Ryan Bettencourt is CEO of Legion Works, a company that builds, buys and grows technology businesses. He co-founded Growth Collective, a platform that connects companies with freelance marketers; Toptal acquired it in June 2024.
Past talks
The Unique Ingredients In "Launch Marketing"
May 15, 2024 10:00
Ryan Bettencourt, co-founder of the freelance marketing platform Growth Collective, argues that the best freelance roles are the ones companies find hardest to fill. At Freelance Unlocked 2024 he picks one: launches, where a company tests a new market, geography, industry or channel. Companies do this badly from the inside, he says.
**What the talk covers**
- Bad roles, by his account, are task-focused, commoditised and about "doing" instead of "solving". Speeding up a website once is a task that comes back and goes to the cheapest bidder. Raising its conversion rate from 1 to 1.5 percent is an outcome that leads to more work.
- Why launches suit freelancers: the result is unknown, it takes expertise in a channel, a place and an industry, and a company that does not yet know whether a market works should not hire full-time. If you help them find out, he says, even a "no" is a good result.
- Four kinds of launch: a new product, a new geography (for instance a US software company entering Germany), a new industry, a new channel such as LinkedIn ads for a company stuck in paid search.
- How to get there: be reactive for your first three to five clients, then proactive once you can point to results. Build credibility with content about what you know, use niche platforms, and team up with other specialists.
- His rule of thumb: work that solves a problem can be worth 500 dollars an hour, a task 25 dollars.
**From the Q&A**
He says influencer marketing and recognised thought leaders are hard to find in Germany. To test a market as a freelancer, he suggests spending ten minutes a day on LinkedIn for a year on what you do best.
**Who it's for**
Marketers and developers who want a specialty beyond one-off tasks.