It is a mouse click away in today’s world to reach millions. Due to the advent of digital media, the success of any company depends on digital marketing. As most people spend time at home and are mainly online, digital marketing is the most essential aspect in terms of promoting the business and reaching new customers.
Digital marketing is also doing better than ever, thanks to current social distancing standards. Search engines are efficient marketing tools coupled with social media platforms, such as Instagram, and Facebook, etc. Particularly small businesses invest in digital marketing tools to connect and convert prospective clients into long-term customers.
One question can arise in your mind as a business owner. Should you hire a freelancer or hire an agency to manage your digital marketing near me?
If you’re a small business owner, the current market situation may prompt you to hire a freelancer to help you with digital marketing. You might have apprehension about your digital marketing being outsourced to an external digital marketing agency. However, it takes a great deal of time and effort to manage digital marketing campaigns, so if you own a growing business, you should take it seriously.
You could try doing digital marketing with a freelancer if you’re under the impression that hiring an agency would cost you more. You may have little time as a business owner because you must be active in every aspect of the company. Although it may seem to be a simple task, digital marketing is a constantly changing area that necessitates the active involvement of many subject matter experts.
Appointing a digital marketing agency vs freelancer
Click to read & to learn more about the factors to consider when deciding between a freelancer and an external digital marketing agency for digital marketing near me.
- Quality
Freelancer
Digital marketing freelancers with good educational histories are more likely to maintain long-term jobs. If they studied web design and production, advertising, or communications, they’ll have the skills to deliver a high-quality project, particularly if they’ve worked in your industry before.
However, since freelancers are not employees of your company, it can be difficult to integrate your brand values into their work. As a result, the standard cannot be as customized to your particular requirements as you would like. Also, the higher the output you expect, the longer it will take a freelancer to produce, as much depends on their level of self-discipline and willingness to put forth effort in projects.
Digital Marketing Agency
Hiring a digital marketing agency provides you with an entire team of people with the necessary background, preparation, and experience to provide you with well-coordinated, high-quality digital solutions. Furthermore, specialist agencies must maintain a certain level of quality to stay competitive. They also upgrade their skills and technologies based on the latest market demand. The only stumbling block here is that top-quality customized services can command a higher price from agencies.
- Workload
Freelancer
In the majority of cases, freelancers recruiting works in the same way as employing a digital marketing agency. Normally they are limited to a single project at a time and concentrate on it. And that’s why they can dedicate themselves to this work.
However, it is possible for freelancers to take on many clients at once, which can rapidly degrade the quality of their work. Furthermore, when freelancers are unable to work due to sickness or personal problems, the plans are often placed on hold.
Digital Marketing Agency
Agencies’ team structures allow them to take on and manage a greater workload, whether from a single or multiple clients. They can handle any of your jobs, no matter how difficult or multiple they are. And if one of the team members becomes sick or goes on leave, there are still those who can fill in.
Since agencies work with a variety of customers, yours may not always take precedence over those of other clients. Nonetheless, the standard of quality will be maintained.
- Assurance
Freelancer
Any freelancer’s integrity and credibility are critical in securing new clients. Long-term trust and guarantees still depend upon the ability of an individual to deliver. Freelancers do not have the means to appeal to the demands of large corporations and businesses.
Digital Marketing Agency
It is in the interest of every agency to have as many successful customers as possible, to improve its reputation and portfolio. The potential disadvantage of this is that you can get information using digital marketing research. So when hiring an agency for digital marketing near me it can be hard to make the right choice. Especially if you hadn’t had the opportunity or previously didn’t know them, you had to rely on online reviews and other data generated by the user.
- Results
Freelancer
It is in the best interest of every independent freelancer to achieve results for their customers. The better the outcomes, the more likely you are to recommend them to other customers. However, since freelancers are unable to commit to a single project for an extended period, the results they produce are only temporary.
Furthermore, you can only depend on the outcomes of a portion of a larger project. There’s a slim to none chance you’ll find a freelance SEO specialist who also dabbles in web development. Then there’s the fact that no one can promise that a good freelancer you employ won’t outsource any of the work to other freelancers, which can save time but also lead to mistakes.
Digital Marketing Agency
Long-term partnerships and arrangements with consumers are in the best interests of any digital marketing agency. The best way to do this is to meet pre-determined objectives and have satisfying results. As a result, agencies are motivated to work hard to achieve the best possible outcomes for the company in the long run. They also have the resources to perform daily analytics on all of your marketing activities to preserve the performance they provide. The disadvantage is that many experienced digital marketing teams with several clients would stop investing all of their time in a single project and instead focus on delivering contract-determined outcomes to all of their clients.
- Structure
Freelancer
Freelancers may find it easier to understand the needs of your potential customers because they have a wider variety of day-to-day experiences with people through their work. A freelancer is still a one-man show, so you can’t trust them. You can focus your entire attention on a bigger customer at any time. If they need to collaborate with other freelancers to complete the project, their lack of coordination can easily lead to delays and unwelcome conflicts.
Digital Marketing Agency
Internally, agencies have a well-organized system that allows them to handle many major projects. Furthermore, knowing the inner workings of an organization and the importance of each department’s job helps them understand the company’s objectives. Another advantage of working with an agency is their analytical methodology and tools for analyzing the latest digital marketing activities.
Larger businesses and organizations, as they have their organizational structure, would rather see digital marketing agencies as a third-party contingency plan than as a partner. The more agencies you have in your system, the more inspired they will be to put your company first.
- Flexibility
Freelancer
Freelancers can be more flexible in completing ad hoc tasks you assign them since there is no structured framework or protocol to follow. Unfortunately, freelancers’ overall versatility is hampered by a lack of overall quality of work. Especially when working on a tight time limit.
Digital Marketing Agency
Professional companies have the manpower to step in and finish projects with tight deadlines. And the work they produce will easily satisfy your requirement for high-quality project management. The larger and more efficient an organization, on the other hand, the less versatile it would be in terms of response time. In general, this is because of an excess of regular customer enquire.
- Cost
Freelancer
Hiring a freelancer for a particular job or a list of requirements is less expensive than hiring a marketing agency. As long as your needs are unique and one-time, hiring freelancers for digital marketing is the most cost-effective option. However, not all freelancers are inexpensive.
Quality freelance marketers with a large portfolio prefer to price their services based on their experience and personal expenses. As a result, recruiting high-quality freelancers can be just as expensive as hiring a good digital marketing agency.
Digital Marketing Agency
Though digital marketing companies are more costly than freelancers, they are a much safer long-term investment. Furthermore, having a monthly plan with an organization is less expensive than paying retainership charges to a freelance digital marketer in long term. Hiring an agency for a particular project or on a short-term basis is one of the most costly errors a company can make. When you choose a longer-term relationship, though, you get service reliability and transparency for a fixed monthly fee.
Final thoughts
You may have understood by now that appointing a digital marketing agency will deliver maximum advantages and eliminate all the related disadvantages.
There are various considerations for various kinds of business when you recruit an agency or use an independent freelancer. Both can help your digital presence grow efficiently. External agencies, however, offer a great deal of expertise, core knowledge, and effective results. That is why many business owners prefer the help of external agencies to grow their business using digital marketing. Although the hiring of an external agency does have some disadvantages, the benefits associated with it are strongly outweighed.
You can conduct thorough research before hiring someone in case you are planning to hire a digital marketing agency. You must ensure that the digital marketing near me you hire has extensive knowledge of your industry and sector. Any digital marketing firm can handle the technological side of things, but it’s still best to work with one who knows the industry inside and out.
The next move is to compare the agency’s charges to your budget. Some companies will bill you on a project basis, while others will bill you every month. Finally, you should work with a company that has a good reputation in the industry. See their previous work and the customer testimonies to get a fair amount of idea about their process and effectiveness. The past work gives you an exact idea of the quality of the work of the digital marketing agency in question. You should also share your ideas and expectations with the digital marketing agency so that they can deliver as per your needs and requirements.
