Madiha Yaqoob
After years of severe unemployment in a number of industries, firms are expected to use freelancing workers more frequently in 2024 to fill essential skill gaps. In this context, the use of AI tools is also growing in popularity.
Although unemployment in the IT sector dominated news coverage this year, other industries—most especially marketing services—also felt the effects and used freelancers to fill the associated skill gaps.
A shocking 85% of marketing executives have turned to freelancers for help after dropping key positions and knowledge during this difficult economic time. Amazingly, according to an AdWeek report, 45% of marketing teams currently use freelancers, and 54% of them claim that the number of people added to the freelance workforce increased in 2023 compared to previous years.
A survey revealed that 74% of full-time and part-time workers said they felt their companies last year’s hires of freelancers helped them out. This positive mindset suggests that the public’s view of freelancing talent is that it is seen as a supporting force that improves the total capabilities of the team rather than as a threat to current employees.
Marketers have discovered that independent contractors (freelancers) enhance their teams with an extensive range of fresh ideas and abilities that drive innovation and development. According to the survey, 56% of marketers said they have benefited from new angles provided by freelancers.
It appears that freelancers get along well with existing teams; 74% of workers said they feel that freelancers help them. Based on a survey by The Freelance Informer, 33% of those who took part saw freelancers as a threat, while 67% of respondents saw them as an asset to teams of current staff members.
In reference to opinions about freelancers, an IT contractor observed that the response frequently depends on people’s past experiences, saying, “If they have worked with good ones, then they are usually quite welcoming; fortunately, if they had bad experiences, then it’s usually quite negative.”
In response to an online survey by The Freelance Informer, 67% of those polled stated that freelancers were typically seen as an asset to an already-existing team of employees, while 33% said the other way around.
Take Advantage of Technology
Marketers should think about a number of techniques to further improve their teams and take advantage of technology’s transformative power, and freelancers should prioritize getting similar skills:
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Hire freelancers with AI Experience: freelancers with specialized AI experience can provide an edge over others by helping to create and perform AI-driven strategies, reviewing data, and automating procedures for enhanced efficiency and insights.
Invest in User-Friendly AI Tools: enabling teams access to these tools helps empower AI within the company, allowing marketers of all stripes to use AI for tasks like audience segmentation, campaign optimization, and content creation. But human editing is still necessary.
Develop a Data-Driven Mindset: To fully realize the potential of artificial intelligence, marketing departments have to promote a data-driven culture. To support data analysis and educated decision-making, freelancers may provide training on data collection for no-code apps.
AI Tools for Freelancers
Regarding AI tools that can give freelancers a competitive advantage, the following are some important choices:
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Tome: Freelancers can finish tasks and documents like business plans and sales pitches in a small amount of the time by using the templates on this website.
Polymer: A platform for data analysis that makes organizing, exploration, and visualization of data easier. With the help of its AI capabilities, you can save a lot of time and effort through automated data cleaning, anomaly detection, and detection of outliers.
Jasper AI is an AI writing assistant that can create articles, social media captions, marketing copy, and more. It is known for its versatility in writing voices and tones.
SurferSEO: An AI-powered SEO tool that analyzes and makes suggestions for better heading structures, keyword usage, and readability with the goal to help content rank higher in search results.
Frase: Analyzing content and making suggestions for improvements to keyword usage, heading structures, and readability, Frase allows marketers create content that is compatible with the intent of their target audience.
