Marketers are continuously asked to do more with less: In addition to mastering traditional marketing duties like customer marketing and demand generation, they’re tasked with juggling changing technology platforms and new marketing channels that emerge. Increasingly, marketing leaders are able to meet these challenges head-on by leveraging freelancers.
Freelancers tend to be the “canaries in the coal mines” when it comes to emerging skills. They are proactively guiding their careers and therefore on the lookout for the most marketable new skills. As a result, when businesses need someone with the latest skills, they can often find freelancers with the expertise they need.
My team at Upwork collaborates with up to 25 freelance marketers at any given time. Freelance experts enable us to tap into specialized skills that are often hard to get in-house, such as illustration, marketing automation or motion graphics. These are just a few examples of the many types of skills businesses are hiring U.S.-based freelancers for though.
To give you an idea of the skills that are most in-demand, here are the top 20 fastest-growing marketing skills freelancers are providing:
- Asana work tracking
- Instagram marketing
- A/B testing
- Brand strategy
- Marketo marketing automation
- Relationship management
- Social media management
- User experience design
- Videography
- Content writing
- Storyboarding
- Communications
- Banner design
- Sound editing
- Google Analytics
- Pardot
- Adobe Illustrator
- Search engine marketing (SEM)
- Search engine optimization (SEO) keyword research
- 3D animation
Emerging Themes & Trends
- Higher-level strategic skills like brand strategy and communications both saw accelerated growth in Q1. The beginning of the year saw companies tap into marketers to help build their annual plans, and they’re also engaging communications specialists who can help execute those plans to raise brand awareness. Instagram marketing in particular experienced high growth last quarter, as marketers increasingly use Instagram Stories to tell more vibrant and detailed stories and also leverage it as a cost-effective ad platform.
- As marketers are asked to do more across multiple platforms, a good project manager is critical to improve efficiency and maintain high standards of execution. In Q1, Asana was the project management tool of choice among marketing teams. Not only was Asana work tracking the fastest-growing marketing skill but it was also the fastest-growing skill overall out of more than 3,500 skills on Upwork, crowning itself the first non-tech skill to ever top the list. Professionals also streamline processes by relying on various automation tools and techniques such as Marketo marketing automation and Pardot, which both facilitate engaging the right customers at scale.
- Video storytelling is a powerful tool, and the surge in demand for videography last quarter indicates that more companies are investing in new ways to show their brand’s personality to meaningfully connect with customers. Storyboarding—a popular method used to visualize how a video will unfold—also saw an increase in demand, as did sound editing and 3D animation. As Brenton Williamson of BambooHR said, video is a window into culture and lets people see that they’re dealing with real humans who care and are willing to give you their time.
- Performance optimization and measurement are integral parts of any marketing plan. A/B testing has become a fundamental methodology for site experimentation with Optimizely as the platform of choice; and Google Analytics also saw a surge in demand in Q1 as marketing teams want to take advantage of its robust reporting capabilities and deep integration with Google AdWords.
To learn more about the hottest skills on Upwork, see the most recent Upwork Skills Index here >>
The post Upwork Reveals the Fastest-growing Freelance Skills for Marketers in the U.S. appeared first on Upwork Blog.
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