Should you hire a freelancer or an agency?

Transcript

Charles Travers: Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of e commerce marketing chats with myself Charles and Jimmy. Jimmy, what’s going on mate? How’s things?

Jimmy Dalgleish: mate, good to be back in another week. And yeah, interesting topic for today. So I think we’re sticking to the sticking to the theme of kind of just working on one topic for the podcast episodes now. And I think today we’re gonna look at agencies versus freelancers, which I mean in saying this Charles and I might be slightly biased because we are both freelancers. but I think I mean you’re gonna hear from our perspective the pros and cons for each. So maybe potentially down the track we can get an agency owner on here and discuss from their point of view what what it looks like. But I think today you’ll you’ll you’ll probably get a as unbiased as we can be, but I think we come from a world of freelancers. So it may potentially be slightly biased towards that. but yeah, we’ll we’ll jump into that topic today and have a look what that looks like.

Charles Travers: Sounds good. Yeah, I mean actually, Jimmy, for a number of years I I was operating as an agency. So I can probably give a little bit of a perspective on the other side as well. yeah, and kind of give you the p the pros and cons and from kind of both sides. but yeah, we you know I know Jimmy you’ve worked with a lot of agencies as well, so I’m sure from your discussions we yeah, you can also give a a point of view in terms of why sometimes it may actually be better to hire an agency versus a freelancer. So yeah, let’s let’s get into it. What’s I guess probably breaking down if we start with like the let’s start with the pros of hiring a freelancer for your e-commerce business. You know, say for example you needed a Google Ads specialist. what are the pros there? and then yeah we can just kind of fire away and and and have a discussion about it.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, I think I think a lot of the pros are gonna be the cons of dealing with an agency. So I think I think one of the

Charles Travers: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: one of the biggest one of the biggest things I get when clients come to me is they’ve worked with an agency, but they have a different account manager like every couple of months because the agencies have high staff turnover. So when you’re working with a freelancer, you’re working with that direct person and you’re not getting kind of interchangeable people constantly, people learning your account. Every couple of months. And I think that’s the real frustration I see with business owners that are working with agencies. It’s the heavy staff turnover within agencies. But also, if you’re a business and you’re not spending like a considerable amount of money, I’m talking like a hundred thousand plus a month, you’re probably going to get one of their junior operators. You’re not going to get one of the senior people unless you’re dealing with, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars a month on your account because that that’s where they’re high level people will be sitting. So all these kind of e-commerce stores or anyone that’s working with either a freelancer or an agency, if you’re spending like one or two thousand a a month, like you’re never getting anyone senior at the at the agency level. you’ll be basically getting someone that’s gonna be training on training on your money, basically. So I think that’s the main one, the the consistency. also the level of seniority. I guess if you’re working with a freelancer that’s been in the game for years, if they went into agency life, majority of them would be very senior in kind of that agency bubble. So you’re working with In saying that too, there are some freelancers that have only been around for a couple of months. So you do need to do

Charles Travers: Yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: your research, but but you need to do your research with everything. I think this is the problem with business owners. They, you know, you hear you hear a lot, I’ve been screwed by an agency. But then some of the onus has got to fall back onto the business owner. Like how much how much research did you do? How much did you look into this? you know, why did you go with that agency? Were you sold a pipe dream and so there’s a yeah, there’s a there’s a little bit of onus on the business owner, unfortunately, as as bad that I do feel for some of them that do come to me and I have a look at the account and they’ve just basically been roarted. But yeah, I think I think freelancer freelance aside, yeah, definitely the consistency of working with one people, one person. and they can still work with so if you’ve got a really good marketing manager. think one of the one of the appealing aspects for agency for business owners is one place to house all the marketing where and that to be honest that that is a really good pro you’ve but sometimes I just find the agencies that offer everything they aren’t really that great at anything so

Charles Travers: Mm. Yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: They they’re kind of the jack of all trades, but the master of none. And they’re more in that realm. what I find is if a business has a really good marketing manager in-house and that can manage freelancers that are all really high level, yeah, they tend to I’ve worked in those situations a lot, being as part of a team with other freelancers, and they seem to they seem to work really well. you’ve got kind of masters of every platform and you can collaborate within a small team for those two. So yeah, I think I mean it’s it’s it’s a hard decision for business owners, right? And like you mentioned earlier, I have worked with a lot of agencies. and kind of my background into working with agencies was after I won that national wide competition with Ace of Computers, like I had I had no experience in. in marketing. This was this was back twelve, thirteen years ago, now. No, longer. Fourteen, far out. Time flies. But after I won that national wide marketing competition, I got headhunted and worked in as the marketing manager in kind of family family owned business. I came in there and when I joined, I thought I was joining a marketing team, but I was the marketing team and agencies were running everything. And I got a really interesting insight into how it all works. And I quickly realized how little they do. And one of the stories that I’ve shared many times is this particular business, like they rented out appliances like fridges and TVs and things like that. When I kind of learned the ropes and how it was all working, I had a look in their Google Ads account and Close to 90% plus of their their budget was being used on keywords around car rental and they didn’t even rent in cars. so I quick I’m like, what? You guys have been paying this agency for like three years. and like cost per conversion was like $129. and within the space of just taking a second to understand it and look at it. I took over from that agency and changed their cost per acquisition from 129 to $12.70. so it just it just I kind of had a gripe against agencies from that because I mean this is a family-owned business. You literally, as an agency, have the power to like completely change their lives if you do a really good job. but more often than not, I see pretty poor jobs. I think another another advantage from working with freelancers, they’re not always cheaper, but they can be because they don’t have the overheads of an agency. I’ve seen I I was actually I was actually looking at some agency prices today for like email marketing. like it’s a Melbourne based business and it’s like close to $10,000 for a flow build out. I was like, my gosh. whereas if you could get a high level freelancer, you could probably get something really similar for, you know, two and a half, three thousand. So it’s a pretty big difference. but yeah, it’s I th I think I think a lot of freelancers get their work from from recommendations. I think the agencies I don’t like to say it, but they kinda have a little bit of a burn and churn model where they spend a lot in advertising to get more clients on. and the the sales cycle is always on because they’ve got they got staff constantly for sales calls and closing deals and then you know, they they usually don’t do the great job, so they usually have high churn as well. So I I find I find freelancers the churn isn’t as high. Agency and then the agencies recoup that business by just ramping up their own marketing and bringing more people into the into that loop. So yeah, I think churn is a chair, churn and lack of kind of detail to customer accounts. And and this is generally speaking, because there are some great agencies out there. I was really happy with the agency that did our email marketing flows. it’s got some good results and I felt we got value for money for what we paid. So yeah, I’m not knocking every agency. I’m just saying I’ve seen more bad than good. So yeah, and that’s kind of my

Charles Travers: Yeah, you make some really good points there, Jimmy. You’ve you you you’ve cut you’re like I’ve got a list here of a few things that I can think of and you’re literally like ticking one off but like, okay, that one’s been talked about. So what else can I talk about? no, I think you you make a really good point. I think just to touch on the points that you made, you know, the pros of a freelancer in my experience as someone who is a freelancer, is I think Clients get the feeling that you’re more an extension of their team opposed to this external agencies. And I think with agencies, because they have to work typically with more clients, they have to be quite rigid in their processes, they have their way of doing things. And therefore, if a client has a request that maybe goes outside of that. slightly outside of that scope, it’s like, no, sorry, we can’t do that. Whereas a freelancer freelancer is typically a little bit more accommodating to you know the request of a client and you feel like that freelancer is more part of the team. They’re more invested invested in it. They’re not as focused, you know, on just getting as many sales and as many clients on board, but actually delivering real value to the clients that they do have. and I guess you could say that that’s you know, the the the flip side of that is freelancers have a cap limit on really how many clients that they can properly serve. and and from what I’ve realized, having worked on the other side as an agency owner, is when I was hiring freelancers, there would be certain situations where They were like, they were working really well up to a certain point. And I’d asked them, like, is everything okay? They’re like, Yeah, I’ve just taken on a bunch of new work. So they’ve overcommitted and they’ve got too many clients on board and and they’ve only got one person and they’re not able to serve their existing clients to the to the best of their ability. So Yeah, I think you know, if you want to say If you want a freelancer to come in that’s gonna try and do everything, like it’s gonna be your SEO, your Google Ads expert, your web developer and designer, that’s not gonna happen. And if it if they are fr offering that, then they’re probably bullshitting you, to be quite frank, and and they’re outsourcing that to to other people. so there is an advantage if you want like you you mentioned about you know having that one point of contact with an agency. that does everything within your marketing from managing your website to running your email campaigns to doing your SEO. Now the flip side of that is It’s questionable. Do they have those specialists to actually deliver real value in each of those marketing disciplines? In many cases, they don’t, unless they’re charging a c you know, a decent amount. Because, you know, for example, even like in the the area that I’m in, you know, if I was to hire a good SEO to d deliver value for my clients. I would have to charge considerably more than what I’m charging now in order to be able to make any margin on top to be able to make it a viable business. Otherwise I’m just you know, I’m just breaking even. So and most SEOs that are really any good long term typically will go out and venture on their own and become, you know, consultants or freelancers anyway. So really the w the ones that retain those SEO consultants, those really good ones, typically are charging top dollar. You know, they’re like high end London agencies or high end Melbourne agencies or high end New York agencies, whatever, you know, name your your your top top cities around the world. so yeah, that’s

Jimmy Dalgleish: think that’s that’s a really good point actually that I didn’t touch on. Like you’re right. The most skilled people in agencies usually leave and take on their own clients. because it it just makes sense. Like they can make considerably more money on their own. They they do have to take on more risk and manage a business. So some people just want to work for someone else and that’s fine. But I find that the really highly skilled motivated ones will go out and start their own thing. from agency life. I’ve seen it time and time again. The the best people and the most sought after, they a lot of them will start their own thing.

Charles Travers: Yeah, for sure. I think actually the clever the clever agency owners, from what I’ve seen, they recognise the talent that they’ve got on and they will allow their s you know, team members to effectively build out their own personal brand. And they’re probably under the they’re probably fully aware that these freelancers or people that work for them on the books are also taking work on the side anyway. so they’re like, well why don’t we just leverage them because they’ve got they’re building a personal brand, they’ve got the credibility within that industry. And yes, we also pay them a full time salary as well, which you know helps things. So I think that’s kind of I’m seeing was what’s happening certainly within the the this the SEO industry. but yeah it’s You know, there I don’t think there’s there’s one size fits all. I think also it at the

Jimmy Dalgleish: No, definitely not.

Charles Travers: end of the day it comes down to budget as well. Like if you are growing an e commerce store and you’re still in the earlier stages, then typically hiring a freelancer is gonna be more budget friendly. but as you said, as you said that there can be you know, you can hire a cheap freelancer and you think, I’ve you know, this is great, then they’re not charging too much, but if they don’t get results, then what’s the point? It’s just wasted money. So,

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah. Nah, it’s that’s a re it’s a really good point. So I’ve talked I’ve talked about like there’s you know, there’s there’s some good agencies. It’s the same for freelancers. There’s some good freelancers, but there’s a lot of horrible ones too. So I don’t want people listening to this to think, I’ll go freelancer out. Every freelancer is great. That’s not the case either. just you just kind of need to see how long people have been in the game for. If they’ve been in there for one or two years, it’s probably yeah, it’s probably not enough. but I mean I’ve been freelancing freelancing for my own business now for since 2016. So what 10 10 years. So it’s not too much I haven’t seen in that time. I think another another really big pro for freelancers can give an example of this this week. So if something goes wrong on the weekend, I’ll fix it for my clients. Agency is a Monday to Friday, nine to five. Like if something goes wrong outside those hours, like good luck. Like if something happens on Saturday or Friday after five PM, you’ll get it sorted on the Monday. So you’ll be you’ll be down all weekend. But a good example for this, so one of the clients that I work with is like a a memorabilia kind of store. They They sell like sporting memorabilia and and things like that. And just in Australia recently we we had the the AFL grand final has just passed. Now I put their ads for memorabilia live as soon as the siren went for the grand finals. So this is on a Saturday. and I noticed their biggest competitor was still running pre order ads for the whole weekend. it just means that the agency or whoever the I I don’t know if it’s an agency or not that they’re working with. I’m gonna assume ’cause they’re a they’re a really kind of big brand. But their ads weren’t updated until the Monday. So

Charles Travers: Mm.

Jimmy Dalgleish: it isn’t and again, I’m not saying all freelancers work weekends ’cause they don’t, but yeah, if a client gives me the heads up for something like that, I will a hundred percent do it on the weekend for them. but yeah, good luck good luck getting an employee in an agency to do that. Like No, it’s my weekend, like I’ll sort it for you when I’m back at work.

Charles Travers: Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. I think the other important thing to consider, regardless if you are hiring a freelancer or an agency, and it’s a big one that comes up a lot for me because typically I’m the freelancer that’s working after another agency or a freelancer have come in

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: to work with them, is communication. Communication’s a huge one. A lot of the time, you know, I literally have clients that I’ve worked with for a few months have just said, look, you are, you know, you’re you’re you’re so much better in terms of communication than the last guys. You know, you actually answer us within, you know, 24 hours, or you know, I’ll send a message, they’ll send a message and answer, you know, on Slack within within the within the hour. I’m not left Or sorry, they’re not left waiting three or four days for a response. and I think that is that’s a big one actually, ’cause I think sometimes the work could be getting done, but the client is often not aware of what’s being done. and they just need a little bit more responsiveness and a little bit more proactiveness in order to feel comfortable and build trust with who they’re working with. so yeah, that’s That’s that’s definitely important one and I think that can apply to, you know, either a freelancer or an agency. You could have you know, I don’t think one is better than the other typically at communication. I think it comes down to the person. The o the other thing I I guess you could say is a is a a con or a negative potentially of working with a freelancer is they are your only point of contact and you know for example if they are off ill or you know something comes up and life gets in the way which inevitably it does they may be unavailable to work on your account for a period of time or a week or two weeks whatever Whereas if it’s an agency and someone you know, is off sick, then there’ll be other people on the team to kinda cover or to at least continue that communication. So that’s, you know, something to yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: You you you’d you’d th you’d think so, agency. I’ve had an experience so when I was the marketing manager, the account manager for my account was sick for three weeks. I didn’t hear from him for three weeks. No one took no one took over that account. So you

Charles Travers: Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: you would you would think because they’ve there is an agency and they’ve got additional personnel, that would happen, but it doesn’t always it’s funny you say like that about freelancers ’cause I’ve never thought about that. like I it is a risk factor, but I don’t I’ve I don’t think I’ve there this maybe over the last ten years, there’s maybe three times that I had a migraine over that period where I I just couldn’t work that one particular day. But I don’t yeah, I I’m very fortunate that I’ve had my health for a long period of time. So I I didn’t even think of that because it’s never it hasn’t happened to me. I’ve Even when I go on holidays with the family, I’ve always got my laptop. when the kids are in bed, I’m working on client accounts. So there’s n unfortunately there’s never really a switch off point for freelancers. I will say though, the time of the year where there is a switch off point is for e-commerce especially, is usually when like a really good switch off point is you you you’ve usually got a two-week or a week and a bit break from Christmas Day l or just when businesses clock off for the year to when they go back into the office to which is usually like January sixth or something like that. I don’t hear from hardly anyone. I ha I don’t hear from hardly anyone over that period. So that’s

Charles Travers: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I’ll just say. Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: like it’s a it’s a nice period for freelancers because everyone in the office is usually not there so you don’t hear from them. So it is that’s the time of time of year where I like to just try to switch off. I still check the accounts just to make sure that everything’s okay. But yeah, in terms of client communication, it it almost there’s no need for it until they’re back into the office, which is a it’s a nice little grace period for freelancers. But otherwise, yeah, you’re on pretty much every day of the year. But I think the freelancer lifestyle is a bit of the laptop lifestyle too. So you’ve got that flexibility. and yeah, as as you know, Charles, I don’t like the sales cycle for as a freelancer. So once I get a client on, it’s trying to do as good a job as possible. So they stick around. So and then

Charles Travers: Yeah, yeah. No for sure.

Jimmy Dalgleish: I think that’s I think that’s almost the the opposite for the agencies. They they won’t go above and beyond, they just keep filling their pipelines. So yeah. it’s a very they’re very different models. Both can be both can be good. And I mean like at the higher end, like the top level corporates, a lot of them won’t work with freelancers, but they will work with agencies that, the the cost is like insane. I’m looking at what they’re getting for like, you know, thirty, forty, fifty thousand dollar a month retainers. And I was like, I could put it together a team that would do like d like so much better than this for like probably like you know s significantly less than what they’re what they’re doing. So I think in the that’s another good thing. Like if your freelancers have been a w around for a while, they’ve usually worked with a lot of people and they have like their own referral network of like service providers that they would trust to work on their clients stuff. So yeah, if you’re working with if you’re working with a really high level freelancer and I I would almost approach them and say, hey, can you put together a team like to do this? Obviously it’s gonna be you’re gonna be paying pretty much agency prices, but you’re gonna get like a you’re gonna get like like a team of like elite level operators working on your brand. So

Charles Travers: Yeah, that’s a good point. I think any good freelancer is typically gonna have a good network of other people in there from different marketing disciplines that they can refer you to. So like obviously we talked about potentially the downside is as if you hire a freelancer they’re not gonna be able to do every different marketing discipline. But what they probably will be able to do if they’re they’re good and they’ve built a good network is they’ll be able to refer you to someone just as good in an in that other area of marketing that you’re you know, that that they aren’t able to do. So, yeah, I think that’s a that’s that’s kind of a really good point is you know, most of the best operators, marketing operators, they often have people in their network that they can refer to you. So if they can’t do that, then they’ll usually be able to pass you on to someone that can. And then you’ve got that that’s that real good you can build up that team of freelance operators that are specialists in each of their areas and they’re able to kind of work together to to help grow your business. the one thing actually sorry.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, I think I think like I also I was just about to say I I think agencies do it too. And the only reason I know agencies do it is because I one of my really strong referral partners is an SEO agency in Melbourne. So they don’t offer like Google ads to their clients, but if they if like it’s gonna help them get the deal over the line, they know kind of the exact type of client that I would work with, like they’ll pitch me in on the deal. so I think even specialized agencies, rather than them losing a great lead, they also have a network of people that they can refer to as well. So it’s not just freelancers, but I wouldn’t write freelancers off as just being a single thing. They will they should and will have connections in kind of other disciplines as well.

Charles Travers: Yeah, absolutely. I think one one point that we haven’t touched on is actually regardless if you’re trying hiring a freelancer or agency, is ideally picking someone who has some experienced within either your market or within the area of so w what I’m trying to say here is like You know, SEO, there’s there’s different types of SEO campaigns. So I would run a you know for a Shopify store, I’m gonna run a s different campaign than say a B to B client. They’re gonna be different.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: And if you’ve got experience working like for for me now I’m focused primarily working with e commerce and Shopify store owners, if someone comes to me and they want local SEO being done for a you know for a local business, I’m probably gonna refer them to to another SEO because it’s not really my remit anymore. Like yes, I can take it on. And I do you know, I’ll be honest, there are some clients that I will take on because I’ve had the previous experience working with B2B companies and if I feel that it’s the right fit, then I’ll still work with them. But really you wanna find someone who kind of specialises working with e commerce stores opposed to like, you know, a Google ad agency

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: that’s primarily working with B to B clients and trying to generate leads, you know, it yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, no, that’s a that’s a really good call. And there’s like niches within niches. So even Google Ads for e-commerce, like I typically would only work with businesses that have at least a hundred products plus. So I like I like the retail type, lots of data. but then there’s some Google Ads people that are amazing at like single product stores. They they do really well there too. and they’re completely different strategies. So When people thinking, you can just run this, you can just run that, you you can, but like, there’s there’s just completely different strategies for like different types of businesses. And a service business is completely different strategy to e-com. so yeah, I a hundred percent agree with that too. We’ve already hit we’re we’re already coming up to the the time limit on in this this particular podcast. I I hope we’ve given a people a lot to just consider about when they do look at what’s they’re looking for. it’s so hard. Like the a the top agencies have so many case studies on their website. You know what I find about case studies though? Cause I’ve worked with a lot of clients that have come from agencies with them as a case study. And then I’ll go in and dive into their analytics and you know the case studies, you know, a a thousand and one percent increase on revenue. And I’ll go in there and have a

Charles Travers: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: look and It might have it might have been from the week that they started. They’ve gone from zero to, you know, a couple of thousand dollars in the first week. I’m like, God, these case studies are so misleading. So but yeah, and on your on your checklist of notes, Charles, have we missed anything? Is there anything else that you want to cover on there?

Charles Travers: Let’s have a look.

Jimmy Dalgleish: for the

Charles Travers: no, I think we’ve I think we’ve covered a lot there, Jimmy. I think what you just mentioned about yeah, look, it’s it’s always good to see if they’ve got, you know, any case studies or they can give you any ideas and, you know, have a look at the testimonials. But like you said, some of those times they can be, you know, buffed up, they they’re not always accurate, they might not always be the most up-to-date case studies. so kinda take that a little bit with a pinch of salt. I think most people typically will get some I’d like to hope that they get a bit of an intuition in terms of, you know, is this person g or this agency gonna help me? But unfortunately, you know, there’s been a lot of brands that have been burnt in the past. So it’s difficult. It’s difficult.

Jimmy Dalgleish: And and one other thing too, on on those case studies, even if they are legitimate and they got really good results, it doesn’t mean that the person that worked on that account for that case study is gonna be working on your account. that’s another it’s another thing with the agencies.

Charles Travers: Yeah and the market’s different.

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: Like e every market’s different. you know, when cli you know, when I’m speaking to prospects and they’re saying, Well, you know, y I see you’ve got results for this client, you know, how long’s it gonna take for us? And I’m like, you know,

Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.

Charles Travers: how long’s a piece of string? Like there’s no you can’t the the strategy c will be similar, but the market is different and you know, how quickly can we execute? Is there gonna be any roadblocks? You know, every s every situation’s different. All I can promise as a freelancer is you know, a commitment to to getting results and making it work long term and and can you know, if the strategy for whatever reason is not working, then we will we’ll you know, we’ll make sure that we we we change it and we tailor it and we’ll and we try and start to see some results. You know, we’re gonna I’m gonna be delving into the data and be like, Okay Well what else can we do here? What why isn’t this working? Okay, let’s go down this route instead. and I think If you ha sometimes that oft often doesn’t win clients, you know, to when you’re being honest. you know, but I think enough e-commerce brands have been burnt in the past to realise that the sales spill about, you know, yeah, well we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that, and we’re gonna s you know, you’re gonna see results in, you know, a few months, and we’re gonna transform you transform your business, you know, in a matter of a few weeks. Like, you know. Most of it is just yeah, i is sales talk in it.

Jimmy Dalgleish: I think we’ll yeah, I think we’ll wrap up this chat there ’cause it this will go on for a little while if we keep going. But I think I think

Charles Travers: Yeah.

Jimmy Dalgleish: we can revisit this, but next time we do, we’ll we’ll bring on an agency owner and and have a kind of a back and forth discussion on it. Think that that would be fun. But yeah, curious to know what your guys’ experiences are with freelancers versus agency. So yeah, put a if you’re watching this on YouTube, throw a comment down below and let Let us know what your experiences have been. be very curious to hear. but yeah, hope you have some good takeaways from this. And yeah, if you need some recommendations for different services, then feel free to reach out to myself or Charles and we can we can put you on some reputable people for different things as well. So thanks for tuning in again, guys. You can check us out on Facebook at Shopify Marketing Secrets or e-commerce marketing chunks everywhere else. Take care, guys. We’ll chat to you next week.