What You Need to Accomplish With Your First Project
If you have been reading this blog for a while you know that we don’t recommend outsourcing one-off projects.
Instead we recommend that you find someone you can work with on a regular basis, who can handle a variety of similar projects for you.
When you are looking for someone you can have a longer relationship with, the first project is important.
You need to find out several things:
1. Can they do the work?
Yes, they looked good on paper and sounded good on the phone. Now you need to see if they can actually do the type of work you need done.
You need to find out… Did they do the work right? Did they pay attention to the details? Was it what you asked for? Was it the level of quality you need?
2. Do you like working with them?
Are they reliable? Did they understand what you wanted? Did they deliver work as promised? Do the two of you get along? Can you see yourself working with them over the long term?
3. Is the price right?
Did they take a reasonable amount of time to do the work? Is the price what you were quoted?
4. How much training do they need?
How quickly did they understand what you were looking for? Did they ask good questions? Did they listen to your answers and act on them? How much more education will they need if they are going to take on bigger projects? How do they learn best?
Choosing that first project…
A good first project is one that lets you answer all of those questions.
It should be something that takes relatively little of your time to pull together.
It should not require you to do a lot of training.
And preferably it should deliver something that will be useful to you whether or not you continue working with this person.
Here are 9 characteristics of an ideal first project for your new marketing person:
1. Requires relatively little background knowledge about the company and its products/services.
2. Has a process that is fairly simple to explain or is already defined somewhere.
3. Requires materials or information that is easy to gather and can be easily sent to someone by email.
4. Is not critical to the business or highly confidential.
5. Takes 5-10 hours to do.
6. Does not require the involvement of a lot of other people in the company or outside it.
7. Has an output that you can easily describe.
8. Has goals that are easy to define or where it will be easy to tell if they have done a good job or not.
9. Does not have a hard and fast deadline.
This is why we say a nurture marketing project makes an ideal way to start working with someone. Nurture marketing meets all 9 of these characteristics.
How to Get Marketing Freelancers Up to Speed Fast – Part 2
In the last post, I said that we use a 2-part strategy to educate marketing freelancers effectively and inexpensively.
Here’s the second part…
Whenever we can, we choose the first project a new marketing freelancer works on so they can learn while they are doing productive work.
For us, that means we look for a customer-facing project. In marketing, a good first project is very often a case study or gathering testimonials.
That lets the marketing freelancer learn how people use the product or service, what it does for them, how they use it, and where the value is. Sure, you can tell them this yourself, but the information sinks in faster and more thoroughly when they hear it directly from the customers. Plus, they hear the language customers use, which is most likely different from what you say internally.
That information then provides a powerful foundation that informs everything else they do.
If the next project is designing a brochure, writing a sales letter, doing a press release, or updating the website – the result will be better because the freelancer now has a better understanding of how customers think and where they find value.
Even the best, smartest, most experienced marketing freelancers need to do this ramping up – they’ll do it better while working, and you’ll be getting useful work while they are learning. It’s a win-win.
So think about what kinds of projects do not require a lot of knowledge to do AND will let your marketing freelancers learn more about your business while they work.
How to Define a Marketing Project the Right Way
Whenever you give anyone a marketing project to do, here is a simple checklist of the information you should provide.
It doesn’t have to be complicated – you can get everything in one short email. But make sure you cover all these bases and you’ll find that you will consistently get better results.
1. What is the project? Why are you asking them to do this?
Describe the project briefly, so they have the big picture. Then explain why you are having them do this. What do you want to happen as a result of doing this project? How will it impact your business?
The “Why” is important. A lot of people skip this, thinking the answer is obvious. But when you clarify the purpose of a project for the person who is doing it, both of you benefit.
Perhaps you want them to call 100 people and get 10 appointments. Or have 50 sign up to receive a free offer. Maybe you want to have a website that is free of typos. You want to have a standard that you can measure results against so you know if they did a good job. What would a good job look like?
People will do a better job if they understand why you are having this project done. Perhaps getting those 10 appointments will lead to 2 sales, which will allow you to afford to have this person work for you on a regular basis.
Or maybe you have had people complain about the grammar and mistakes on your website and you think you’re losing business as a result. You want to increase the conversion rate from your site. Or your goal is x increase in revenue…
The more clearly you articulate what you want, the more likely you are to get it. (There is a truism that you get what you measure – you also are more likely to get what you ask for.)
And if they understand what your goals are, they can contribute their knowledge and experience to give you advice on how to achieve that goal. There might be better ways to do things that they know about and can share with you.
2. What are the steps?
List the steps you want them to follow.
If there is anything they need to learn (like how to use a certain type of software), tell them how you want them to learn. Should they look for videos on YouTube? Are you going to teach them?
3. What else is needed?
Provide whatever materials they are going to need to do the work. This might include a contact database or some files or a list of websites to visit. Whatever it is, list what you are providing them and where to find it or how you are getting it to them.
4. What is your deadline?
When should the project be finished? If it is a bigger project and there are sub-deadlines, such as you want to see a first draft by a certain date or you want a status report by a certain date, include those.
Don’t assume that you have the same understanding of what “I need it as soon as possible” means, particularly not when you are just starting to work with someone. For some people that means “drop everything and do it immediately.” For others it means “do it within the next couple days or as soon as you can reasonably get around to it.”
5. What is your budget (time/money)?
How much time are you willing to have them spend on this project?
If you have a pretty good idea of how long it should take, this will be easy. (Remember that no one can do the work as quickly as you can. Double or triple the time it would take you.)
If you are not certain, you might tell them to spend 5 hours on it, then stop and check in with you. You can see where they are and decide if more time is needed.
How much do you want to spend? If there are other expenses involved, list what you think is reasonable. Or if they are doing research about a purchase for you, say how much you are willing to spend.
6. What do you want the results to look like?
What kind of output do you want (Word, Excel, email)?
If you think it doesn’t matter, think a step further… Are you going to want to be able to search in the results easily? Maybe it should go in an email message. Copy and paste out of it? Maybe a text file or Word. Do further manipulation? Maybe Excel.
Include information about the quality too. If you expect it to be error-free, say so. If neatness or proper spelling/grammar matters (and it should), say that too. You would think this goes without saying, but particularly if this person is new to working for you, you want to let them know that quality matters.
Topgrading your marketing team
I just finished reading a classic and highly recommended book, Topgrading, by Bradford D. Smart, PhD.
It was full of wonderful advice on how to make sure you hire all “A”s (as opposed to “B”s or “C”s) – in other words, the very best people.
The problem is that Topgrading is a very heavyweight process – 3-hour interviews that start with the candidates’ college days and go through every single job they have ever held with a fine-toothed comb.
I can see where it makes sense to do this for a full-time job. But most companies now outsource at least part of their marketing, and no one – not you and not any marketing freelancer I know - is going to have the patience to do this for a short-term gig.
Yet choosing the right person is important – you need the best freelancers just as much as you need the best full-time staff.
And I love the approach he takes to doing the interviews. Read more
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