It’s hard to imagine any business thriving without proper marketing. Also, it’s very hard to imagine having a good marketing campaign without utilizing digital marketing. We live in a digital world, so without proper digital marketing, it can be challenging for any business to grow.
For example, let’s say you’re an interior designer or you have a designing agency. Even if people need your services and are looking for them, they won’t know you’re offering them if you’re not advertising yourself or your company. When it comes to marketing, you can either do it by yourself or hire someone else to do it. Later is usually the better option, because people who offer those services are good at what they do.
What are your options when hiring an outside helper? Should you go with a freelancer or an established agency? Both have their strengths and weaknesses and today we’re going to try and highlight both pros and cons, for both options, so you can easily decide between the two. Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Quality of Service
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Freelancer
Pros: Freelancers that offer digital marketing services are often people with degrees in either art, advertising, or communication, so you can be certain they know what they are doing. They can easily design marketing materials that speak to an audience you wish to reach.
Cons: On the other hand, a freelancer might not know exactly what you’re trying to achieve, usually because they lack experience. Freelancers are fairly limited by time since they work alone, so they might’ve taken on fewer projects than you’d consider necessary for them to have enough experience to fully understand the client.
Agency
Pros: The greatest benefit of having an agency behind you is the fact that you have a number of highly skilled individuals that work as a team. That allows them to play off of each other’s strengths and deliver better results. Also, they usually have more than enough experience which should allow them to tackle any project.
Cons: The cons, as far as quality goes, are none existent. The only problem you might encounter is a disagreement between creative minds, but that’s easy to overcome.
Assurance
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Freelancer
Pros: The assurance and support levels you can expect from a freelancer are directly tied to his own ability and personal integrity. It all comes down to the reputation of the person in question. If you’ve heard good things or you have previously worked with him or her, there are no reasons as to why you shouldn’t be able to rest assured.
Cons: Once again, you have to understand you’re dealing with a one-man-show and there’s a clear line as to how much of an assurance one person can provide.
Agency
Pros: Agencies are a much better option for large businesses as they provide more structured service and offer complete assurance of uninterrupted service and support throughout the whole project. Also, with so many people at hand, it’s hard to rest assured your project is in the right hands.
Cons: You don’t really know a lot about an agency apart from what you read online. Reviews and ratings can be really helpful, but most of them can be altered or faked. Unless you can talk to clients you really can’t know what you’re in for.
Results
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Freelancer
Pros: If a freelancer wishes to build his portfolio and attract more clientele, it’s in their best interest to provide you with the best results possible. You can expect a lot of effort on their part.
Cons: On the other hand, you can expect high-end results in one area in most cases. For instance, a skilled designer will deliver on the artistic side of things, providing you with the best material, but can be quite lacking in the other marketing areas.
Agency
Pros: A good, goal-driven agency such as seoshark.com.au pride itself on delivering the best results possible. A number of people working on a single project at one time guarantees that there are no stones left unturned.
Cons: The only ‘problem’ you might encounter when it comes to this, in particular, is that the end-results affect the digital marketing agency as much as the client, which could affect their approach in some way.
Workload
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Freelancer
Pros: As most of the freelancer work on their own, most of them only deal with one client at a time. if you’re a small or medium business, having the undivided attention of one professional can be more than enough for you.
Cons: If they happen to be overachieving and end up with two or more clients at the same time, increase workload may reflect badly on the quality of the work for each one of you. Also, any personal injury or trauma means your marketing campaign is taking a break.
Agency
Pros: No matter how much of an increase in an activity you require, the agency should be more than able to handle it thanks to the number of people that are working on it. This also means that if someone from the team is unable to work for a certain period, your project isn’t put on hold, because there are enough people that can cover for them.
Cons: You’re not the only client, but that shouldn’t affect you or your project in any way.
Flexibility
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Freelancer
Pros: Not having a strict working schedule means there’s more room for flexibility and quick changes in the game plan.
Cons: However, the cost of the quick changes and adaptations is often lower in quality. Some things just can’t be rushed.
Agency
Pros: More people – more power. if something needs to be done quickly, an agency can easily assign more people to the project.
Cons: Because they’re often working with various clients, it can be hard to change something that’s previously agreed upon as it’s directly affecting other projects.
Price
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Freelancer
Pros: Freelancers are a generally less expensive option when it comes to digital marketing services for various reasons.
Cons: Even with that in mind, their services aren’t as affordable as one might expect.
Agency
Pros: It will cost a little extra, compared to a one-man-party, but you have a more hands-on deck.
Cons: You could be paying for services you don’t need. Sometimes you just don’t need a whole team behind you.
As you can see, both of these options have their own strengths and weaknesses. Before deciding on any of these, you should take a look at your business and assess your needs. Generally, for a large business, the agency is the way to go. For a start-up or a medium company, on the other hand, a freelancer should be more than enough.