Industry News and Insights

Inside most people's head is a giant question labeled WIIFM. Despite how it sounds, this doesn't connect them to an imaginary radio station! It's an acronym for: 'What's in it for Me?' Your aim, through social media activities, and other forms of inbound marketing, is to give them the information needed to understand your company and understand how your company solves their problems. 

Marketing is exponentially more complex than it was even 10 years ago. Until a decade ago, marketing options were limited, especially when it came to digital marketing. Businesses relied heavily on signs and billboards, radio spots, and a select few could advertise on television. The vast majority of marketing was locally focused. Today, progressive mom-and-pops stores advertise on a global scale using a plethora of marketing options.

In any transaction, having a relationship built on a strong foundation is essential. As a business owner, your business can grow a lot faster if you master building relationships with customers. Running a business comes with many challenges, including high levels of competition in the industry. For this reason, you have to build strong customer relationships.

It may sound simple, but the very first questions businesses need to ask before starting their marketing efforts is who their potential customers are and how they should be engaged. Anyone who has invested any time into this problem quickly learns that the devil is in the detail, and that things get increasingly complicated the more questions you ask—are my customers businesses or individuals? What are the different ways a product can be marketed to these different groups? What is the best way to communicate with this group? Hiring a good digital marketing agency, like Open Path Digital, is the quick road to answering these questions over targeting customers and B2B vs B2C.

As a Freelancer, you have all sorts of jobs that need to get done.  In this post, we will go into the many hats worn by Freelancers.  If you are just now looking to branch out on your own, there is nothing here to be afraid of.  You just want to be aware of these different aspects and think through how you want to handle them.  

After all, the organization you left behind had all sorts of people who specialized in these things.  You often wondered why things worked the way they did, knew you could do it better or really had no idea how.  Today, we will explore the many opportunities that face a new freelancer.  For the time being, sit back and ponder and, in future post, we'll explore each of these!

Now, remember the immortal words of the Jedi Master.  "NO!  Try Not!  Do or Do Not!  There is no Try!"

As part of an organization, managing multiple projects, I regularly needed to reach out to the freelancer world for some project work to fulfill commitments that my team either did not have the time or the expertise for. Below is a list I compiled that kept some of the best freelancers on my list handy to call back at the next project opportunity.  Believe me, there is another list that I won't touch in this post of reasons I wouldn't call some freelancers back.  I guess, you can read between the lines or wait for another post!! 

So, let's jump into it.  At a high level, here is what made these freelancers winners in my little world!