Hiring a freelancer or an agency - what makes more sense for your business?
There’s been an increasing trend in the last 6+ months with more companies turning to external marketing support in place of in-house specialists… especially in the areas of design and brand marketing. When a full-time creative contributor doesn’t make sense for the bottom line of a business, how do you choose the best solution to meet your needs but not add more work to your team’s plate? It’s often an oversight to assume you can just hire a freelancer and they will “handle” everything — when you outsource marketing and creative tasks, someone on your team has to manage that ongoing relationship to keep things running efficiently.
So do you use a freelancer or an agency? We’re going to walk through some advantages and drawbacks to both.
Working with a freelancer
When you have a strong team in place and are just in need of some quick design projects, a freelancer might be a good option. However, you should have a complete brand guide in place to serve as a reference for the designer to follow, and you should choose someone with 5+ years of experience working with an established brand style (with portfolio examples).
Although a freelancer is less expensive than an agency, you might only have someone who is limited to production work. Not all designers have the ability to write creative copy or take the underlying marketing goal and design to adhere to that strategy — leading to a lot of “hand-holding.” This is not convenient for your team if they have to provide extensive direction with multiple rounds of revisions for projects.
Working with an agency
When a business is looking to outsource the majority of its marketing and creative efforts, an agency is the way to go. Instead of being limited to one person, you get a team of specialists working together on your account – designers, creative directors, copywriters, digital marketers, to name a few.
When you need to tailor messaging so your brand resonates with your target audience, you partner with professionals who can take a holistic view of your strategy and enhance the way you talk about your business.
When you have a critical upcoming pitch and need to revamp your presentation but still stay within a style guide, you don’t want someone who just changes colors and images. You want to work with a team who understands your business goals and can design a professional presentation that best conceptualizes your proof of value in a clean, easily digestible format.
You will have urgent needs too, often same-day or within 24 hours. Without being limited to one individual’s schedule, an agency has convenient turn-around capabilities. It can be as simple as shooting a text or email and saying “Hey, can you knock this out today?” If it’s ICG, the answer 99% of the time - Yes, we can.
By working with a creative agency, you collaborate on meeting marketing goals together, eliminate the hand-holding / micromanaging, and can breathe a sigh of relief knowing “they got this, I can focus on something else now.”
Getting started
It all starts with a conversation. Reach out to us to discuss your marketing & brand strategy and we can identify opportunities to help support your team in the most efficient way possible. Our process: After an intro meeting, we send you an estimate for you to review. If you accept, we can get started within 7 days.
It’s that simple - let’s get moving.