Digital Marketing Agency vs Freelancer: Make the right choice with these pros and cons

updated 6/20/2022 ⎮ 14 min read ⎮ Digital Marketing

Agency vs Freelancer vs In-House: This is an honest comparison of pros and cons to help you make the right choice for your small business. Should you outsource your small business marketing to an individual freelancer, a digital marketing agency or hire an in-house marketing person or team? Here's all you need to know to make the right choice.

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What is the difference between a freelancer and a digital marketing agency?

We have put together an honest comparison of the pros and cons of both options to outsource your small business marketing. We have determined 13 criteria by which we compare hiring a freelancer or a digital marketing agency.

The 13 criteria:

1. Limitations
2. Availability, Reliability & Accessibility
3. Expertise & Adjustment To Your Small Business, Brand, Industry And Market
4. Solo vs Teamwork: There’s No "I" in Team
5. Flexibility
6. Speed, Experience & Efficiency
7. Customer Service & Support
8. Testing & Quality Assurance
9. Security & Confidentiality
10. Project Management
11. Collaboration & Communication
12. Trustworthiness & Authority
13. Price

Limitations

Pros and cons:

A freelancer can be talented at a specific niche skill-set but may not be able to offer you high-quality work when it comes to other services that are related to the main task. Your marketing project may come along with a bunch of other things you need to think about and take care of and it makes sense to have one specialist point of contact to work and communicate with.

For example:

When developing a website, there needs to be copy on the web pages. A freelance web developer can develop you a website but if your copy is not professional, your messaging won't speak to your audience. You would have to hire another freelancer, a freelance copywriter along with your freelance web developer, and this is where you end up with multiple freelancers. This can easily lead to management challenges, communication issues, time zone issues, collaboration, coordination and team work issues, etc.

A digital marketing agency can provide you with full-scale solutions because they have a multi-disciplinary team and thus can produce better results without you having to deal with any of the struggles mentioned above.

In this example, an agency can offer you a professional web design, develop a user-friendly website for you, write compelling copy, source and customize beautiful images, and even optimize your website for SEO and things like site load speed.

Bottom line:

An agency can serve as a one-stop shop for your small business marketing needs, while a freelancer may only help you with some aspects of a marketing campaign.

Availability, Reliability & Accessibility

Pros and cons:

A freelancer is susceptible for unexpected disruptions such as illness, time zone differences or family emergencies. They are just a normal human being and life happens. However, this can leave your marketing project stranded and cause missed deadlines and broken engagements.

A digital marketing agency can compensate for the loss of a person and still meet your deadlines. That’s because you have a team working for you and not just a single person. You have an account manager that is always available and accessible for you and who is your personal contact person. This allows for direct and immediate communication.

Bottom line:

A freelancer is a single person and when unforeseen things happen in their life, your marketing can suffer. An agency has a team of people working for you and can compensate for team members for example getting sick, so undesirable events won’t interfere with your digital marketing goals.

Expertise and Adjustment To Your Small Business, Brand, Industry And Market

Pros and cons:

A freelancer may not be familiar with your business, your brand, your industry, your market and your customers. Plus, they might not know how to do the research and which are the right questions to ask to learn more about you and your buyer personas to be able to deliver great work that requires little revisions.

A digital marketing agency is practiced and proficient in putting themselves in your shoes and seeing your business from your perspective. They may have worked with a variety of companies in a variety of industries and are familiar with learning the ropes of different businesses in different markets and industries and their ideal customers and customer avatars.

A digital marketing company most likely has internal processes in place that serve as standard operating procedures. The marketing agency team is able to familiarize themselves with your company and brand quickly.

Bottom line:

Both a marketing agency and a freelancer have to familiarize themselves with your business when doing marketing work for you. Make sure to choose a digital marketing company or freelancer that is able to do it quickly and efficiently.

Solo vs Teamwork: There’s No “I” In Team

Pros and cons:

A freelancer may not be able to give you a consistent and polished final product because he or she doesn't have a team to provide feedback from a variety of different perspectives.

For example:

You may hire a freelancer to write you a blog post and get a blog post that looks well-written and reads well for you. But for your readers it contains complicated phrases that are hard to follow. Plus, your blog article wouldn't be able to rank in Google because your freelance writer wasn't able to consider the SEO ranking factors to optimize your blog post for that. An agency may have people on their team with expertise in all those surrounding areas that talk to each other, share feedback and collaborate.

With a digital agency, you can benefit from the structured collaboration and communication and can get a final product that is more consistent and polished.

When hiring a freelancer, you get only one person. It can make it difficult to hire several freelancers that aren’t working together as a team to balance out the downside of having just one person.

Bottom line:

Teamwork makes the dream work. Keep in mind that there are a number of things to consider when you work with a team or a solo person and it’s a trade off. Evaluate taking advantage of the number of benefits when you have a team of professionals working for you.

Flexibility

Pros and cons:

A freelancer might only work during “normal” working hours and take weekends off. This means that it takes longer for work to get done. In addition to that, it could cause inconvinves when it comes to communication if your freelancer works in another time zone.

A digital marketing agency can always have someone working on your needs and build their schedule around your priorities. Especially if it’s an online business, they can have team members in all american or even international time zones and the specialists can work on your project more and longer and on weekends and holidays, too.

Bottom line:

A digital agency may have more resources and your digital marketing campaigns won’t lie dormant on weekends and outside the nine to five time window. They can finish work with tighter deadlines. You might need more patience and plan things ahead when hiring a freelancer for your small business marketing.

Speed, Experience and Efficiency

Pros and cons:

A freelancer may lack a structured workflow with SOPs and thus might be less efficient and slower. A freelancer also cannot leverage the strengths of having multiple team members. Because he or she works alone, it may take longer for you to get results.

A good digital marketing agency has accumulated invaluable experience to work efficiently and deliver comprehensive, high-quality work. They would have a structured workflow and can leverage the strengths and skills of multiple people. Thanks to organized and standardized procedures and workflows, they can accurately predict the necessary resources and time that will be required to accomplish your digital marketing goals.

Bottom line:

Ask questions about the approach of your freelancer or digital marketing agency, so you can be sure they work efficiently.

Customer Service & Support

Pros and cons:

A freelancer may not be available at all times and can disappear without a trace and suddenly be unresponsive.

A digital marketing agency can offer 24/7/365 customer support and prioritize your project in a better way with more resources.

Bottom line:

Consider the scope of the customer support, help and service when deciding whether to hire a digital marketing agency or a freelancer. For agencies there is more on the line and they want to maintain an excellent reputation.

Testing & Quality Assurance

Pros and cons:

Experience shows, if you work with a freelancer, be prepared to do a lot of the testing yourself.

A professional small business marketing agency only delivers something, if it has been thoroughly tested and works as it should. Good agencies make sure to understand all components and interdependencies of the moving parts involved.

Bottom line:

Depending on if you have the time to do a lot of the testing yourself and correct flaws in the work you receive, or value it more to get a finished piece of content delivered that is ready to go, you might prefer working with a digital marketing agency for small businesses or a freelance marketer.

Security & Confidentiality

Pros and cons:

Freelancers often don’t prepare contracts or non-disclosure agreements. These protect both parties legally. You don’t want your ideas and designs being leaked out. It is important that you own your data and intellectual property. Talk to the freelancer about this and make sure all is clear and defined and you’re happy. The freelancer might be open to set up a contract and put in in writing.

Agencies oftentimes set up a contract, non-disclosure agreement and project plan for each client, so you can be sure all of your intellectual property, personal data and sensitive information stays safe and remains confidential and you know exactly what's in and out of scope.

Bottom line:

Security is important. You want to choose someone to work with where you can have peace of mind about your data security.

Project Management

Pros and cons:

When working with a freelancer you might need to give them more direction and end up managing your project on your own.

A good digital marketing company manages your entire project for you and stays on top of every task with a state of the art project management tool. Ideally, they’ll also give you access to it so you can check the progress of work at any given time. Whenever you have a question about digital marketing and are not clear about the what's, why's, and how's, they should provide you with a satisfying answer.

Bottom line:

Especially for long-term projects, ask questions about the project management and work with either a freelancer or digital marketing agency that sees working together as a collaborative endeavor where you still have a lot of influence.

Collaboration & Communication

Pros and cons:

When hiring a freelancer, you get only one person.

When hiring a digital marketing agency, you get access to an entire multi-faceted team. The results and deliverables you get as a result from the collaboration of a team that communicates with you and with one another, may be better able to accommodate all of your design, development and digital marketing needs of your small business.

Bottom line:

Whether you have a single person or a whole team at your disposal affects your digital marketing campaigns and digital marketing projects when it comes to the availability, reliability and accessibility of your points of contact, and how seamlessly you can implement finished results or deliverables.

Trustworthiness & Authority

Pros and cons:

Freelancers can be very professional and trustworthy people who are passionate about what they do and love their profession. Oftentimes this is the reason they have become freelancers. Driven freelancers may also have authority in theri space and won awards and have a bunch of success stories to show.

A good digital marketing agency may also have been featured in a variety of publications in the digital marketing space and a proven track record. An agency most likely also has a variety of content e.g. blog articles, videos, podcasts, and value added templates and guides that showcase expertise and experience.

Bottom line:

Pick a person to work with that you can trust, who has some authority in theri space, results to show you, and some social proof. It is important that you take the time to get to know the person on a personal level too and it will improve your communication if you like them as well. Factor this into your decision.

Price

Pros and cons:

A freelancer may charge cheaper rates, so you can save money when you work with a freelance marketer for your small business marketing.

The kind of digital marketing service a small business marketing agency provides comes with a higher price point, so you have to invest more of your marketing budget when you work with an agency. With a good digital agency you get what you pay for and can expect high-quality work alongside the benefits mentioned above.

Bottom line:

Do the math and crunch your numbers and choose the option that gives you the best possible return on investment (ROI).

What About Hiring An In-House Marketing Person Or Team?

Pros and cons:

Finding, recruiting, hiring and training your in-house marketing team member(s) is time consuming and costly.

The ever changing digital marketing landscape requires a lot of different skill sets, so it's not easy to find people who have all the skills you need. One needs to be passionate about marketing to stay motivated to learn new things and keep up to date with the almost daily changes and updates. So, you cannot realistically expect to hire one person to do everything. You’ll likely need to build your own in-house digital marketing team.

Your in-house marketers will also need a salary, employee benefits, insurance and technology to work with. The different tools that are required to strategically and successfully complete marketing tasks aren't exactly cheap. Also don’t underestimate the effort it takes to manage an in-house marketing team to get the best out of their work. So the finding and recruiting process costs and the time you must invest to interview candidates, hire and register them and train them to get up to speed and learn your company culture are not even all there is to it.

Then you have the risk of picking the wrong candidates and having invested so much time, money and energy in getting them started, trained and up to speed and then have to start over again.

Bottom line:

Building an in-house team of marketings that reliably help you to achieve your digital marketing goals is something that can be worthwhile for bigger companies. For small businesses, it oftentimes is much more cost-effective to outsource marketing work on a long-term basis.

Conclusion

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of whether to get help with your small business digital marketing from a freelancer or from a digital marketing agency. It depends on your business and there is no other business out there like yours and no one knows what your business needs better than you do.

The points we made and the criteria mentioned in this article give you an idea of what to consider when making your decision.

Either way, it’s important that you read customer reviews and testimonials, look at case studies, and get insight into working with the freelancer or digital marketing agency.

Read this article to learn how to choose the right digital marketing agency for your small business.