Every business is unique in its services/products, its vision for the future, and its marketing strategies. The goals a business has for the future, the resources that it can deploy, and the experience it has marketing and advertising its services/products are key factors in the following question.
Is it better to hire an agency, freelancer, or build an in-house team when it comes to running Google Ads, or any other marketing strategy? There are pros and cons to each of the answers to this crucial question that every business asks itself. With businesses and brands spending above $614.73 billion in marketing worldwide, it is important to be certain that the money being invested is towards a strategy that works, and more importantly works for you.
Factors to Consider
Cost-effective
Being cost-effective is not synonymous with being cheap. Cost-effectiveness is the quality of being worth the investment, efficient in its use and value, and providing the most bang for buck.
Management
An effective marketing campaign is as much about timing as it is about time management. Whether you choose to build an in-house marketing team, or employ an agency or a team of freelancers, carefully consider the amount of time and involvement you can invest.
Skills and Experience
Successful digital marketing across platforms requires a wide range of experience and skills. When considering whether to build an in-house team, or employ an agency or freelancer, evaluate the skills and experience they bring to the table. The platforms and campaigns they have worked on before, its success, and their process.
Pros and Cons of In-house vs Agency vs Freelancer
In-house
Pros-
- Marketers with talent work for, and only for, your business.
- You work closely with the marketers to craft your strategies.
- You get to be involved in the entire creative process of crafting a marketing campaign.
- You design, direct, and own the whole end-to-end marketing strategy.
- The knowledge that an expert marketer brings to the team becomes a part of your business and influences your training of future employees.
- An in-house marketing team helps you scale your business.
Cons-
- The resources required to hire marketers with talent to join your in-house team with competitive salaries and benefits, not including the associated overhead costs is substantial.
- They can be lured away from businesses with more resources.
- The hidden costs of delays in project completion are also substantial.
- whole process.
- You will be investing valuable time simply overseeing and shepherding the marketing team.
- You would be doing little else other than overseeing the marketing efforts.
- An in-house marketing team would have to be extensive with each member of the team skilled in their respective niche of marketing, whether it is social media, PPC, demand generation, etc.) You will have to employ a fairly large group of people.
Agency
Pros-
- No overhead costs that will be associated with an in-house marketer or marketing team.
- No benefits, no paid health or vacation leaves, no unemployment taxes.
- Accountability for every minute and hour of work towards the delivered service.
- You can have as little and as much involvement in the creative process as you are comfortable with.
- End-to-end marketing campaign and management that does not require you to double-check on each step of the way.
- You neither have to oversee nor invest time training the expert professionals at a marketing agency who are already proficient and skilled at their line of work.
- You need not worry about the marketing campaign and can focus on improving and expanding your business and its products/services.
- Agencies have pre-assembled teams with a combination of members who have diversified and specific skills. Agencies recruit talented and experienced experts who bring their knowledge and creativity to the team.
- Agencies work closely with and on advertising and social media platforms producing the best quality content and marketing results for businesses.
- Agencies have a thorough understanding of the best and most effective practices backed by years of experience, which is why they are more skilled at account management across the different ad platforms. This influences and boosts the success of marketing campaigns across channels.
Cons-
- Since every hour is accounted for, the hourly rates are competitive.
- The price of each service is based on the scope and width of the individual project.
Freelancer
Pros-
- No overhead costs or benefits required.
- Idle for very specific or single pieces of your marketing strategy.
- Freelancers put your marketing plans into action.
- Depending on their quality of work, you might not need to guide them much.
- Freelancers are flexible and can save you time and resources when hired for small or specific projects.
Cons-
- No accountability for time spent working on the project.
- Freelancers, generally, have multiple projects and are unlikely to pay 100% of their attention to your project.
- Hiring a single freelancer rarely gets the project done, or done successfully for that matter. You will most likely have to hire an entire team of freelancers to complete the project.
- Freelancers rarely develop marketing strategies. They simply put the already crafted and developed marketing strategy into action.
- Freelancers require a fair amount of guidance in the beginning and unfortunately, till the end of the process.
- You will have to double-check and sign off on each step of the marketing process.
- Each freelancer has his/her very specific skill set in a very specific domain/marketing platform. A freelancer would not, could not, have all the skills and the years of experience your business needs to execute a successful marketing campaign.
- Freelancers work on their own time and speed. This can push the estimated time of completion for their work further than either you or your budget are comfortable with.