You’ve hit a wall. You no longer have the time to handle all of your small business’s marketing tasks yourself. Sure, you could work 24 hours per day. But that leaves you no time to actually work on your business. You’re just working in it.
Whether it’s a time constraint or lack of skills, you need a team in order to grow. In an ideal world, you’ll have all the cash in the world to hire an expensive consultant to take care of the process for you.
So you’re left facing the reality. Do you build an in-house marketing team around you? Or do you outsource specific tasks to freelancers?
There is no cut and dried answer.
Both options can be very effective. Still, each approach comes with drawbacks you’ll want to be aware of. Below we dive into the pros and cons of the marketing team building and freelancer approaches, and suggest an alternative route you might not have thought of.
Pros & Cons of Hiring a Marketing Team
With an in-house team, you can have face-to-face conversations. That can really help to create energy around your projects, which in turn can help you to put out fires before they began and even come up with new ideas to grow your business.
When people become employees, they truly feel at home in your company. That sense of shared purpose may push them to work harder. Without the need to bounce between various projects and clients, your employees can dedicate more of their attention to the company.
You can also create specific project roles and hire people better at those roles than you ever could be.
However, finding talent can be quite the search. Plus, once you’ve found suitable candidates, you have to go through the process of interviewing, offering trial periods, negotiating salary, and ensuring there’s a steady flow of work for them.
You also have to manage your team. If you go the virtual team route, you have to ensure they’re actually doing the work required.
Finally, the training period can take time. You not only have to get employees used to how you do business, but you have to consistently train them to ensure their skills are up to the latest technology standards.
Pros & Cons of Outsourcing Marketing Tasks
Most freelancers are specialists who can help your business solve a very specific problem. This can be useful if you know exactly what you need. You can get projects completed faster and have a wide pool of talent to choose from, especially with the introduction of sites like Upwork and Freelancer.
You can also complete one-off projects faster than it would take to hire an additional team member.
The positives end there, though. Since freelancers often aren’t working with your company alone, they can become booked, and you’ll have to go through the process of finding another freelancer to tackle the job.
If you pay by the hour, you’ll also have to watch out for skyrocketing project costs and increased project timelines. If you want something done fast, it’s a better option to pay on a per-project basis.
It’s also worth noting that communicating with freelancers can be tough, especially if timezone conflicts come into play. And specialist freelancers can get quite expensive. If you want the best, then expect to pay a lot for the job.
How to Get the Best of Both Worlds
If the options above seem a little overwhelming for you, there is another way. You could work with a company like us.
At Automation Agency, we charge a flat fee, so there’s no need to worry about hours. Plus, our sole purpose is to free up your time and help your business run smoothly.
Our team is highly trained and fluent in the platforms and technology you need to automate your marketing. Our graphic design team live, breathe, and eat design; they don’t just mess around with Photoshop in their spare time.
Plus, our main goal is to keep things moving and keep you informed. We have refined processes and systems that push tasks to completion, enable communication, and keep you in the loop. You’ll never be left wondering what stage your project is at.
However, we’re not the perfect fit for every business. We’re not a full replacement team for your business. We’re a small team of specialists.
You’ll still need to fulfill certain roles like customer service, admin, accounting, and your product team. Typically, we work with solo operators to make their lives easier. But a lot of our clients are also small teams with a marketing assistant we work in collaboration with.
Deciding whether to hire a team or outsource to freelancers can be a tough decision. While you’re trying to figure out the best course of action, why don’t you let us take some of your design and marketing automation tasks off the table?
