Decoding Digital: A Freelancer’s Guide to Modern Marketing
Marketing your services has undergone a sea change since the turn of the century: it’s digital, it’s everywhere, and it’s changing almost daily. In January 2025, the Canadian Freelance Guild hosted a webinar on the topic of Digital Marketing Plans for Freelancers. A summary of this discussion is below. If you would like to watch the webinar, it can be accessed here.
In an era where online visibility can make or break a freelance career, two marketing experts reveal the strategies that actually work—and bust the myths that waste your time and money
The results were startling but perhaps unsurprising: when asked if they had a digital marketing plan, the overwhelming majority of freelancers attending the Canadian Freelance Guild’s expert panel answered with a resounding “no.” In fact, the collective response to whether they had any marketing plan at all—digital or otherwise—painted a picture of a talented community that knows how to deliver excellent work but seems allergic to promoting it.
“I’m not shocked,” quipped panelist Robyn Roste with a knowing laugh that carried the weight of a thousand consultations with marketing-averse creatives.
Her fellow expert Khaldip Gill was more surprised: “I expected—I got a bit, yeah. So we gotta roll up our sleeves here today.”
And roll up their sleeves they did. Over the next hour, these two digital marketing veterans from different corners of the industry shared practical advice that cut through the noise and demystified the often overwhelming world of digital marketing for freelancers who’d rather be doing literally anything else than promoting themselves.
Starting from Square One (Or: Help, I Have No Plan!)
For the majority of freelancers who have no marketing plan whatsoever, the path forward might seem as daunting as climbing Everest in flip-flops. Where do you even begin?
Gill, who brings over 20 years of experience in digital advertising and photography, emphasized the importance of starting with audience research—because shouting your message into the void rarely works.
“First of all, I would sit down with the client, figure out what’s the audience that they wanna go after,” he explained. “What kind of content are they creating? And when I say what’s the audience, I don’t just mean the type of audience, I mean geographically.”
From there, he recommends creating a content calendar and determining the platforms you’ll use to share that content, with a strong focus on local search—what he calls “the low-hanging fruit.” After all, why compete with the entire internet when you can dominate your local space?
“If you have a website, the architecture has to be audited, and SEO needs to be implemented, and then a month, month and a half into it, the content needs to be rolled out,” he explained, adding a reality check for those expecting overnight Instagram fame. “When it comes to net new, you’re looking at a long game, right? This isn’t something that’s gonna flick of a switch and turn on overnight.”
Roste, author of “Marketing for Freelance Writers” and the editor of the CFG’s publication The Storyboard, takes a complementary approach with her clients, focusing on foundational messaging before any advertising begins—like making sure you have a solid roof before inviting guests to your house.
“My work would be helping them get ready to run ads, because that will take all of their marketing strategies and amplify it,” she said. “How we would do that is really talk about their messaging and their branding and making sure that they know what they’re about, that they know who they’re going after, what their services are.”
This clarity about your services and ideal clients creates the foundation for everything that follows. “If we’re talking about a marketing plan, we need all those, the why, the how, the what, the who ahead of time,” Roste emphasized. Without them, you’re essentially throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks—a strategy that wastes both pasta and potential.
Digital vs. Traditional: Understanding the Difference (Or: Welcome to the Matrix)
For many freelancers more comfortable with traditional networking and marketing approaches, the digital landscape can seem like a foreign country where everyone speaks in acronyms and measures success in metrics you’ve never heard of.
Gill, who witnessed the transition firsthand while working at AutoTrader, provided insight into the key distinctions: “Online is more strategic. It’s more quantifiable. You can see the metrics essentially immediately and how that campaign is affecting your bottom line and your results. Whereas traditional is more kind of a broader scope and more kind of a branding play versus acquisition when it comes to digital.”
This quantifiable nature of digital marketing is both its greatest strength and the source of much confusion for newcomers. When we talk about “acquisition” in digital marketing, it doesn’t just mean landing clients—though try telling that to your bank account.
“A lot of people focus on just that. It’s like landing a client and that’s the end goal,” Gill explained. “But acquisition can be several things… I would consider an acquisition, not just if somebody signed me up and hired me, but it would be how long did they spend on my website? How many page views did they look at? Was it a solid lead that’s going to that website?”
Translation: In digital marketing, even getting someone to stick around your website for more than 15 seconds can be considered a win—a concept that might be hard to explain to your mortgage lender, but is genuinely valuable in the long run.
Roste added that even without paid advertising, there are many ways to measure marketing effectiveness. She described how a marketing funnel works for someone selling a book: “The acquisition would be getting them on your email list in that example. And so what you’d measure is how many people saw your social media post…And then you’d measure how many people went to your website…And then how many people actually took the next step to sign up for your email list.”
It’s like tracking a romantic relationship: first date (they saw your post), second date (they visited your website), commitment (they signed up for your emails), and finally marriage (they bought something). Each step matters, and each can be measured.
The Power of Email Lists (Or: The Marketing Channel That Actually Works)
Speaking of email lists, Don Genova posed a question that many freelancers wonder about: “I’ve been hearing that emailing lists are very important and more useful than other channels in terms of reaching people, true or false?”
Roste didn’t hesitate: “I think it’s very true. This is someone volunteering to hear from you directly and you have their attention in a way that you don’t on social media or really any other channel that I can think of.”
In other words, while that Instagram post you slaved over is being shown to approximately 3% of your followers (thanks, algorithm!), your email newsletter is landing directly in the inboxes of people who actually want to hear from you. It’s the difference between shouting in a crowded stadium and having a conversation in someone’s living room.
Gill strongly agreed, explaining why email lists are becoming even more valuable in today’s digital landscape: “It’s essentially first party data and that’s incredibly valuable, right? And especially in this world where third party data is getting harder to access and use with data privacy regulations.”
However, he cautioned about the importance of obtaining emails legitimately: “If you’re harvesting emails in a correct way, again, that’s very important because if you’re just getting emails from non-legit data sources, then you’re gonna run into issues like CASL, and that’s the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation, which there are severe penalties when it comes to that.”
The takeaway? Build your email list like you’d build a friendship circle—genuinely, ethically, and without being that creepy person who steals contact info from other people’s phones when they’re not looking.
Beyond simply collecting emails, Gill explained the importance of segmentation: “That person who gave me that email looked at this article and this topic, and then you can put them into another bucket. So now when I’m writing another article regarding that specific topic, whether it’s heavy equipment or whether it’s nature walks or whatever, you can set them into a different bucket and send them a specific email on that.”
In other words, not everyone wants to hear about everything—a concept that might save a few family holiday dinners as well as your marketing strategy.
Breaking Through the Noise Without Breaking the Bank (Or: Marketing for the Rest of Us)
For most freelancers, budgetary constraints are a reality. How can you effectively market yourself when your marketing budget is roughly equivalent to a nice lunch?
“A very strategic approach when you don’t have much of a budget, you have to really dial in the content that you’re putting out there because it has to be for that specific audience,” Gill advised. “That goes to SEO and local search when it comes to pushing that content to social, pushing that content to your Google business page is huge.”
He emphasized consistency over splashy one-off campaigns: “These are things that you can essentially do for free, but you have to take the time and you have to do it in a continuous way. You can’t just do it and sit back, wait for the results. That’s not how search engine algorithms work.”
Think of it like exercise—one intense workout won’t transform your body, but consistent effort over time absolutely will. His recommendation? “I would suggest at least anywhere from five to 10 pieces of original content a month that you’re putting out there in order to be seen.”
Roste advocated for what she calls a “visibility campaign”—essentially putting yourself out there in spaces where potential clients might find you, rather than waiting for them to magically discover you while you work in obscurity.
“Running, putting yourself through a visibility campaign is a great way to become visible online without putting in a lot of money. It’s sweat equity, it’s time, but not maybe your dollars,” she explained. “That would be speaking at different things like a webinar such as this. It would be applying to speak up… I would apply to writing conferences to speak. I try and get on podcasts to get interviews, to do collaborations on social media.”
For those looking to reach new audiences, she emphasized one particular medium: “If I’m looking for a new audience, I’d be really leaning into video. So reels, short form video, and just doing it all.” Yes, that might mean conquering your fear of seeing yourself on camera—something many freelancers rank somewhere between public speaking and swimming with sharks on their personal terror scale.
Shattering Marketing Myths (Or: Stop Wasting Your Money)
When asked about common myths or misconceptions in digital marketing, Roste didn’t mince words: “You can’t run ads to a bad product. So if you don’t have your services worked out, or you don’t have your audience targeted properly, or you don’t have a great product that people are looking for, the ads don’t really work in my opinion.”
In other words, no amount of marketing can make people want something they fundamentally don’t need—a harsh reality check for anyone hoping advertising would magically transform their struggling services.
Gill agreed, explaining how the industry has fallen into problematic advertising patterns: “There’s actually a great stat that came out a couple of years ago that you’re more likely to survive an airplane crash than to click on a banner, right? And that shows you like that’s that spray and pray approach.”
Let that sink in: You’re more likely to walk away from a plane crash than click on a banner ad. If that doesn’t change how you think about digital advertising, nothing will.
He emphasized that strategic targeting, while more expensive, ultimately delivers better value: “But there’s also the other approach when you’re more strategic, when you’re going after certain data sets, that is a more accurate way to run campaigns. And that’ll cost you a little bit more, but in the long run, it’s gonna save you money because you’re actually going for that specific audience.”
It’s the difference between standing on a street corner handing flyers to everyone who passes by versus hosting a dinner party for people who are already interested in what you offer. The dinner costs more per person, but you’re not wasting resources on people who will immediately toss your flyer in the nearest bin.
Marketing for the Neurodivergent Freelancer (Or: When Traditional Advice Just Doesn’t Compute)
One of the more poignant questions came from an anonymous attendee who identified as a neurodivergent illustrator struggling with the business side of freelancing. How can someone who excels at their craft but finds marketing overwhelming approach this challenge?
Roste, offering compassionate insight, acknowledged that standard advice often doesn’t work for neurodivergent individuals: “I think you’re gonna hear a lot of advice that is for neurotypical people. So it doesn’t make sense and it won’t work. So I’ll let you off the hook.”
She went on to suggest finding approaches that work with, rather than against, one’s neurodivergent traits: “You have to figure out routines that work for you. So if being consistent, that’s not gonna work maybe because it’s overwhelming or your energy management, it doesn’t work as typical advice would come across, then you have to figure out systems that work for you.”
Some practical strategies she suggested included batching marketing tasks during high-energy periods, setting up automation systems, or working with someone as a “body double” to help maintain focus during marketing sessions.
Gill added his perspective: “I know a lot of creative people and I’m a creative person as well with my photography and I know some of the people that are the most creative people that I know, marketing themselves just crush them. It crushes their creativity as well.”
His advice was straightforward: “In those situations, I would say seek help. I mean, if you can’t do it on your own, don’t force yourself to do it because it’s gonna affect your core, what you do as far as your creativity and stuff.”
Both experts suggested leveraging AI tools judiciously as a potential aid, with Gill noting: “It’s not something to be afraid of, it’s something to kind of embrace and use it as a tool and that’ll simplify a lot of things when it comes to pushing content to push your message forward.”
The message was clear: Marketing doesn’t have to be a choose-your-own-misery adventure. There are ways to make it work with your brain, not against it.
The Social Media Landscape: Where to Focus Your Efforts (Or: No, You Don’t Need to Be on TikTok)
With new platforms emerging constantly and others fading in relevance, many freelancers feel overwhelmed by the social media landscape. Which platforms deserve their limited time and attention, and which can they blissfully ignore?
“It depends on what you’re promoting and what your product is,” Gill cautioned, before offering some specific advice: “LinkedIn is great for freelance writers. But I wouldn’t post what you’re writing, what your articles are necessarily on LinkedIn, but I would post like what it is to be a freelance writer, day-to-day kind of thing and become like that subject matter expert.”
He emphasized the importance of hashtag research and strategic keywords, sharing a personal anecdote: “My full-time job is digital advertising, digital marketing for the last 20 years. Photography is just something that’s like a passion of mine. And then every time somebody has used my photography, they found me through hashtags. I’ve never really promoted, I’ve never went out and pushed any of my photography, but National Geographic found it on Instagram.”
For content creators, he recommended: “I would stick with LinkedIn, I would stick with Instagram. Videos or short form videos are huge. I would limit those to five to seven seconds.” Yes, that’s shorter than it takes most of us to decide what to order for lunch.
Interestingly, Gill advised caution around some of the platforms many assume are essential: “I would stay away from platforms like TikTok, Meta… There’s a reason why some of these large brands like Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s in the US, they’re all pulling their budget out of Meta. Because it’s just, it’s not as effective as it used to be and it’s rampant with fraud.”
Insert massive sigh of relief from every freelancer who’s been anxiously feeling they should be dancing on TikTok to promote their B2B copywriting services.
Budgeting Reality Check: What Does Digital Marketing Actually Cost? (Or: Brace Yourself)
For freelancers ready to invest in digital marketing, the question of budget looms large. What kind of investment should they anticipate? The answers might make you want to sit down first.
“It varies, right? I mean, you can spend 500 bucks a month, but you’re gonna get 500 bucks a month worth of service,” Gill explained candidly. “I would suggest for some of my friends that have small media businesses… start allocating $3,500 a month.”
Yes, you read that right. $3,500 per month—roughly the same as a mortgage payment in some parts of Canada.
He broke down what that investment might cover: “The first month would be an audit of their website, architectural audit, keyword analysis on their competition, and just really make sure that the website is sound, that web crawlers can go through and it’s a nice clean website. And then the SEO starts at the second month and content creation, seven to 10 pieces of content.”
Roste concurred with these figures: “The ads managers that I work closely with are usually recommending minimum $5,000 a month spend to get something worthwhile. So I totally agree with Khaldip.”
For those not yet ready for that level of investment (or who just had to pick their jaws up off the floor), she recommended focusing on building marketing foundations first: “What I would recommend to get them ready for this is to get all of their marketing foundations ready for running the ads. So building out their funnel is the first thing.”
This preparatory work involves its own costs: “You need automation software to do that. You need a content creation plan. You generally will need equipment for your, because video is what you’re gonna generally be doing. So a good camera, good lighting, good mic, that kind of thing.”
While acknowledging that these numbers might sound intimidating, she offered reassurance: “I know it sounds probably very intimidating if you’ve not really had much experience in this world, but you do learn it as you go. So don’t let that be a total complete turn off and you’re not gonna do it all at once. You’ll do one piece at a time and then you’ll be ready for the next step.”
In other words, you don’t have to mortgage your house tomorrow to start marketing yourself effectively—but you should be prepared for serious investment when you’re ready to take things to the next level.
Looking Ahead: Digital Marketing Trends for 2025 (Or: What’s Coming Whether We Like It or Not)
As the session wound down, the experts shared their insights on emerging trends freelancers should monitor—or perhaps brace themselves for.
“I think for 2025, we really have to take into account permission and consent with digital marketing,” Roste predicted. “There have been a lot of black hat type tactics where you’re buying email lists or you’re adding people to your email list without permission or you’re uploading lists to advertise to them that’s been scraped from somewhere. I think those are gonna be just getting harder and harder to do.”
She also emphasized the increasing importance of human connection in an AI-dominated landscape: “With AI, we want to be human. So appearing as human as possible is gonna be important too, I think this year. As it’s gonna improve and it’s gonna get harder and harder to tell the difference.”
The irony wasn’t lost on anyone—in a world of increasing automation, the most valuable marketing asset might just be your authentic humanity.
Gill agreed that AI would continue to dominate conversations, but encouraged embracing rather than fearing it: “AI definitely is gonna be at the forefront of everybody’s mind. And it is a scary topic. But I mean, you can’t fight technology, right? Like you have to embrace it and figure out a way to utilize it to best of your potential.”
He shared wisdom from a recent speaking engagement: “I spoke at an event earlier this year and it was about fear and anxiety in our industry. And that was how I closed the event was, fear and anxiety is a real thing. Like AI is scaring a lot of people, but not necessarily a bad thing. And you can use that fear to your advantage, right?”
His practical advice? “If you’re afraid of technology passing you by, sign up for some free tools. Use the free chat GPT, play around with it. Embrace it, get to know it, because it’s gonna be around, right? Use that fear to your advantage.”
In other words, the robots aren’t going away—you might as well make friends with them and put them to work for you.
The Long Game Worth Playing
If there was one consistent thread throughout the session, it was the reminder that effective digital marketing is a marathon, not a sprint—more like growing a garden than flipping a light switch. As Gill emphasized: “Net new, it’s gonna take a long time to roll that out and create that content and in order to see results. You’re not gonna see results when it comes to, say for example, driving traffic to your website you will see results for probably six months.”
This timeline often proves challenging for freelancers eager for immediate returns on their investment: “And that scares a lot of people when they think that, okay, I’ve hired somebody to do this, where are the results? I want the phone ringing, I want emails tomorrow. It is a long game when it comes to that.”
Yet as the panel concluded and attendees were asked if they planned to implement any of the digital marketing ideas they’d heard, a full 75% responded with “yes”—suggesting that perhaps the most valuable marketing insight of all is simply getting started, however imperfectly, and refining your approach along the way.
As Gill aptly summarized: “You can’t just do it and sit back, wait for the results. That’s not how search engine algorithms work.” The same might be said for digital marketing as a whole—it’s not about perfect execution from day one, but about consistent effort, strategic thinking, and the willingness to adapt as both technology and your freelance business evolve.
For the freelancer without a marketing plan, the message was clear: The best time to start was yesterday, but today will do just fine.
