Australia’s e-commerce industry experienced tremendous growth over the past year. Whether it’s due to the lockdown restrictions made necessary by covid-19 or simply because it’s sort of inevitable (come on…), this industry broke into the country’s top ten last year. It’s even projected to be worth roughly USD26 billion by the end of the year.
This is clearly good news for a lot of SME entrepreneurs. Maintaining a storefront comes with a lot of overhead expenses like rent, utilities, and extra manpower. Hawking your wares online removes the need for that and allows you to launch a business with far less risk.
However, establishing a sustainable e-commerce business isn’t without its challenges. One of these is deriving traffic from search engines like Google. If your business doesn’t appear on the first page of the search results, it’s pretty much non-existent. Another challenge is managing your social media presence so that your brand engages with the right audience and thus builds loyalty.
Finally, all these efforts need to result in quality leads. This simply means that all that traffic and engagement should lead to sales.
Of course, not all SME’s have the skills, time, or experience to do their own digital marketing. Fortunately, you can hire someone to do it for you, and thanks to the wonders of outsourcing, you can even get the best talent from anywhere in the world.
Here’s how you can go about it effectively:
1. Go looking in the right places.
Online, there seems to be no shortage of digital marketing candidates. You can find loads of them on job boards, directories, and freelance sites.
On the other hand, the ones listed on the aforementioned sites tend to be a mixed bag. Sure, you can find veterans on them, but you could also run into amateurs, inactive marketers, or worse, scammers.
If you want to increase your chances of finding the right digital marketing talent, you’d best look elsewhere. For instance, perhaps you have friends who’ve already worked with digital marketing professionals for their online business. Maybe they can recommend someone for you.
Also, if you follow blogs covering related topics, you may find guest posts on there by digital marketers. If you like their content, you can try hitting them up via the contact details on the said blog posts.
Lastly, don’t underestimate the power of social media, which brings us to….
2. Don’t forget to check social media.
Twitter can be a gold mine if you’re looking for digital marketers in your industry. Doing a deep-dive into a prospect’s social media accounts is also a good way to vet candidates. You needn’t feel squeamish about either as digital marketers typically build their profiles in anticipation of such.
After all, if they can’t market themselves properly, how can you expect them to market your company well?
So, what should you look for? To start, your digital marketing candidate should tick the following boxes on social media:
- Active and complete accounts on major platforms;
- Relevant content from various sources posted across accounts;
- Genuine and frequent engagement with followers;
Ideally, they should have results-oriented case studies or proof somewhere on there too. Otherwise, you can move on to the following step.
3. Request case studies.
These are reports that pertain to the work that these digital marketers have done in the past. Here, you should be able to find details such as the industry their clients belonged to, the goals and/or solutions the client was looking for, and what they did to deliver.
Most importantly, the candidate’s case study should reveal tangible results. Did they grow the client’s following by 300%? Were they able to double or triple the website traffic? How did these results manifest in the client’s bottom line? These are just some of the questions that a digital marketer’s case study should be able to answer.
4. Google for testimonials, among other things.
Ah, where would be without this search engine? If you want to examine someone’s paper trail, Google is still your best bet.
Once you Google the digital marketer’s name, look for online reviews, forum posts, and other relevant content they might be in. A quick Google search should also reveal perhaps the biggest red flag for a digital marketer: NOT appearing on a Google search at all.
5. Prepare interview questions to determine their values and cultural alignment.
As with a lot of things, there are many ways to go about digital marketing. While there are lots of talented digital marketers out there, you’d want to pick one whose culture and values align with yours.
Thus, when you’ve narrowed your candidate list and get to the interviews, ask each one about their plans for growing your business. Look out for black-hat SEO strategies that might get you in trouble with Google. Ditto for promoting your business to a platform with a huge audience, but is hardly relevant to your business.
Related read: Five Skills to Look for When Hiring Your Digital Marketer
It’s also advisable to sound out a candidate’s values by asking them about what they deem most important. You are looking for someone who would be a good fit for your organisation, whether you hire remotely or locally.
6. If possible, have them work on a mini-project as a test.
Okay, so this strategy is a bit controversial. However, you won’t see how good a digital marketer is until you see them in action.
You don’t even need to ask them to build a simple website from scratch (unless this is what their job would entail). Depending on their actual job description, you can also have them conduct keyword research or map out an editorial blog calendar for the next two months.
Consider it a litmus test for determining whether the candidate can carry out the job and how well they can do it. Do bear in mind that you may have to compensate them accordingly if the task happens to require considerable time and effort.
Or, you can take the easy route and just request a callback from Remote Staff. We take care of all the pooling and pre-screening of our talented Filipino digital marketers. This way, all you need to do is pick and choose.
Contact us and experience the convenience for yourself today.
Serena has been working remotely and writing content for the better part of the last decade. To date, she's written for Pepper.ph and Mabuhay Magazine, among others, and has churned out more than a thousand articles on everything from The Basics of Stock Market Investing to How to Make Milk Tea-Flavored Taho at home. Hermits, aspiring hermits, and non-hermits with interesting project propositions may email her at serena.estrella10@gmail.com.
