When integrated marketers and their teams are in over their heads with a challenging workload, bringing in freelance help makes sense. Rather than seeing them as an indulgent expense, a freelancer's contributions often help save money and build the business.
Whether it's tight deadlines, doing repetitive work in a limited brand palette, or having a big project with 37 rounds of revisions...admit it: you and your employees are fantasizing about running away to a tropical island. When the going gets tough, the smart integrated marketers call in a freelancer.
Even if hiring a freelancer feels indulgent, it shouldn't. It's cheaper than the alternatives (e.g., hiring a full-time employee, missing deadlines then losing business, having to withdraw from a pitch because you don't have the right staff). Here's why using freelancers makes good financial sense:
Keep your employees happy: Burnout is real and, unsurprisingly, the ramped-up timelines of digital marketing are even more stressful. Having a set of extra hands can help your team take a much-needed breather, which can...
Avoid costly mistakes. Mistakes happen to the best of us, especially when we're jugging too many projects and rushing through QA. Design mistakes can cost time, money, and credibility, which is reason enough to get help.
Keep your existing clients happy: If you're an in-house group and you bring in a freelancer for a special project, your client is going to see your commitment and feel much more valued.
Protect yourself from going over-budget: If your team is stretched so tightly that more senior designers are having to do grunt-work, it makes financial sense to bring in a freelancer - so your higher-priced talent doesn't burn hours that eat into your profits.
Enhance the quality of your work: You and your team have probably been working with a branded image library, fonts, and colors for a long time and gotten accustomed to doing things a certain way. Let a freelancer inject some fresh thinking into your work.
Be more competitive: You get a new project or opportunity that requires a specific skill that your team doesn't have: for example, if a client wants to produce a commercial and your copywriters only have web and direct mail experience; or you're asked to build a website with Drupal or another content management system you've never used before. Outsourcing social and content marketing is becoming increasingly more popular with integrated marketers for that exact reason.
Finding a freelancer doesn't have to be hard, either. Call your vendors and ask for referrals. A good freelancer is almost the next-best-thing to taking a vacation!
Last modified: March 5, 2018
