
- Engaging and moderating social media accounts
- Running social media ads
- Running marketing campaigns
5. Create a Sales Funnel
A sales funnel is the ultimate scaling tool for any business. You need to identify a buying process that can lead your customers through their buying journey. However, if you’re not marketing-savvy and you don’t know how to build an effective sales funnel then you might be missing out big time.
Freelancers can help take the burden of creating this for you. They can strategize the right funnels and even create them for the software of your choice. They can also track conversions and optimize copy on your sales funnels to maximize conversion rates.
6. Manage and Implement Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful driver for sales. However, to truly reach out and connect with your subscribers, you need someone who understands the rudiments of planning and executing an email marketing plan.
A freelancer can layout email marketing initiatives, schedule auto email campaigns to new subscribers, send weekly email campaigns, create email content, create a custom sign up forms, and more!
7. Boost Your Sales
For smaller businesses, hiring more people to work on sales just isn’t practical yet. A great way to boost your sales is by hiring freelance virtual sales assistants who can work closely with your sales manager, organize leads, research and contact potential leads, and make cold calls and follow up calls.
8. Set Up Affiliate Programs
If you’re not an expert with setting up affiliate programs, freelancers can help you out. They can help with many tasks including but not limited to:
- Maintaining and developing affiliate marketing programs
- Recruiting new affiliate partners
- Monitoring affiliate practices
- Negotiating and evaluating affiliate advertising agreements
- Maintaining relationships with affiliates and partners
- Regularly monitoring campaign performance; compiling and submitting campaign performance reports
- Providing monthly invoices to affiliate partners
- Handling the buying, renegotiation of rates, renewing or canceling of media placements, and other advertising programs
9. Advertise with AdWords
Pay-Per-Click advertising is one of the most important aspects of scaling your business. PPC allows you to get your brand out there and draw more people to your site as the organic results are growing. It can also raise organic results as time goes on. Furthermore, it directs the right customers at the right time to your ads.
A freelance AdWords expert can help run your Google AdWords account, so you don’t have to. They can work towards improving impressions, conversions, and ad content while staying within the budget you’ve set. Furthermore, they can perform advanced searches into your competition and Adwords for keywords that fit best with your budget and industry.
Why Work with Freelancers When Scaling Your Business
Freelancers can be your best partners when you’re looking to take your business to the next level. If you’ve started your business as a solopreneur, it might seem unthinkable to hand over the reins to someone else.
But as many successful business owners can attest to, delegation is the key to improving your business’ performance amid an expanding workload. Here’s why you should be working with freelancers when scaling your business:
Highly-Specialized Skill Set
Most freelancers are experts in their chosen fields. When you hire them, you can be sure that you’ll be able to address your particular needs through specialized talent.
Reduced Overhead
One of the key aspects of scaling is growing without adding a financial burden to your company. This is where hiring a freelancer shines. Since you’ll be hiring a private contractor, you don’t have to worry about paying for new equipment, providing additional office space, and covering employment benefits.
Flexibility
Another reason why hiring freelancers is great for scaling your business is you can use their services as needed. You can get the help you need when you need it without the burden of having somebody on the payroll.
Efficiency
Hiring somebody for a full-time position can take a long time and when you’re scaling, you need to have people on board quickly. When you hire a freelancer from platforms like FreeUp, they can start working in a matter of days.
Final Words
Scaling a business is a multi-faceted process that takes hard work. While you can’t be an expert in everything required to level up your company, there are experts out there who can help you out.
Freelancers are your best partners for taking your business to the next level, and with the help of the right people, your business will start experiencing exponential growth in no time!
Matt Harrison is the VP of Strategy of FreeUp, the preeminent freelance marketplace for hiring high quality, vetted talent. He has hired freelancers from around the world and built teams to service multinational brands resulting from over $100 million in web hosting company acquisitions. He currently lives in St. Petersburg, FL.