Solved: Need help finding a freelance digital marketer!

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It sounds like you're in a common but tricky spot with your e-commerce brand. Getting those first sales is one thing, but turning it into a properly profitable business is a whole different ball game. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts based on my experience. I've worked with quite a few e-commerce brands, from subscription boxes to apparel, and I've seen what works and what doesn't.

Just to be clear upfront, my expertise is purely in paid advertising (like Meta and Google ads), not so much the SEO side of things, so I'll focus my advice there as that's where I can be most helpful. Honestly, trying to tackle everything at once – Meta ads, Amazon ads, and SEO – especially when you're bootstrapped and new to it, is a surefire way to spread yourself too thin and not get real results anywhere. It's much better to pick one or two channels and really master them first.

We'll need to look at your store first...

Before you even think about spending more money on performance marketing, you have to be brutally honest about your website. Sending paid traffic to a store that isn't ready to convert is like pouring water into a bucket full of holes. It's the fastest way to waste your budget. I haven't seen your site, of course, but after looking at hundreds of stores in your position, there are some common pitfalls.

Your number one priority should be making your store look trustworthy and making it easy for people to buy. When someone lands on your page from an ad, they're a cold visitor. They don't know you, they don't trust you yet. You have maybe 10 seconds to convince them to stick around. Ask yourself these questions:

-> Is the homepage clean and easy to understand, or is it cluttered? A slow-loading, messy page will have people clicking away instantly.
-> Are your product photos high quality? For e-commerce, your photos are everything. Grainy, poorly lit photos won't cut it. You don't need a massive budget for this; sometimes a smartphone, good natural light, and maybe a video of the product in use can make a world of a diffrence. One campaign we worked on for a client in women's apparel generated a 691% return, and a big part of that was having really good lifestyle shots that helped customers imagine themselves using the products.
-> Do you have detailed product descriptions? You need to sell the product with words. What is it made of? What are the benefits? Why should someone buy it from *you*?
-> Where are the trust signals? This is probably the most overlooked part. People need to feel safe giving you their money. This means having customer reviews or testimonials visible. It means having links to your social media profiles. It means having a clear 'About Us' page that tells your story, and an easy-to-find contact page with an address or phone number. Without these, your store can feel a bit anonymous and untrustworthy, which will kill your conversion rate.

I know you're looking for a freelancer, and I have to touch on your proposed payment structure. Offering a 'nominal amount' plus a cut of sales is something a lot of new businesses suggest, but from an expert's point of view, it's often a red flag. It takes a significant amount of upfront work to research, set up campaigns, test audiences, and create ads. A professional can't work for weeks on the promise of future sales, especially when those sales depend so much on factors they can't control, like your website's conversion rate, your pricing, or your product quality. You'll find a much higher calibre of marketer if you can offer a fair fixed fee for their time and expertise. It shows you're serious and you value their work.

I'd say you need to choose your battleground carefully...

Right, let's talk about Meta vs Amazon ads. They are very different beasts and you need to know which one to use for your specific goals. You mentioned both, but I'd reccomend starting with just one.

Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram)

This is all about 'demand generation'. You're putting your product in front of people who aren't necessarily looking to buy it right now. You're interrupting their social scrolling with something cool, interesting, or beautiful. It's fantastic for visual products and for building a brand. You can reach a massive audience and use powerful targeting to find people who are likely to be interested in what you sell. For many of our e-commerce clients, this is the main driver of growth. I remember one subscription box client where we achieved a 1000% return on ad spend almost entirely through Meta ads. It works because you can tell a story and create a desire for the product that didn't exist a moment before they saw your ad.

Amazon Ads

This is 'demand capture'. People are on Amazon with one primary goal: to buy things. They are actively searching for products. Your job with Amazon ads isn't to create desire, it's to make sure your product shows up when they search for something you sell. It's incredibly powerful because the buying intent is already there. If you sell, say, "handmade leather wallets", you can pay to appear at the top when someone searches for exactly that. The downside is that it's a very crowded and competitive space. You're directly up against hundreds of other sellers, and it can become a race to the bottom on price.

So, which one to choose? If your brand is new and people don't know to search for it, Meta is probably the better place to start. You can build awareness and drive initial traffic. If you sell a product that people are already searching for in high volume (and you can compete on price/reviews), Amazon could be a good bet. Given you've had some sales already but need to grow, I'd lean towards getting a solid Meta ads funnel built first.

You probably should focus on getting your Meta ad targeting right...

This is where most people go wrong with Meta ads. They boost a post or throw a load of random interests into the targeting and hope for the best. It just doesn't work. You need a proper structure. A funnel. The way we structure accounts for clients is by splitting campaigns based on where the customer is in their journey: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

ToFu: Finding New People

This is your cold audience. People who've never heard of you. The goal here is to find potential customers. For a new account, you'd start with 'Detailed Targeting'.

The trick is to pick interests that are specific to your target audience. Let's say you sell eco-friendly yoga mats. Targeting a broad interest like "Yoga" is a mistake. Why? Because millions of people might have casually liked a yoga page once. They aren't all your potential customers. You'd be better off targeting smaller, more passionate audiences, like followers of specific yoga magazines, famous yoga instructors, or brands that sell sustainable clothing. You need to think: what would my ideal customer like that a normal person wouldn't? That's your sweet spot.

Once you have enough data (sales, visitors), you can create 'Lookalike Audiences'. This is where Meta's algorithm finds new people who are similar to your existing customers or website visitors. A lookalike of your past buyers is usually the most powerful ToFu audience you can create.

MoFu/BoFu: Bringing People Back

This is retargeting. It's about showing ads to people who have already interacted with you in some way but haven't bought yet. This is where you'll often see the best return on ad spend because these people are already warm. They know who you are. You can create audiences for:

-> Everyone who visited your website
-> People who viewed a specific product
-> People who added a product to their cart but didn't buy
-> People who started the checkout process but didn't finish

Your ads to these groups should be different. For someone who just visited the homepage, you might show them your best-selling products. For someone who abandoned their cart, you could show them an ad with the exact product they left behind, maybe with a reminder or a testimonial to nudge them over the line. For a small budget, you can group all these retargeting audiences together to start with.

Here’s a rough priority list of audiences we'd typically test for an e-commerce store. You start at the top and work your way down as you gather more data.

The key is to test. Set up different ad sets for different audiences and see what works. Turn off what doesn't. It's a process of constant refinement.

You'll need realistic expectations about costs and returns...

A big question you probably have is "how much will it cost to get a sale?". There's no single answer, but we can make some educated guesses. You're in India, which my data categorises as a developing country in terms of ad costs. This is good news and bad news. The good news is that clicks are generally cheaper. The bad news is that the traffic can sometimes be of lower quality, with more clicks that don't lead to a purchase.

Let's do some rough maths. For e-commerce, a typical website conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who buy something) is around 2-5%. In developing countries, your cost per click (CPC) might be somewhere between £0.10 and £0.50.

-> Best-case scenario: Your CPC is low (£0.10) and your conversion rate is high (5%). To get one sale, you'd need 20 clicks (1 / 0.05). Your cost per sale would be 20 x £0.10 = £2.00.
-> Worst-case scenario: Your CPC is high (£0.50) and your conversion rate is low (2%). To get one sale, you'd need 50 clicks (1 / 0.02). Your cost per sale would be 50 x £0.50 = £25.00.

Your actual cost will likely be somewhere in between. These numbers are just to give you a ballpark idea and will be in your local currency, of course. The most important metric for you isn't actually the cost per sale, but the Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). If your average order is worth £50 and it costs you £10 in ads to get that sale, your ROAS is 5x (£50 revenue / £10 ad spend). That's a profitable campaign. If your average order is £15 and it costs you £10 to get it, your ROAS is 1.5x, and you're probably losing money once you factor in product costs and other fees.

One of our clients selling cleaning products achieved a 633% return (a 6.3x ROAS) on Meta ads. This is what you should be aiming for – a system where every pound you put into ads generates multiple pounds back in sales. But it takes time, testing, and expertise to get there. It won't happen overnight.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot to take in. To make it a bit simpler, I've broken down my main recommendations into a table for you. This is the step-by-step process I would take if I were in your shoes.

I realise this is a massive amount of work, and the learning curve is steep. You could absolutley learn to do all of this yourself, but it will take time, and you will inevitably make mistakes that cost you money along the way. For a bootstrapped brand, those early mistakes can be painful.

Working with an experienced agency or freelancer isn't just about getting someone to press the buttons for you. It's about paying for their experience, their process, and their knowledge of what's worked across dozens of other accounts just like yours. It's an investment to get you to profitability faster and more efficiently than you could on your own.

Hope this has been helpful and gives you a clearer path forward. If you'd like to chat through this in more detail and have us take a proper look at your brand and current setup, we offer a free initial consultation to see if we can help. No strings attached.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh