Should You Hire a Digital Marketing Firm or a Digital Marketing Freelancer?
There are many decisions to be made when it comes to digital marketing. Digital marketing strategies tend to be complex, focused on growth, and have a long-term initiative. To make sure that your strategy is successful enough for your business to enjoy greater sales, you need to have the right approach, information, resources, and expertise. Since it becomes difficult for business owners to handle digital marketing themselves, most tend to outsource the task to a reliable entity.
Here, the question arises: should you hire a digital marketing firm or hire a freelancer?
Digital Marketing Agency vs. Freelancers
Before you make this tough decision, you need to understand what each entity brings to the table. A digital marketing firm will consist of an organized team of professionals who will handle your marketing requirements in a thorough manner. Instead of only focusing on one aspect of digital marketing, a professional agency will be able to provide you with an all-in-one package that helps you establish a strong and successful online presence.
Freelancers, on the contrary, are independent marketing professionals who operate on their own. What makes them unique is their level of expertise and knowledge regarding digital marketing, especially since they have built their own portfolio from scratch.
Making the Right Choice
While both options may sound great to you in a nutshell, it is important to choose one according to the needs of your business. Here are two things you should consider whilst making a final decision:
- Quality of Work
If you hire a freelancer for your digital marketing, you can easily rely on them to have a strong educational background and portfolio. Most digital marketing freelancers tend to have a specialized degree in communication or advertisement which makes them an ideal choice for small businesses. Freelancers are also a great choice for those who only wish to hire a digital marketing specialist for a short-term project instead of long-term work.
If you are looking for professionals for your digital marketing, then an established firm would be able to deliver a high standard of quality. However, you should remember that hiring a digital marketing firm means that the team you hire would not be part of your company itself. This means that it may take a longer time for you to become comfortable working with a whole new team of individuals and for them to understand the core brand values of your business.
- Results
Whether you hire a freelancer or a digital marketing firm, the one thing that you will be looking forward to are results. Hiring a freelancer means that you might be able to get quick results since these individuals need to uphold a high standard of quality to maintain their clients and get new referrals. However, a single freelancer might only be able to offer you their services for the short run since they will have other clients to cater to as well. The results offered by a freelancer might be quick, but they could also be limited to a certain time frame only.
If you are looking for long-term results, then hiring a digital marketing agency could be a better choice. This team of professionals will be committed to providing you sustainable results in order to retain you as a long-term client on their portfolio. Instead of looking for new clients to work with like a freelancer, digital marketing firms focus on providing promising results to a handful of clients that they can retain.
The one downside of hiring a digital marketing agency for your business is that the firm will be reluctant in investing all their resources into a single project for you. Instead, they will only provide smaller results over a longer period in order to keep you invested in their work for a longer time frame.
Finalizing a Decision
Before you finalize whether you need an individual freelancer or a digital marketing firm for your business, you should consider niche-related experience. Consider which entity has the most experience in your industry before signing a contract, since expertise in digital marketing varies from market to market.