People who work as freelancers online have their hands in a lot of different industries.
That's part of being a freelancer: having a diverse skill set and attitude for fast learning makes a freelancer useful for many different clients. There are many areas of study that are good for the working freelancer to make himself or herself more marketable.
A comfortability with Search Engine Optimization has been one of the most important disciplines for a developing freelancer to understand for many years.
But one of the growing arenas that is worth a deeper look for most of these people is Search Marketing, also known as the Pay Per Click model.
Unless you have a background in marketing, this is an advertising model that is somewhat unfamiliar to it. But it's increasingly relevant for the way that certain industries advertise, industries that may comprise part of your workday in the future.
While the most familiar association many of us have with PPC is entertainment sites like Buzzfeed, it is also relevant to the way more conventional (and economically important) industries operate.
For the purposes of explanation, let's use the automotive industry as an example.
Most car sellers sell used vehicles. The average car seller will have many dozens of vehicles in their inventory, and this inventory is constantly shifting, being added to and having units bought out of it.
As web and mobile technologies have become more sophisticated, seller websites have risen to the occasion, accurately representing everything that they have to sell at any one time. The problem isn't giving the consumer options, it's getting the consumer's attention at all.
Most potential car buyers don't have specific brand loyalty to one local/regional seller in particular. 84% of people who buy a car use web search to learn about the car they're looking for. But only about a quarter of these actually provide a lead to one seller in particular.
Sellers all over the country are trying to use advertising to give individuals compelling and convenient reasons to pick them, and to start the purchase/relationship online prior to the sale.
Showroom Logic is an example of a company that is starting to crack the code. They have found innovative ways to communicate a seller's existing inventory to a potential customer. But they take it a step further.
Rather than featuring a selection of vehicles at some static location on the seller's website, these inventories can be displayed in a variety of innovative ways, even following customers wherever else they search on the internet.
There isn't the space here to talk about all of the ways that ads like these ads can be tacked and customized, but suffice to say there is a lot of transparency and accountability. Sellers can see exactly which ads are the most effective, with clicks and leads tracked accurately.
For freelancers, it's important to understand the way advertising is transforming for people in industries like these.
Freelancers can become acquainted with the way these systems operate, so that when you find a new client who already employs such a system, you already know how it works, or you can suggest ways in which a system like this would better their current advertising.
It's just one way that a freelancer can add "arrows to the quiver" and become a more marketable mind overall.
