Marketing agency, private freelancer, or employee?

In 90% of cases, an entrepreneur who decides to develop his business online faces a small problem when choosing a contractor to promote it. Now I suggest that you consider three possible options for choosing people who will be responsible for the development of your site, namely, work with a private freelancer, a marketing agency, or invite a specialist to the office.

Obviously, each of the options has its pros and cons, which you can determine for yourself in this article, as well as learn about our real experience with our clients and the situation in which each of the options will be beneficial.

Private freelancer: in what cases should you apply?

To begin with, let’s define that a private specialist is someone who works for himself remotely, mostly in another settlement. In some cases, a contract with legal guarantees and any specifics can be offered. However, it can perform large volumes of work with your site for an extremely low cost. This option is the cheapest, because the cost of a freelancer’s work does not include renting a fancy office in the center of Kyiv or Moscow, and he already has all the technical software for working with websites.

It suits you

This option can be the most profitable when your site has only recently been created (start-up project) and it does not yet have any positions in search results, promoted brand, turnover and sales. A competent private SEO specialist can do the basic optimization of your site no worse than any top company, and if you take into account the minimal cost of his work and the fact that the young site has no positions and, accordingly, it does not bring any profit, you are completely safe and maximum, what you can lose is time. Conclusion: it is definitely worth applying if you are not ready to immediately invest a lot of money in the site and it does not yet bring you any financial profit.

Definitely not suitable

Let’s be clear: you’re not going to give access from your site to some private freelancer with 20 (not a fact, that’s real) testimonials, whose portfolio (not a fact, that’s real) you saw on the freelance exchange? When you have a turnover on the website like that of “Rosetka”, or on the way to such amounts.

Unfortunately, we have encountered situations when a customer with a well-promoted site turned to a private specialist who, instead of raising the position of the site, only did worse or drove it under the sanctions of search engines (believe me, such cases have a more negative result than cases of fraud) , when the freelancer simply disappears after receiving the advance payment).

If you do not take into account the cases of fraud, poor communication, lack of specifics and financial obligations, you as a customer are exposed to too great risks by handing your site over to a person you barely know, and not to a team of professionals. Also, a private freelancer will rarely be able to provide a complex of services for promotion or website development, and even less often a high-quality complex.

SEO studio, marketing agency, company. Price does not always decide

Internet marketing agency usually costs more than a freelancer or an in-house employee. Also, you are communicating with a person who does not deal with your site, so it is important to make sure of his professionalism. It should be a specialist, not just a “seller”. At the same time, there are risks of falling under the conveyor belt – the company should not have 100,500 current projects. However, marketing companies cover all these risks with the help of their professionalism, a wide range of services, responsibility and, most importantly, financial guarantees. Below are situations when it is not worth saving, and when a contract with financial guarantees can play against your interests. For example, the contract was concluded without the possibility of early termination or with penalties upon termination.

It suits you

An excellent option for cooperation with the company if your site already brings applications and sales, but you do not want to stop there. In this situation, it is not only about SEO promotion, but also other online marketing channels that may be no less relevant for your niche. In my practice, there were many cases when, it would seem, maximum positions were squeezed out of SEO promotion, but you can always go further when the team works. Also, working with the company, the site is completely safe from hacking. If your site is the main source of orders for your business, then you should definitely consider working with the company, sacrificing lower prices and communication directly for security and guarantees.

Definitely not suitable

In our clients’ past experience, most conflicts when working with companies arise when the sales department performs better than the technical department.

Why does this happen? Imagine you ordered a turnkey site development, you liked everything: the design is chic, perfectly adapted to all devices and all wishes are taken into account. Now you have decided to contact this company for website promotion. After all, if they can create a high-quality site, they can also promote it well. Mostly no: not always a digital company that creates excellent sites can also take into account all the nuances of Internet marketing and promote it well, and vice versa, if a company occupies a top position in the market of online marketing services, this does not mean that they are worth contacting for the development of complex projects, services or mobile applications. To this nuance, it is worth adding the risk of falling under the conveyor belt, communication through managers, inflated prices. After all, if you have already decided that you will work with a certain company, then be sure to study its portfolio directly for the services you are going to order.

Employee on staff: why it is not as profitable as it seems?

A full-time employee is the same freelancer who is next to you in the next office, he will never disappear, he does not need to be paid as a whole company. The demand for full-time employees in the field of Internet marketing is growing every year. Absolutely every modern business in a niche with more or less serious competition needs to have a person responsible for the website or online sales. But not in all cases the decision to hire such a person has a justified result.

It suits you

Always relevant if your main (or even only) source of sales is the website. One of the common reasons for customers leaving companies is when the customer finds a new employee. If we take our projects as an example, it can be a large real estate agency that has several promoted sites at once. After a year of work, they didn’t even need a private staff member, but a whole team: a small group of copywriters/content managers, 3 programmers, an SEO specialist, a marketer and a designer. You definitely won’t be able to organize such a team of people from private freelancers, and in the case of companies, you will communicate with only one project manager, which can lead to a kind of broken phone. It is always easier and faster to discuss the project at a live round table with all involved employees. Therefore, if the main source of income of your business depends on the functioning of your website, you are definitely recommended to invite one or more specialists to your office.

Definitely not suitable

The disadvantage of this approach can be busyness. On average, a private SEO specialist can lead 5-10 projects. When you invite a full-time employee, he will manage 1, maximum 2 of your sites. You can, of course, make it search and add pictures to the site, or write texts. But this can be compared to when an experienced architect is asked to mix cement mortar (well, he has already drawn his drawings there and is not busy yet).

Will such a schedule be interesting to a new employee? Of course not, if he could recently earn several times more while sitting at home. And in the best case, if he tells you about it directly, in the worst case, he will start “healing”, that is, engage in other projects (well, if not during working hours). To the low workload and motivation, add the costs of SEO services, which are necessary for full-fledged work with the site, which averages about $400 per month. If you develop social networks, then SMM services can be from $100 to $300 per month and so on.

In conclusion: be prepared to spend not only on the workplace, equipment and the rate of an employee, but also to replenish various services, pay for courses or the work of additional specialists in related areas of digital marketing. And don’t forget about the specialist’s motivation. Try to create such a motivation system that he does not even think about working at home.

Let’s summarize

If we do not take into account all that was said above, but talk about the general criteria for finding a contractor, then I suggest starting with the following (in descending order):

1. A commercial offer means a turnkey price and scope of work. One specialist can take more money for his work than a whole team of specialists in an SEO company. But it is not a fact that this team will devote more time and effort to your site than 1 person. Carefully study the KP and its components: the work plan, the budget for expenses, the number of requests for promotion, additional services. Alternatively, you can request examples of reports on other projects to compare the final scope of work.
2. Communication – in this case, you can determine this even before the start of cooperation, for example, how the company manager or freelancer answers your calls, how quickly they can answer you by mail or Viber. Is it possible to reach you on the weekend? There are often cases when the customer may forget to top up the hosting or renew the domain, as a result the site simply does not work. You can face a very unpleasant feeling when you did not have time to solve a really important issue with the site on Friday, and you start to be ignored after 16:00 or write “we will definitely do everything necessary by Monday!”.
3. Reputation – it’s not enough to ask about which sites your contractor has promoted. This criterion should also be given special attention even in cases where you have applied for the recommendation of a familiar person. When choosing a contractor company, I would not look at reviews on the site, but at various IT ratings and search results, for example, queries for “wedex reviews”. When communicating with a private specialist, I recommend looking at his fresh portfolio with screenshots from Google Analytics or Microsoft Clarity with today’s attendance.

Serhii Ivanchenko

CEO

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