Do I Need an Agency or a Freelancer
Do I need an agency or a freelancer? This is one of the most common
questions for business startups. If you own a business, you will want to make
the best choices for your company. That’s why Inspiral has for you some of the best
tips for a startup.
When you own a company, there are so many things to take care of.
This can feel very overwhelming, it seems like 24 hours is not enough for a
single day. It’s a fact that you can’t manage to do all these tasks on your
own.
This is when you start to think about hiring other people to do
the work. And therefore,
the question of Do I need an agency or a freelancer? becomes the key to
taking the next action.
It is important for you to consider which one is a good fit for
your company. Otherwise, it could cost you time, money, and effort that would
go to waste. And these 3 things, when invested wisely, bring amazing results.
Agency or Freelancer?
Either agencies or freelancers have their pros and cons. So,
either any of them could be a good choice or a bad one, this depends on the
needs of your company. So, for you to make any choice, first you need to know
what are the options.
Investopedia defines a Freelancer as:
“A freelancer is an
independent laborer who earns wages on a per-job or per-task basis, typically
for short-term work.”
In other words, a freelancer is a person who works for themselves,
instead of for a company. Freelances offer services and tend to work on several
jobs for many clients at one time.
As for Agency, Market Business News defines it as:
“An agency is a business, firm, or organization that provides
a specific service. Often, but not always, agencies work on behalf of another
group, business, or person.”
Agencies or companies have either full-time employees or
independent contractors. They take care of different tasks and activities for
the company and its clients.
But now,
What’s the difference?
Simple. Freelancers work in an
independent way, with their own terms and conditions. They arrange all straight
with their clients. Agencies on the other side, have employees. They can add
team members to projects for the agency’s customers and clients.
Some freelancers can manage to take care of the entire process of
a project. Yet, usually, freelancers specialize in a specific area or task of
the project. This means that as the project keeps growing you might need to
hire more freelancers to cover the rest of it.
The function of an agency is to provide its clients with a variety
of specialists. Their goal is to please a rising demand for general skills.
Agencies count on project management.
They take care of distributing the project into small tasks that will be
done by the members of the company. As
a result, the only thing you need to worry about is to hire the agency, since
they will do the rest for you.
Once again, both options are functional. Yet, these solutions will depend on
the needs that you and your business have. As well as on the specifications of
the project.
So, “which one should I hire?”
I have personally worked as both, freelance, and now as a team member of a company
in Inspiral Growth. So my advice for you in this article will be based
not only on research but also on personal experience.
I started working as a freelance in 2018 for a Freelancers
Agency, and I want to make emphasis here. This third option is like an
in-between. Freelancers Agencies’ function is to find clients and then match
them with freelancers. Once they do this, they charge a commission over that work.
Based on the client’s needs they will find one of the freelancers
they hired to be part of their community. Then, they let the client interview
the freelancer to see if there’s a match. After this, almost all the procedures
are between the client and the freelancer.
Of course, the Freelancers Agency will follow up with the
freelancer’s work. They need to make sure everything it’s going well
since the freelancer’s client is also their client. Other than that, the
communication and tasks will be between the client and the freelance.
The only thing you don’t get to
discuss with these freelancers is the payments. Their contract is with the
freelancers’ agency. Here the concept is like the one we saw of agency, but
there’s still a difference.
Freelancers Agencies will provide
you with one or many freelancers. After that, you have to manage the tasks and
assignments directly with them. While regular agencies have a team that takes
care of managing and achieving
those tasks for you.
In other words, hiring a freelancer’s agency it’s almost the same
as hiring a freelancer. In both, you’ll end up working directly with the
freelancer.
So, if you are a business owner that is ready to delegate some of the
workloads, you need to ask yourself:
What does my company need?
If the answer is very specific, such as I need a graphic designer to
create these videos for my marketing campaign, then go for a
freelancer. You know what you and your company need.
If on the other hand, your answer
is very general such as I need to position my brand or I need to get more clients. And, you are not sure of how to
achieve them, you might not be sure of what you need.
And when I say what you need, I’m talking about the specific
actions that you have to take to achieve those goals. Therefore, an
agency is the best option for you. And also for your resources.
I’ve seen people hiring a
freelance who’s specialized in graphic design and creating content, and they
don’t even know who their market is. They don’t know who to sell their products to or where.
Let me put it this way, graphic designers can have basic knowledge
in copywriting. They can know about social media. Most likely they do. But this
doesn’t make them community managers.
When you don’t know what you need, you can end up hiring someone
who is also not what your company needs. And yes, they can learn how to do it,
but the time it could take them to learn about it can cost you money and, of
course, time.
So, we can conclude that if the answer to what we mentioned before
is an action, then a freelancer can be good for you. Freelancers are good for
short-term projects. Also, when hiring a freelance you can get involved in the
creative process.
And, if the answer is instead of an action, a goal you are
not sure how to achieve, then go for an agency. Agencies are good for
big complex projects that demand phases to manage and multiple specialists.
As always, I hope this helped you answer the main question of Do
I need an agency or a freelancer? And If so, or If you have any other
doubts, please leave a comment for us! And stay Inspired with us.
Here in Inspiral Growth, we want to be the rocket that gets your
company to the moon!
Book a call today!
Sofia Villamil
Web Developer.
