With the rise of digital marketing, one of the best businesses to start today is an online marketing service. Since the pandemic has further sped up the interest in this industry, many companies are looking to outsource. If you are already in this field and have many connections, you can gather all the people with the right skills and create a startup. All your transactions can be done online as well, making it favorable for all involved.
Before you get started on this, make sure that you have the following items to ensure your success.
Paid Cloud
One thing that every digital marketing team has is an abundance of files. With hundreds of creatives, blogs and spreadsheets, it is no surprise that free storage services are not enough. Even the storage services offered by project management tools will quickly fill up in just under a year. The respective content creators don’t always have the memory to keep every file either. For this reason, a public-connected Cloud is important if you ever want your business to succeed.
Unlike storage tools such as Google Drive, these services offer much more storage space and have the option to expand and upgrade. These are better than just having your creator store them because it allows others to access the files. This makes file sharing and coordination a lot easier.
Sometimes, your team must store the files in case an issue comes up. For instance, the client wants to make edits or revisions. Another is for showing future hires the branding and style that you are going for. With this, you don’t have to message every person and ask where their work is.
Designated Work Email
Since your business operates entirely online, there is no physical office wherein clients can get in touch for requests or complaints. Thus, you need a specific point person with a professional company email to handle all these interactions. In fact, a lot of clients might actually trust you more because of your email. Surveys found that 75 percent of consumers say that a professional company email increases their trust.
If you are starting, it may not be possible for everyone on your team to have a professional email. However, the company leaders, managers, and CEOs should definitely have their own professional emails. They will likely be the main contact persons, so the clients will be talking with them more than anything.
Professional emails establish reliability. Naturally, clients want to ensure that the person they are emailing is associated with the company and not just a random person. When sharing of information is involved, they will want to be careful. Similarly, they would want to express their concerns to legitimate personnel to prevent leaking out your strategies.
Website
The main thing that will distinguish your company from a group of random freelancers is a website. Everyone that you hire will be under one company name. The website will showcase you as a specific service, and it is one of the top ways clients can reach out to you. Freelancers, especially new ones, often make use of other platforms such as UpWork and Fiverr. However, this has a lot of competition.
One reason why you would want a website is to increase credibility. You can appear more reliable if you have a website. Aside from that, the site can feature testimonials and sample works to improve your chances. It can be promoted on different platforms and social media sites to get a wider range of audiences. More importantly, you are not limited to clients who are only looking for cheap and fast work, which is quite common in freelancing websites.
Another huge benefit is attracting clients and having more control of your pricing and negotiations. With third-party platforms, services fees are taken from your final payment, and sometimes the fees are extremely high. You usually won’t be able to get the payment right away either because it takes time for them to clear the payment.
Policies and Contracts
This is the most important thing to have when doing any business transaction. Before accepting clients, make sure that you have a detailed contract on the services provided, the terms, pricing, and what can occur when the client is unsatisfied. This safeguards you and your business from potential clients who refuse to pay or are being unreasonable.
Similarly, your team needs to agree on a set of rules and conditions as well. The main challenge with working with purely remote workers is that holding them accountable is hard. When a person misses a deadline, you don’t know whether the reasons they are giving are true. Aside from that, some of them may disappear without a trace. With this, you can hold them responsible for any negligence on their part as well.
