As part of the ritual of examining local commerce and SMB Saas strategies, Localogy goes right to the source: SMBs themselves. How do they feel about marketing and operational software? What features do they want? And how has their hunger changed in a pandemic? This is all a moving target.
But as part of that excercise, we sometimes broaden the subject matter beyond traditional SMBs. In the latest Localogy study, done in collaboration with Mono Solutions, we looked specifically at freelancers. Why is this important? The Covid-driven “great resignation” has boosted the freelancer economy.
With that backdrop, who are freelancers and what makes them tick? The report, The Freelance Channel – A Growing Reseller Resource dives in. This week we spotlight one of the report’s many findings. Specifically, who are these freelancers and how do they break down by age and by field of work?
Breaking down the results, younger individuals over-index as freelancers in marketing services, virtual assitants and software development. Older individuals are meanwhile more prevalent in HR, Accounting and management consulting. These results were gathered in November 2020.
Localogy members can access full charts and SMB survey reports. Non-members can purchase reports.
What Does it All Mean?
Going a bit deeper, a few things jump out at us:
– Younger generations overindex as freelencers in job categories that are more digital in nature (virtual assistants and Software development.
– Older individuals converesely overindex in more traditional professional services like HR and accounting.
– These results speak to the greater degrees of technical savvy and software orientation among younger individuals.
– For example, the biggest profession among freelancers aged 55-64 is HR. That’s followed by management consulting.
– In both of these fields, older individuals exclipse younger generations by a large margin.
– That situation is flipped in virtual assistants which is dominated by individuals aged 18-34.
–The story is similar in marketing services where indivduals aged 18-34 and 35-44 make up the vast majority of freelancers
Time to Shine
Stepping back, SMB online marketing – website-based or otherwise – continues to grow rapidly. SMB SaaS startups and online services providers are correspondingly thriving as it continues to grow as a leading subsector of the broader SaaS universe. There’s a long-tail opportunity at play.
Meanwhile, new SMB SaaS users could represent permanent adopters – a concept that’s accelerated in the Covid era as SMBs are forced to boost their digital transformation. This sends them into the arms of SaaS providers to accomplish a range of marketing and operational functions.
We’ll return in the next installment to go deeper into SMB marketing and website adoption. That will include their goals and success factors. Let us know what additional insights jump out at you from the above data, and stay tuned for more breakdowns in our Benchmark Bytes series.
