When it comes to outsourcing content marketing services, businesses often compare marketing agencies with freelancers. This comparison makes sense – both marketing agencies and freelancers are options for outsourcing blog content production and content marketing. However, freelancers don’t always make sense for enterprises, and sometimes hiring a marketing agency doesn’t make sense for your needs as well.
After diving into the key differences between the two, this article will address when you should hire a freelancer vs. a content marketing agency.
Common Marketing Services Businesses Need
Digital marketing helps businesses all over the world grow their service offerings and advertise to new markets. Marketing can be done in-house, but sometimes it’s better to gain access to services from industry experts. Common marketing services include:
- Advertising, Google AdWords, Google Analytics
- Content marketing and content creation
- Inbound marketing strategy
- Content strategy (including clusters or hub and spoke)
- Blogs
- Optimized content marketing for sales
- Marketing materials for trade shows and publications
- New web design or web maintenance
- Social media marketing
- Newsletter campaigns
- Search engine optimization (SEO) and local SEO
- Linking strategies and backlinking
Outsourcing content marketing help you overcome a number of content challenges, and provides you with a way to automate your content marketing efforts.
Working With a Freelancer Marketer
With the rise in the gig economy, more small business owners are hiring freelancers for their marketing efforts. In the U.S., there are an estimated 57 million freelancers, and a lot of these freelancers are successful in content marketing. With the amount of availability and project control that is possible when working with freelancers, many businesses consider this a viable option:
Pros of Working With a Freelance Digital Marketer
There are a number of benefits to working with freelancers. Freelancers operate on their own time, and schedule, and often in their own time zone.
So you can really gain access to a wider net of talent and hire a freelancer who is very skilled in your business niche.
The biggest reason why businesses go with freelancers is that they are usually cheaper than a content marketing agency. This is not always the case, though, since content writing is not a hugely profitable business, as most of the money goes to the content writer. And, what you may find is that freelancer writers sometimes charge more than agencies do for their time and knowledge.
However, you have to be careful who you work with. If you want freelance for marketing, consider a marketing consultant. Otherwise, you can simply hire a talented freelancer writer.
Cons to Working With a Freelance Marketer
With these benefits, there are of course downsides to working with freelancers for your marketing efforts. When it comes to freelance work, you are relying on usually one or two people to do the work.
If you have a bigger workload, this can easily tax an individual freelancer and you might not be able to get as much done.
Additionally, you may be limited to the particular skill sets that the marketer has. This might mean that you would end up hiring multiple freelancers, which adds more time and effort to in building that relationship.
This is compared to a digital agency where you’ll have access to an entire marketing team, and more personnel available to work on content marketing distribution, newsletters, and more.
Working With a Digital Marketing Agency
Lots of businesses decide to work with a marketing agency for their marketing efforts. Here are some of the pros and cons if you are thinking about going this route:
Pros of Working With a Digital Marketing Agency
Marketing agencies are groups of marketers working together professionally. When you find the marketing agency with the right mixture of expertise, skill, and organization, then you can tap into this shared pool of experience and get a really great marketing program.
Working with a digital marketing agency can get you access to white-labeled marketers with skills in marketing campaign development, content strategy, content creation, project deployment, and more. You can even access a project manager, content strategist, writers, and editors, all from one spot. You most likely can access partners for website design, including a graphic designer and web developer.
It’s usually more efficient working with a marketing agency as they are able tog easily add on services or modify them since they have more personnel on hand. They can also add services as needed and you don’t have to deal with personal introductions or sourcing your own. Instead, the marketing agency handles all that for you, and you just get to reap the benefits.
Cons to Working With a Digital Marketing Agency
There are always downsides to any company type. One of the biggest might be the cost that is believed to be associated with marketing agencies. In general, marketing agencies will cost more than a freelancer (although this is not always the case).
And some business owners might not like the agency experience. While you can get a comprehensive marketing solution through an agency, it may not feel as personalized as working with a freelancer. While, again, that is not always the case, it is a general attribute of agencies.
Freelancer vs. Digital Marketing Agency for Content Marketing
When comparing whether you want to work with a freelancer or a marketing agency for content marketing, the most important distinction is to know what you pay for.
While freelance marketers can supply some of the same services as marketing agencies, they typically can’t do it with as much ease or as big of a scope. They are, after all, limited to the services that they can provide as an individual and any contractors they hire out.
Additionally, while you can often get more from content marketing agencies, you also get a wider breadth of industry knowledge, including connections and partnerships. You can leverage these connections to grow your business even as they are often included in content marketing packages. And they still come at affordable prices.
Know that when it comes to writing online content, this is a very competitive industry. And we also mean that in the sense that the industry is not always out there to support businesses who need the work.
Content mills, for example, are out to work against business needs. Content mills are companies, agencies, and freelancer sites that hire freelance writers at rates that may seem affordable to your business but come at a cost. The bottom line is that content mills are too good to be true – and often you get content that is poorly written. You may have saved money on the outset, but in the end, it is a lot more work, hassle, and time because it requires more effort to fix the content.
Additionally, you as a business often have to put more work into obtaining and managing a healthy relationship with a freelancer, which can take precious time out of your day and can sometimes prove to be a waste. With a marketing agency, you can rest assured that the agency is working as a collective to find more people onboarded and prepared for your upcoming projects. So adding projects and scaling is a breeze.
Why You Should Trust okwrite
When it comes to choosing whether you want to work with a freelancer or content marketing agency for content production, we want you to be prepared and you want to hire someone you can trust. Freelancers take work and are limited in scope. With agencies, you can access more talent with less headache and a reasonable (and often more affordable cost).
With okwrite, you can access all of the benefits listed above, and more. We also offer AI-powered content marketing and content optimization to keep you competitive in the ever-advancing world of AI online search queries.
At okwrite, we have assembled a team of content writers and strategists to provide you with a bespoke content strategy and high-quality written content. From page copy to email campaigns and blog content, reach out today and experience the okwrite difference.
