Freelancer.com Index: SEM out, SEO and digital marketing skills in

Fast 50 Index Q3 2022 from Freelancer.com shows changing nature of the marketing and advertising skills in demand right now

Marketing and advertising teams are looking less for search engine marketing (SEM) skills and putting more emphasis on search engine optimisation (SEO) and traditional advertising, Freelancer.com’s latest figures show.

The digital freelance marketplace today released its Q3 2022 Fast 50 Index highlighting the fastest-growing jobs on its platform and skills in demand r right now.

When it comes to marketing and advertising trends, the data revealed projects for SEM fell by 30.4 per cent in Q3, or from 2300 jobs to 1600, compared to the previous quarter. By contrast, digital marketing, traditional marketing and YouTube jobs spiked in interest.

According to Freelancer.com, employers are looking for support with SEO rankings, with SEO-friendly blog writing jobs increasing by 55 per cent. YouTube projects also grew by 32.3 per cent quarter-by-quarter, while TikTok jobs lifted by 10 per cent.

Digital marketing similarly experienced an increase (23.1 per cent), with jobs ranging from hiring business consultants supporting social media strategies to SEO managers. During Q3, employers were also looking to the Freelancer.com platform to hire community managers, digital marketing campaign managers and social media managers.

Traditional advertising was another area of focus for employers. For example, flyer design projects lifted by more than a quarter (27.5 per cent), as did designing for covers and packaging, up 27.3 per cent (1253 to 1596 jobs). In addition, when comparing Q3 2022 to 2021, advertisement design is up 15.7 per cent, from 1516 to 1755 jobs.

“With the onset of new digital marketing channels, businesses are learning that their strategies must diversify and move away from primary channels, such as SEM,” commented Freelancer.com marketing director, Hector Perez-Nieto. “Paid advertising alone is no longer the most viable alternative. What we are witnessing is demand for freelancers with skills in social media, short video platforms, earned and owned content, SEO and a whole spectrum of marketing strategies that before were in the realm of large corporates only.”

On the sales front, lead generation and cold calling proved a popular project type in Q3, with jobs to generate leads jumping by 25.3 per cent, from 1387 to 1738. Sales specific jobs also increased by 18.7 per cent from 2544 to 3020 total projects.

Tech skills in highest demand

Across the wider index, Freelancer.com reported the biggest surge in tech-related jobs in Q3 when compared to Q2 2022 and Q3 2021. Most notable was Android app development work, which was up 80.5 per cent from 1082 jobs to 1954. This was followed by website and software development skills in AJAX (up 66.4 per cent, from 1059 to 1763) and API (up 59.5 per cent, from 1587 to 2532).

Overall, software development were the fastest-growing skills, up 54.7 per cent, followed by coding and back-end development.

Freelancer.com attributed the surge in tech-related freelance jobs, which first became apparent in Q2 2022 findings, to global tech layoffs and hiring freezes across what’s been called the ‘tech winter’. It pointed out more than 42,000 workers in the US tech sector lost their jobs in 2022. Online tracker, Layoffs.fyi, also reported 83,173 layoffs from 661 startups this year at October 2022, almost half the total of 179,164 tech layoffs recorded since the beginning of Covid-19.

“The macroeconomic environment, tech winter and nosebleed inflation has led to an almost daily string of announcements of layoffs,” said Freelancer.com CEO, Matt Barrie. “The most similar event was the Global Financial Crisis, where we saw three trends: Businesses looking to cut costs and going online to hire freelancers; people looking for work online; and a lot of startup businesses forming to bridge people through hard times. However this was mostly contained to the United States. We think that heading into 2023 we could see this all over again, but on a more global scale.”

The Freelancer.com index is based on data from 296,000 jobs posted on Freelancer.com between 1 July to 30 September 2022.

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