Have they asked you any questions?

If you don’t have the budget to hire a full-time marketer for your small business, finding the right freelance marketer can cause a lot of stress. Whether you’re hiring this marketer to help you with your social media advertising, to manage your blog, create a logo, or to do market research for you—you want to make sure your money is going to the right person.

There are many articles and Youtube videos online talking about how to “Hire Freelancers Without Losing Your Mind” or “The case for hiring a freelance marketer.” However, these posts only gloss over the reason why you need a freelance marketer. Chances are, if you’re already searching for someone to help you with your marketing, you already know that you can’t do it on your own and that there are several ways a freelance marketer can help you grow your business.

What you really need is an easy solution to know whether or not your potential hire is up-to-snuff. The easiest way to know whether or not your time and money are going to be wasted is to note what questions the freelancer is asking you.

The right questions lead to the right solutions

After vetting several marketplaces and individual freelancers, you’ll eventually come upon two to three that seem capable of solving your marketing problems. When you’re interviewing them, take note of the questions they are asking you.

Of course, they will most likely start by giving you a background of their skills and why they’re qualified for the job, but if they are being interviewed by you—you already know they are qualified. What you really want to know is if they are attentive enough to get the job done without any miscommunication.

If all the candidate does is boast about their skills and expertise, warning sirens should start going off in your head. You will want to hire a freelance marketer that asks you:

• Who is your target customer (age, gender, location, job role, etc.)?
• What do you want people to do when they visit your site? What is the #1 thing?
• What are the key features of your product or service?
• Describe your current process of making a sale to your ideal client, right from prospecting through to completion of a deal. Be as specific as possible.
• What are your current content assets?
• Do you have direct competitors that you want to outperform?

Depending on the specific tasks you want to give them, the more direct these questions are to the problem at hand, the more confidence you can have in your decision to hire them. The wording might end up being different, but questions like these are what you should be looking for before asking for an invoice and a contract.

Image Credit: Unsplash