Should you hire a freelance digital marketing expert, or get a digital agency to do the marketing? Well, that depends on your business goals and budget.
With over 9 million small businesses, the reality is you need all the help you can get. It's fierce out there, as all of these businesses are vying for attention at the same time. And only those who are able to hack it will be around to tell their success story.
Marketing is a crucial part of your business. It doesn't matter if you own a mom and pop store, or an e-commerce store. If you want to generate significant revenues and profits, people have got to be able to find you.
This is why promoting your business should be top priority in your list of business activities. The days of assuming that you'll get a lot of business because you have a great product or service are long gone.
And you need a competent expert to help you do so. But if you're yet to decide between a freelance digital marketing expert and a regular digital agency, this article should help you do that.
Here's why you should hire freelancers:
They're Less Expensive
Hiring a freelance digital marketing expert is cheaper than hiring a full digital marketing agency. There's lower overhead costs, zero lunches on your tabs and no additional bills that you have to foot.
Most agencies have to pay for office space, food, health insurance, office furniture, travel, and other activities. These have no direct impact on your business.
The problem with them is you still have to pay for those indirectly if you hire a regular digital agency. Freelancers don't have that problem. Most of them work for themselves, which means they do not need office space.
Just because they don't have an office space, doesn't mean they can't do amazing work. For instance, many reputable social media consultants on remote working sites like Upwork, are freelancers who work from home, coffee shops, and coworking spaces.
Not because they can't afford it, but because there's no real need for it. When you hire them, you'll be boycotting all those extra frills that regular digital marketing agencies charge you. In fact, they're the smart choice for those looking to bootstrap their business.
Helps You Focus on More Important Business Activities
Want to scale your business faster, and enjoy quicker growth? Hiring a freelance digital marketing specialist is the way to go. Most small business owners routinely wear many hats, many times a day.
So, you can switch between roles like CEO, COO, CIO, digital marketing manager, and the support guy many times a day. While this is great for learning, and seemingly saving money in the short term, the medium and long term costs are often astronomical.
Besides, pulling off this feat for a long time is almost impossible. After a while, you'll need to bring people on board to assume some of those responsibilities.
When you hire someone to handle your digital marketing, it frees up your time to work on your business, instead of in it.
Unfortunately, many don't know how to stop wearing that many hats. This is probably why some are willing to pay as much as $500 to gain an extra hour every day.
They're Very Thorough
A freelance digital marketer knows that they have to perform and produce results consistently to grow their business. So, they tend to do a very good job.
This is even more so with those who are resident in a good location like the US or Canada. You can tell by your interactions with them, and their availability of resources. For example, businesses owners looking for social media services will find that the marketers may have social media packages for just about any small business type.
They're able to track the results of their social media campaigns, unlike most small business owners who don't know how.
ROI Can Be Quite Significant
A good specialist can help you get returns of 100 percent on your Google paid ads alone. This will translate into a lot of revenue for your business, enough to cover the cost of the ads and the marketer.
Freelance Digital Marketing Specialists Are High Skilled
A quick visit to freelance platforms and personal websites will show you that they're very competent. In fact, many go on to create guides designed to help you understand what you need to do to grow your business.
For instance, if you want to focus on content marketing for lead gen, they can provide simple but effective blogger outreach guides to help you.
And if you're interested in social media, they can create premium social media guides that will be free to help you too. The point is because they know their onions, they can provide you with great resources.
Are Freelance Digital Marketing Experts the Best Option?
Well, as we stated earlier, that depends on where you're at right now. If you want minimal overhead costs, faster results, fewer bottlenecks, direct access to the person handling your campaign and personal attention, this is the best option. Just make sure to keep your call center staff motivated and well trained.
Just make sure to hire a freelance digital marketing specialist who resides in a good location. By good location, I mean countries where there's a pool of experts. North America, Europe -the English speaking parts, South East Asia and India are good countries to hire from.
Although North America has the biggest pool of freelance digital marketing talents, their prices can be higher than those from the EU or Asia. If you want more tips on the best strategies for growing your business using digital marketing, go read this article on Bootstrap Business.
