When it comes to your marketing you've generally got three options, which are to bring in an agency, hire a freelancer (or a few of them) or employ someone in-house. Any of them can work really well or go badly wrong, and which one suits you depends on how much work there is, what kind of work it is, your budget and how much managing you're able to take on.
I should be upfront that I'm a freelancer, and before that I spent my whole career at small, fast-paced agencies. I've never worked in-house, so what I say about in-house marketers comes from working alongside them. I've tried to give each option a fair hearing, including the bits that don't flatter freelancers, as the aim is to help you make the right decision and I've no interest in bad mouthing anyone.
Working With a Marketing Agency
Agencies come in all shapes and sizes. Some are full service and cover everything from market research and design through to websites, digital marketing and PR, while others specialise in one discipline or in an industry like hospitality, SaaS or B2B. I spent years working at agencies, so I know the results they can produce when the fit is right.
What an Agency Does Well
- An agency can cover design, website support, SEO, paid ads and PR all running at once under one contract, so you get one point of contact and the people involved already work together.
- There's a team behind your account, so if someone's on holiday, off sick or leaves, someone else can pick the work up.
- Most agencies have some form of internal review, so your work usually gets a second pair of eyes and a senior person's input before it reaches you.
- If you've got a launch or a busy season coming up, they can scale up quickly by putting more people on your account.
- They tend to have set processes for onboarding, project management and reporting, so you generally know what you're getting and when.
- As lots of their clients need the same things, they can often justify paid tools that a solo freelancer or a small business might not.
Where Agencies Can Fall Short
- Offices, account managers and management time all get built into the rate, so an agency can cost more than a freelancer for the same work. That isn't always the case though, so I'd compare like for like before assuming either way.
- You'll usually talk to an account manager while a team behind the scenes does the work, and that extra layer can slow things down or lose some of the detail between what you asked for and what gets done.
- Lots of people start their career at an agency, so the chances are juniors will work on your account. That's fine with good senior oversight and it's how people learn, but how much senior time you get varies between agencies, so it's worth asking.
Working With a Freelance Marketer
Freelancers usually focus on one discipline or a handful, such as search, social media, design or email. Just like agencies they vary a lot in quality, and being freelance doesn't make someone an expert any more than working at an agency does, so it's worth vetting them just as carefully.
What a Freelancer Does Well
- The person you speak to is the person doing the work, so your questions get answered by someone who knows your account inside out.
- Lots of freelancers specialise in one or two channels, so if you find a good one you get a lot of depth in that area.
- With fewer overheads a freelancer can cost less than an agency for the same work. Bear in mind that isn't a given though, as a senior freelancer's rate can be on a par with a small agency's.
- They tend to be flexible about how you work together, whether that's a one-off project, a monthly retainer or plugging a skills gap in an in-house team or an agency.
Where Freelancers Can Fall Short
As a one-person business myself, all of this applies to me as much as anyone.
- A freelancer is a single point of failure, so if they're on holiday, ill, too busy or decide to stop freelancing, the work stops with them unless you've planned for it.
- There are only so many hours in one person's week, so if you need to double or triple your output they may not have the capacity, although some have a network they can pass work to and it's worth asking how that works.
- The range of skills is narrower, so if you need several disciplines you'll probably end up hiring several freelancers, and someone has to brief them, keep them talking to each other and make sure it all adds up, which usually falls to you.
- There's generally no internal quality check, so you're relying on one person's judgement without a second pair of eyes.
- Finding the right freelancer takes time, and if it goes wrong there's no brand or wider team to fall back on.
Hiring an In-House Marketer
Hiring in-house means employing a marketer directly, full or part time, and in some businesses that grows into a whole team. I have a lot of respect for in-house marketers and I think they often have the hardest job of the three, as they're usually expected to cover every channel.
What an In-House Marketer Does Well
- All of their working week goes on your marketing, as they're not splitting their time across other clients.
- They get to know your products, customers and business really well, so they're far more likely to get content and ad creative right first time.
- They're around day to day, so they can react quickly, sit in on meetings and pick up on things an outside marketer would only hear about later.
- What they learn stays in the business, along with the processes and relationships that go with it.
- They can work closely with sales and the rest of the team, which really matters for things like events and organic social media.
Where In-House Can Fall Short
- An in-house marketer often has to look after social media, paid ads, email, the website and sometimes design, which is a lot for one person to do in as much depth as a specialist, so some areas will benefit from outside help.
- There are employment costs on top of the salary, such as employer National Insurance, workplace pension contributions, training and cover for the 5.6 weeks of paid holiday most workers are entitled to each year.
- It's harder to scale down, as if budgets tighten you can't reduce an employee's role as easily as you can end a contract with an agency or a freelancer.
- If you employ a single marketer you've got the same one-person problem as you would with a freelancer, so holidays, illness, parental leave or them moving on will all leave a gap.
- Like any employee they need someone to set priorities, support their development and manage them day to day, and if you've never managed a marketer before that takes time to get right.
Which Option Fits Your Business
There's no single right answer, as it depends on your size, your budget, how much work there is and what it needs, and it tends to change as the business grows.
Generally speaking, an agency tends to suit larger businesses running complex campaigns across several disciplines, or a business in a sector with lots of specialist rules, such as legal or medical, where a team that knows what you can and can't do really matters.
A freelancer tends to suit a small business or start-up that needs help with one or two channels, a one-off project like a website migration or an audit, or an in-house team that needs specialist support with SEO or PPC. They also suit agencies with a gap, such as a web design agency needing SEO support on a migration, and can provide cover while you replace someone or while a marketer is on maternity leave.
That said, a freelancer is the wrong choice if you need lots of disciplines running at once, if you need to scale quickly or if the work simply can't stop when one person is unavailable. In those situations an agency, an in-house team or a mix of the two will serve you better, and if you asked me I'd tell you the same.
Hiring in-house tends to suit you if there's enough marketing work to keep someone busy full time, or your agency bill is starting to look like a full-time salary, although they'll usually be a generalist so you may still want some specialist support. It also makes sense if a lot of your leads come from organic social media, which works best as a two-way conversation with someone who knows the business inside out (or a specialist agency you really trust), or if you do lots of events and exhibitions that need people to set up, attend and follow up afterwards.
Mixing and Matching
Very often the best answer is a mix. An in-house marketer can do the bulk of the day-to-day work with an agency or a freelancer to lean on for the specialist channels, the busy periods or an area they're struggling with, and once they've been upskilled they can take more of that work on themselves.
It works between agencies and freelancers too. People tend to see the two as competition, but an agency that brings in a freelance specialist to fill a gap, instead of bodging a job it doesn't have the skills for, does better work for its client. I offer agency support and white-label work as well as working with businesses directly.
The right mix won't stay the same forever either. As you grow you might bring more of your marketing in-house and keep a freelancer or agency for the specialist side, and if budgets shrink you might find a full-time role no longer makes sense and move to an agency or a freelancer instead. It's hard to know when to make that change, so I'd suggest looking at the mix again whenever your budget, your team or your plans change.
Questions to Ask Whoever You Choose
Whichever route you go down, these are the questions I'd ask before committing.
- Who will actually do the work day to day, and how much senior input will my account get?
- What happens when you're on holiday, off sick or if you leave?
- Who owns the ad accounts, analytics, website logins and data, and do I keep all of them if we part ways?
- How will results be reported, and how often will we talk them through together?
- What's the notice period, and is there a minimum term?
If a freelancer sounds like the right fit for your SEO, PPC or tracking, drop me a message on my contact form and we can set up a free discovery call. I work without long-term contracts and my clients keep full ownership of their ad accounts and data, and if it turns out I'm not the right fit for what you need, I'm happy to say so and point you towards someone who is.
