Find Top Digital Marketing Talent: 11 Best Freelance Platforms

Freelance marketers are in demand. Employers love the flexibility and cost savings compared to hiring full-time. In fact, 80% of businesses now say they have hired digital marketers on a freelance basis.

But where do you find talent for hire? Freelance recruitment websites are an excellent place to start. These platforms make it easy to identify the right person for the job.

If you are on the hunt for professional digital marketers, read on. We’ve pinned down the 11 best marketing freelance platforms out there.

These days, every business is a digital business. And that means you have to know how to market and promote yourself in the digital world.

SEO, Content Marketing, Paid Search, and other forms of online advertising, Social Marketing, Marketing Automation, Marketing Intelligence – digital marketing know-how can have a huge impact on your brand. But where do you find these specialist skills?

Freelance websites give employers global reach in the search for talent. Perfect in the modern world of remote work, they make finding and hiring the right person quick, convenient, and safe. And hiring a freelancer gives you the flexibility to only pay for what you need.

When curating this list, factors considered included the size of each site’s talent database and the availability of digital marketing freelancers. We also evaluated features, ease of use, the hiring process, and security measures.

If you’re short on time, here’s a summary of what each site is best for.

11 Best Freelance Marketing Websites

There’s no single type of freelance marketer website. Some operate like digital recruitment agencies, offering strict talent vetting and actively helping employers find the right candidates. Others are more akin to giant job boards or marketplaces, allowing employers and freelancers to find each other. Many offer a blend of different options.

Here’s a detailed look at what our top 11 picks offer.

1. MarketerHire

MarketerHire has made a significant impression in a short space of time, attracting an impressive list of big-name clients along the way.

Its success may stem from its straightforward approach. Everything about MarketerHire is designed for simplicity.

While some digital marketing freelance platforms emphasize an extended “get-to-know-you” phase, MarketerHire prioritizes quickly presenting candidates to clients. It boasts a pre-approved database of marketing freelancers ready for deployment. Clients can expect candidate recommendations within 48 hours of applying, and with suitable matches, a new team member can be onboarded in as little as a week.

However, MarketerHire is meticulous with its vetting process. It accepts applications from freelancers but also employs a dedicated talent scouting team, much like a recruitment agency. They actively search Facebook groups, forums, and LinkedIn for potential candidates. Every candidate undergoes an in-depth skills review, a video interview, and test projects.

MarketerHire offers a simple and transparent pricing structure with a choice of three contract types: 10 hours, 20 hours, and 40 hours a week. The exact cost depends on the hired talent, but budgeting by contract type is straightforward.

Best for: Businesses looking for a quick way to find highly-vetted talent they can trust.

2. Mayple

Mayple is a freelance platform dedicated exclusively to digital marketing jobs. It features a strict vetting process for candidates and utilizes data to precisely pair freelancers with employers.

Every professional who signs up is assessed on 141 different criteria. Mayple proudly highlights its 1% acceptance rate, ensuring that only the best talent with proven track records makes it onto their roster. This guarantees clients the highest quality of every candidate.

Collecting such extensive data also positions Mayple to achieve exceptional matches. Clients are encouraged to share ample details about their business and specific role requirements. Mayple then employs 25 matching criteria to suggest suitable candidates.

Mayple extends beyond just making a match. It offers service packages across various digital marketing disciplines. Whether you aim to boost your business with an email marketing campaign or increase visibility on social media or search engines, you specify the desired outcomes, and Mayple recommends a freelancer to deliver. It actively tracks performance against your goals, and you pay for the combined package.

Best for: Larger businesses seeking marketing talent for guaranteed results.

3. Contently

Contently provides a comprehensive, three-part digital marketing content service. It assists businesses in building tailored content strategies based on expert insights. It then offers a complete content marketing management platform, and finally, includes a marketplace for hiring content creators.

The marketplace aspect is particularly relevant to this article. Contently’s Creative Marketplace functions on two levels: First, freelancers can create a free portfolio, providing a convenient space to showcase their work. Second, freelancers can apply to join Contently’s Premium Creative Network, which is vetted and paid for.

As a resource for hiring teams, Contently offers something distinctive: its roster is populated with world-class writers, journalists, designers, videographers, editors, and illustrators, many with high professional profiles. Contently strongly emphasizes the creative aspect of content creation.

An algorithm suggests a ‘content team’ of matches for clients to choose from. Contently handles contracts, payment, invoicing, and all other administrative aspects of hiring.

Best for: Working with high-profile journalists, writers, and creatives.

4. GrowTal

GrowTal follows a well-established playbook for professional freelancer matchmaking. It rigorously vets all marketers who apply to join its network, ensuring that hiring clients can trust the quality of the recommended professionals.

The hiring process is quick and easy. Clients complete a two-minute questionnaire detailing their needs. From this, GrowTal identifies the best matches from its database. The list of digital marketing roles it caters for includes SEO consultants, email marketers, and content marketers, plus brand consultants, social media marketing specialists, advertising experts, and more.

GrowTal arranges video calls with every shortlisted freelancer. Regardless of who you choose to hire, a risk-free trial period is offered.

GrowTal also offers what it calls Accelerator Packages, a menu of fixed-term, fixed-price jobs. These range from marketing strategy consultations starting at $499 to platform rollouts for $4999. In all cases, GrowTal has professionals ready to begin, speeding up the process to get you started faster.

Clients looking to hire on a project basis can also submit RFPs. GrowTal’s creative database is fully vetted. A similar ‘on-demand’ service is available for agencies.

Best for: Knowing exactly what you will get for a fixed price.

5. PeoplePerHour

PeoplePerHour is one of the ‘big four’ freelancer websites, boasting a database of over 2 million freelancers and more than 1 million business clients.

It functions more as a digitized job board than a recruitment agency. There’s no in-depth vetting process here. Freelancers post their skills and rates, while hirers post work opportunities. PeoplePerHour uses AI algorithms to facilitate connections. Freelancers submit proposals for projects they are paired with or find themselves.

One of PeoplePerHour’s greatest strengths is the vast range of skills on offer, far broader than the standard definition of ‘marketing talent.’ Here, you can find programmers and designers for web development, translators and video producers, photographers and music producers, alongside a multitude of content, SEO, social, and email marketers.

PeoplePerHour also features a very slick and user-friendly interface, making everything from registration to posting projects and communicating with freelancers incredibly easy. Pricing is equally straightforward: you agree on rates either by the hour or on a full project basis. A deposit is paid upon accepting a freelancer’s application, which PeoplePerHour uses for initial payment. After a trial period, the balance is paid if you are satisfied with the work.

Best for: Anyone looking to hire a freelancer on a short-term basis, fast.

6. Upwork

Upwork is a colossal platform, boasting a database of 18 million freelancers and 5 million clients worldwide, establishing itself as a major player in the ‘gig economy.’

It’s more than just a freelance site for marketing talent; Upwork covers sectors such as finance, HR, IT, and law, among others. Nevertheless, there’s no shortage of digital marketing and creative talent available.

One of the key factors behind Upwork’s popularity is its flexible hiring options. Its Talent Marketplace operates much like other job board-type sites: hiring teams post details of available jobs or projects, and Upwork’s AI scours the database to find matching freelancers. Clients can view freelancer profiles and read ratings and reviews before hiring.

Another option is the Project Catalog, a library of fixed-term, fixed-objective jobs offered by freelancers for a set price. The projects available often lean towards digital marketing and branding and tend to be quick, low-cost, and have short lead times. You can have someone start working within hours.

A final option is to find an industry expert for a one-to-one consultation. Here, you share project details, and Upwork matches you with a suitable specialist. You then book a private Zoom meeting through Upwork and pay the consultant by the hour. This is an excellent way to solidify project plans in areas outside your own expertise.

Best for: Flexible hiring options with the biggest range of freelance talent.

7. Fiverr

Fiverr initially made its name as the job board where freelancers sold tasks for $5 a go. It has evolved significantly since those early days but retains the strengths that propelled it to become one of the world’s biggest job sites: simple project-based pricing, a vast array of skills, and an easy, direct hiring process.

Fiverr’s talent pool encompasses digital marketing, creative industries, and technology, covering virtually every digital marketing discipline imaginable. It’s also popular for graphics designers, translators, photographers, web developers, software programmers, and data analysts.

On Fiverr, hirers typically don’t post project details; the onus is on you to search the database for suitable talent. The search feature offers a robust set of filters, allowing you to narrow down results by skill, price range, location, and experience.

This self-service approach will suit some businesses, but others might prefer the talent-matching services offered by other freelance platforms. Fiverr addresses this with Fiverr Business, an enhanced service that recommends freelancers based on project criteria. All freelancers available through Fiverr Business are fully vetted. It’s free to join, but commission charges are higher.

Best for: Making low-cost hires on a short-term basis.

8. Freelancer.com

Freelancer.com is one of the pioneering freelancer marketplaces, having established much of the format that subsequent freelancer sites have adopted.

Freelancers create profiles detailing their skill sets and experience, while hiring teams post projects they need assistance with. While there isn’t a direct matchmaking service, freelancers can search for jobs, and businesses can actively search for freelancers. You can filter searches by skill, language, and location.

The list of freelancer skill sets catered for is excellent. While Freelancer.com may not quite match the enormous talent database of Upwork, the range of sectors and skill types it covers is second to none. It extends well beyond digital marketing, claiming to cover more than 1800 different skill sets in total.

Freelancer.com provides a Live Chat tool, which you can utilize to vet candidates before making a hire and to maintain communication throughout a project.

You can choose to pay per project or hire freelancers by the hour. Either way, payments are managed by Freelancer’s Milestone Payment system, which allows businesses to split payments into parts, released upon the completion of specific project milestones.

Best for: Searching for freelancers with specific skills.

9. Guru

Guru is a significant global freelancer marketplace, boasting over 1.5 million freelancers on its books, covering a wide range of industries. This includes more than 100,000 freelance digital marketers.

A notable feature of Guru is that you don’t have to sign up to browse its talent database. Freelancer listings include portfolios of previous work, plus statistics on the number of projects completed. You can filter searches by the number of invoices paid by hirers and how many employers a freelancer has worked with, providing a good indication of experience.

You do need to sign up to start contacting freelancers and request quotes, but this is completely free and takes only a few minutes. Hiring teams can also post jobs and projects and have freelancers submit bids to them.

Guru’s WorkRooms offers a collaborative space for managing relationships with freelancers. It’s particularly useful if you hire multiple freelancers for a single project, allowing you to assign and track tasks and keep all documentation organized. WorkRooms also tracks progress and clocks hourly work.

Like most similar platforms, Guru holds payments until you are satisfied with the completed work. There are multiple payment options, including an AutoPay feature that automatically completes transactions when an invoice is outstanding.

Best for: Browsing for talent with no signup.

10. ClearVoice

ClearVoice is owned by Fiverr, but the two platforms operate very differently. While Fiverr is a broad job marketplace for all kinds of freelancers, ClearVoice is a specialized, managed content creation service.

So, if you’re looking for a freelance writer, ClearVoice certainly fulfills that need. However, it’s not simply a place to post available projects and search for individuals to fill roles; the experience is a little more involved.

When you engage with ClearVoice, you don’t just get a single freelance writer completing tasks. You gain access to a whole team, a mix of ClearVoice staffers and freelancers. ClearVoice positions itself as delivering full editorial teams to execute complete content strategies.

This offers a different take on the freelance hiring website concept, ideal if outsourcing your entire content creation process appeals to you. ClearVoice specializes in content production, SEO, and amplification. While it may not boast the huge database of freelancers that other services offer, its network is highly vetted to include only proven, experienced professionals.

Best for: Businesses looking for a complete managed content creation service.

11. LinkedIn

LinkedIn needs no introduction. With over 900 million active members worldwide, it is by far the biggest platform on this list. It’s also not purely a freelancer marketplace or a job message board, although it encompasses both functionalities.

As anyone who has used it knows, LinkedIn bills itself as a professional social network. Just as you use social media to connect with friends and family, LinkedIn facilitates professional connections.

Job search and talent acquisition are significant components of this. LinkedIn isn’t focused solely on digital marketing or adjacent industries, nor is it exclusively a freelancer-focused site. However, what it does offer are high-quality recruitment tools.

LinkedIn’s native hiring tools fall under its Talent Solutions banner. Options include:

• Jobs: A straightforward jobs board.
• Recruiter and Recruiter Lite: Platforms for sourcing, contacting, and hiring candidates at speed, differentiated by hiring volume.
• Talent Insights: A data analytics platform for tracking workforce and recruitment intelligence.
• Talent Hub: An applicant tracking system (ATS) for recruiters.

LinkedIn has also inspired an entire industry of third-party recruitment and talent management plug-ins. Furthermore, the value of good old-fashioned networking and recommendations, both of which LinkedIn significantly aids, cannot be underestimated.

Best for: General recruitment and networking beyond marketing.

How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Freelance Marketer?

The cost of hiring a freelance digital marketer varies widely, influenced by several factors:

• The type of marketing skills you are looking for
• The experience and expertise of the freelancer
• The size of the project or length of the contract
• The freelancer website’s fees and commission
• The pricing structure

What you pay is often shaped by the freelancer website you choose. At one end of the scale, sites like Fiverr and PeoplePerHour specialize in short-term, fixed tasks that can start at just a few dollars. GrowTal and MarketerHire offer project-based bundles ranging from $500 to $5000. For managed content services, platforms like Contently and Mayple can command even higher rates.

Another factor to consider is that digital marketing often relies on access to specialized software. When you hire a marketing freelancer, you’re frequently engaging them to utilize a particular platform. You may need to budget for app subscriptions in addition to the freelancer’s fees. Examples of such tools include:

• SEMrush
• Ahrefs
• Moz Pro
• Google Analytics
• Google Ads
• HubSpot

Freelance Marketing Websites: Which is right for you?

If you’ve not already decided which freelance marketing website is best for your needs, here are some helpful tips.

If you’re a small business seeking quick and easy access to marketing skills, explore the ‘job board’ type sites. They are excellent for short-term hires at budget-friendly rates.

For larger businesses that require guaranteed results on a longer-term basis, consider a specialist marketing site offering advanced candidate vetting and matchmaking services.

Best freelancing sites for quick, low-cost, short-term hires:

• Fiverr: Best for small projects at budget rates.
• PeoplePerHour: Best for the sheer number of freelancers to choose from.

Best freelancing sites for finding the very best candidates:

• Mayple: Best for AI-powered talent matching.
• MarketerHire: Best for rigorous talent vetting.

FAQs about The Best Freelance Marketing Websites