10 Actionable Marketing Projects You Can Complete With an Upwork Agency

Your marketing team is busy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do more—experiment with new trends, ramp up output, or pull off a big, special project—without draining your existing bandwidth.

Agencies on Upwork can help marketing teams like yours scale their output with amazing results. Their contributions can be as focused as an animated video or as all-encompassing as a top-to-bottom rebranding package. And without the big commitment and overhead of a traditional agency of record, these boutique agencies are poised to help you tackle more, quickly and affordably.

Here’s a look at ways they can help and 10 stand-out marketing projects that agencies on Upwork have rocked for companies like yours.

1. Run a comprehensive market and customer research study—then put the findings to work

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Market research agencies can be a marketing department’s secret weapon, mining deep into consumer and industry data to uncover key findings you can use. But their value doesn’t stop there. An agency can analyze findings and deliver a polished strategy to guide your team’s next marketing project, big and small.

When UK-based agency GreatBlue Research’s client wanted to expand its millennial customer base, the agency conducted extensive quantitative and qualitative research to develop an engaging marketing plan. From that, the client was able to tailor messaging in a way that resonated with this new audience.

2. Videos for every channel and strategy

You almost can’t talk about digital marketing without mentioning video. Nearly all (91%) of businesses use video in their marketing content. That investment is predicted to continue as video remains popular, especially among younger generations.

You don’t need Hollywood-quality productions, but you do need content that feels authentic and is worth your audience’s time. Video agencies can help you create such videos within nearly every budget.

As important, they’ll make sure the videos are consistent with your brand’s messaging, value, and products, such as in this Upwork-branded video series featuring chef and TV personality Kristen Kish.

See 5 video projects agencies have done for clients on Upwork.

3. An interactive infographic explaining key data and metrics

How you present data and metrics can be the difference between engaging readers and losing them in a flood of figures. Graphic design agencies are skilled at creating infographics that your audience can easily understand, remember, and want to share.

A Florida-based content agency was the perfect partner for creating an interactive infographic for Airbnb. The resulting graphic is an engaging journey through Airbnb’s economic impact in some of its biggest cities.

4. Create a content marketing calendar

One of the challenges of creating marketing content is knowing what to produce for each channel and when to publish it. A content marketing calendar makes it easier to plan out your marketing projects for the next few months or year.

Use the calendar to identify content gaps and consistently produce digital and traditional content like articles, videos, and webinars that your audience wants to engage with.

Creating a content marketing calendar involves researching audiences and competitors, analyzing market trends, and identifying the best type of content for each channel. Then, tech tools are used to ensure the content is published at the right time for maximum impact and to analyze the effectiveness of each piece.

A well-thought-out content calendar can increase the performance of your marketing projects, but it requires a considerable amount of work. You could save time by assigning the project to an agency.

Since they’ve made content calendars for other clients, they’ll know what questions to ask, how to develop a steady flow of content that aligns with your marketing goals and budget, and when to publish.

5. Get a full, top-to-bottom rebranding package

Branding is more than a logo. Branding also includes your font types, color palette, vocabulary, and messaging so that your audience receives a consistent message across all channels.

Marketing agencies have a team of specialists and a breadth of experience to create a brand that resonates with your audience and is aligned with your company’s goals, mission, and values. They then encapsulate all of this in a brand style guide for your teams to use.

Americord, a biotech company pioneering umbilical cord blood banking, wanted to rebrand with a digital marketing agency. They tapped Milk Bar Design, specialists in brand strategy, web design, and corporate brand identity, to redesign their marketing content and website to improve its messaging and responsiveness.

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Milk Bar seamlessly handled every aspect of the multifaceted rebrand, which involved simplifying a complex topic and process.

They began by restructuring an information architecture and user experience for the highly complex process of stem cell banking. That meant redefining the existing copy, sitemap, page layouts, illustrations, and product icons and art-directing a photoshoot for an entirely new set of marketing imagery. The agency also restructured the user checkout process, handled the collection kit design, and created new instructional materials.

Beyond the site, Milk Bar delivers ads, landing pages, emails, and print marketing materials for Americord. View Milk Bar’s portfolio for a full look at all the refreshed brand assets.

6. Launch a social media campaign

Digital marketing projects succeed through speed. On social media, trends can change in the time it takes you to walk to the kitchen to refill your coffee. If you don’t have the resources to jump on trends and execute ideas quickly, you may miss out on opportunities or generate lackluster returns.

Social media agencies spend their days spotting trends, creating quality content around them, and launching posts and campaigns while there’s still a healthy buzz around the idea.

These agencies can also help you develop data-driven strategies, create scroll-stopping headlines, and monitor performance across social media platforms.

Read: How To Create a Social Media Strategy in 2024

7. Create a monthly magazine layout

For most marketing teams, the effort required to produce a monthly magazine—copy, articles, layouts, graphics—could quickly drain bandwidth and push other important tasks to the back burner. But not for the Gallup Journey magazine.

Each month, they publish a meaty issue and keep their many projects on track by working with freelancers and agencies including Etcetera, a web design and development agency. Having reliable, flexible talent makes it possible for Gallup Journey to scale content production quickly and affordably.

Etcetera’s team created a layout flow with ready-to-print pages. Each month they collect the copy, create graphics, lay out the pages, and ready the entire piece for print—like a virtual publication house. They make the entire process very turnkey, even making final prepress corrections and tweaks on behalf of the client so the final deliverable is always polished.

8. Set up an affiliate marketing campaign

Partnering with businesses and individuals to promote your products and services is a strategic way to expand your audience for little upfront cost. But setting up, executing, and monitoring an affiliate marketing campaign takes work.

An affiliate marketing agency uses its connections, expertise, and teams to handle everything from developing to launching a targeted campaign. They could also make your marketing project a success by:

• Recruiting affiliates. Tap their networks to bring on affiliates whose audience aligns with your goals.
• Setting up and managing the entire program. This includes the tracking systems and payment processing, complying with legal requirements, and then ensuring the affiliate continues to adhere to your brand guidelines.
• Creating marketing materials. Provide affiliates with things like product descriptions and ads that are on brand and resonate with the target audience.
• Analyzing performance. Track performance and suggest ways to improve campaign results.

9. Launch an ongoing multichannel campaign to drive awareness

As marketing becomes increasingly digitized, you must coordinate messages across various channels, target markets, devices, and mediums. Executing all of that requires a good amount of production and planning.

That’s why when the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) was preparing for its multiyear renovation, it tapped marketing agency Perceptiv to launch a multichannel campaign.

Perceptiv created printed construction mitigation collateral, including barricades, interior posters, and digital boards, throughout the airport’s ticketing area, people movers, and terminals. They extended the messaging to a website and social channels. Each time the messaging required updating, Perceptiv handled the incredibly complex process of removing and replacing each physical communication seamlessly throughout the entire airport.

The resulting two-year-long “Re:LAX” campaign kept travelers informed about what was going on, and what the benefits of the $4 billion improvement project would be. The campaign successfully sent the message to visitors to one of the world’s busiest airports that while change can be inconvenient, it can also be worth the wait.

10. Get an SEO audit

If your website seems sluggish, you’re getting less organic traffic, or you made changes to it recently, you may want to include an SEO audit to your digital marketing projects list.

A search engine optimization (SEO) audit helps you maintain a positive user experience, optimize organic traffic, and improve site rankings.

An SEO agency keeps up with ever-changing SEO guidelines and trends to maximize your site’s performance. Some of the tasks they’ll perform during an audit include:

• Analyzing the site’s technical infrastructure such as its crawlability, indexing, speed, and mobile-friendliness
• Reviewing page content for optimization opportunities in areas like headlines, meta tags, and content quality
• Auditing backlinks, social media presence, and online reputation, which all impact site ranking
• Evaluating the ease of navigating the site and usability to increase conversions
• Auditing for compliance with search engine guidelines to avoid penalties
• Comparing the site’s performance against competitors to identify where the site can gain a competitive edge

Read: 45 AI Prompts to Supercharge Your SEO Strategy

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