When it comes to creating a marketing campaign for your small business, outsourcing online is a great way to get the results you want without blowing past your marketing budget. Imagine being able to save hours every week by hiring a freelancer on Fiverr for your social media marketing or web development. Outsourcing is a powerful tool for small businesses and start ups who are not ready or willing to hire a marketing agency or an in-house marketing department.

If you’re looking to outsource online, it’s important to know how to approach the hiring process. While it isn’t the same kind of commitment or expense as hiring an employee, there are still key rules for keeping your business protected. It’s important to avoid making any huge outsourcing mistakes.

Master these areas for outsourcing marketing work online:

• Where to hire freelancers
• Communicating with freelancers
• Creating the perfect expectations
• When to hire freelancers
• How to get the best work
• Trusting freelancers
• How to get a return on your investment

Rule Number 1: Only Hire from Trusted Freelance Platforms

There are so many different places where you can outsource online.  For instance, you might:

• Get a cold email from someone looking for a gig
• Get a recommendation from a colleague
• Post in a Facebook group for referrals
• Look into a VA agency
• Hire a friend
• Use one of several freelancing platforms

If you got an expert marketing consultation from our President, Angie Moore, the first thing she would tell you is that if you want to find the best freelancers, you should only use a trusted freelance platform like Fiverr.

While outsourcing platforms aren’t the only place that quality freelancers hang out, there are many benefits to sticking with a middleman:

• Better protection in case you have a poor experience
• Ability to review past work examples at a glance
• Access to honest reviews
• Everything you need is in one place

The great thing is that with sites like Fiverr and Upwork, adding that layer of protection doesn’t really influence your bottom line. You’re still likely to find an expert freelancer within your budget.

[Want to save time and money with outsourcing? Download our free guide.]

Rule Number 2: Treat Freelancers with Respect

We have a lot of tips for communicating with freelancers to get exactly what you are looking for, but none is more important than this: treat them with respect.

Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for a business owner to get caught up in the idea of freelancing equating to “cheap” or even “unskilled” labor. Because they don’t place a high value on the labor, they become demanding and deal poorly with the freelancers they hire. (Imagine our embarrassment when we recommended a freelancer to someone looking to hire, only to hear back from the freelancer that the business owner was unprofessional and unreasonable in their expectations!)

The fact of the matter is that there is another person behind the screen and that you’re outsourcing work online because you lack the time, the skill, or both needed to get a job done.

The bonus is that when we communicate respectfully, it also encourages better communication overall. Your freelancers will feel more comfortable asking clarifying questions. They will also be more likely to go above and beyond for someone who has treated them well.

Rule Number 3: Set Freelancers up for Success

Before you look to outsource online, you should have your reference material in order.  Whether you hire a freelancer or an employee, you’re bringing in an outsider who doesn’t know anything about your business and how it runs.

Depending on the job you want done, potential references needed are:

• Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)
• Brand Guide
• Style Guide

Any routine task is going to require an SOP so that the freelancer understands your expectations. This should include things like workflow if the project requires a back and forth (keep in mind that freelancers often specify how many revisions are allowed, so don’t try to override their review process with your own) or a timeline for anything with a deadline.  For instance, you may look on Fiverr for Social Media Marketing and hire someone to schedule posts for your business. Your SOP might say that you expect the full month to be scheduled by the 20^th of the month prior and that on Wednesdays you post your weekly deal.

Brand and Style guides are extremely important if you are hiring someone to write copy or handle any design work. These guides include information like:

• Your color palette
• Your font
• Your brand’s voice
• Any grammatical rules for consistency
• Examples of what you are looking for

Having these documents ready ahead of time will save you a huge headache when communicating expectations with a freelancer. It cuts out a lot of back and forth and keeps revisions low, too.

Rule Number 4: Don’t Hire on a Deadline

If you can avoid it, we recommend that you hire well before the final product is needed if this is your first time working with a particular freelancer. This rule goes hand in hand with rule number 5 as well.

If you need a graphic in three days, chances are that you can find someone to do it for you, but the heightened anxiety on your end will compound if revisions are needed or if the freelancer has an emergency or complication that keeps them from completing the work. Not to mention the fact that most freelancers have a set turnaround time and needing something finished quickly can mean fees for expediting.

However, sometimes you don’t have a choice and need to outsource online right away. Make sure you approach the process with as little stress as possible. Calculate how much time you have and carve out a section of it for making the best choice possible when you hire instead of hiring in a panic and ending up with slipshod work.

Wondering how to figure out when you need to hire a freelancer? Look at what needs to be done and note which tasks:

• You don’t know how to do well
• Take up a huge portion of time
• Have less of a direct impact on sales and delivery

Granted, you can’t outsource tasks that require your presence (meetings!), but scheduling social media, data organization, and design work are great places to start.

Rule Number 5: Go for a Test Drive

The great thing about outsourcing online is that you have a ton of options. The tricky thing about outsourcing online is that you have a ton of options. We’ve learned a lot from hiring hundreds of freelancers on Fiverr and other sites. One of the best things you can do for projects is to hire a freelancer for a smaller gig as a test.

This could be:

• Hiring for a short blog post
• Hiring one week of social media posts
• Ordering a smaller graphic before a package deal

There are some things that you can’t really test—You don’t want to order a smaller test website, for instance.

If a freelancer doesn’t have the option to order a smaller gig, reach out and see if they have custom offer options.

When you order a test gig, you obviously get to see if the freelancer’s work matches your standards, but you also get a feel for what it’s like to work with them. In some cases, you may love the work that a particular freelancer does but find that they are not a good fit for your company behind the scenes.

Rule Number 6: Trust the Experts

One of the benefits of outsourcing work online is that you can hire experts for each part of your marketing campaign.  However, sometimes business owners get in their own way by being too precious about the work being done.

If you’re hiring someone who is more knowledgeable and experienced than you in an area, learn to let go and trust that they know what they are doing. This will keep you from micromanaging and ending up with lower quality product.

Absolutely provide input when it comes to information about your business and discuss your ideas and preferences with the freelancers you hire. But when it comes to the technical and design aspects that they specialize in, trust what they tell you. You may have an idea you are really interested in that won’t work as well as you had hoped.  It’s better to trust in them instead of arguing about something because you feel you know best.

Rule Number 7: Track the Data

Whether you’re outsourcing your marketing online, doing it in-house, or hiring a marketing agency, the one thing you must have is a way to track your results. In fact, it’s even more important to track your return on investment (ROI) when you’re investing money into it by hiring someone.

This feels basic, but you’d be surprised at how many business owners keep paying for services that don’t bring in any results. Here are a few things to keep track of, depending on what campaigns you’re running:

• Website visits
• Website bounce rate
• Email list opt-ins
• Social media engagement
• Link clicks
• Leads generated
• Email open rate
• Video views
• Cost per click

If you have hired someone to manage your marketing campaigns, they should be able to put together these reports for you.  The freelancer you hire to write copy for your website or social media is not going to be tracking your analytics unless that is a part of their gig.  There are several different areas that can affect how well a campaign does, so be sure to check your data consistently. This will help you to communicate what is or isn’t working with freelancers and change strategies as needed.

Outsource Work Online

Hiring freelancers is a great way to get the help you need without entering into a steep contract or hiring an employee. It’s especially a great option for small businesses who run with a tight-knit team that could use an extra hand or two. If you stick with these 7 basic rules, you will be off to a strong start for growing a marketing campaign that will scale your business to the heights you have been planning for.

If you’re struggling to manage your workload or grow your business, outsourcing could be the answer. Download my free guide and discover the freedom of owning a business.