Are Lead Generation Freelancers Better Than Lead Generation Agencies?

In this article we compare pros and cons for Lead Generation Freelancers versus a Lead Generation Company.

How To Decide If You Need Digital Marketing Help?

As a new business, you possibly took care of all the digital marketing yourself. After all, who knows the product better than you? However, now the business is successful, you might find yourself with 1000 other things to do and lead generation starts to take a back seat.

If this is the case, it’s time to outsource some marketing services.

This will take a lot of trust from you and a fair amount of decision making. But handing over your digital marketing will free up your priority time.

So where do you start? Do you choose a freelancer or an agency, and what’s the difference?

Lead Generation Freelancer v Lead Generation Agency

There are literally thousands of results for both options. So how do you choose who is the right match for your business?

Firstly, what is your business niche? Perhaps you could narrow it down to a freelancer or agency who has expertise in your business product or service.

What Is A Freelancer?

A freelancer is an independent person who works for themselves. Obviously for the purposes of this article, you are particularly looking for a marketing freelancer.

You need someone who has had previous experience in marketing as you’re not looking to train someone new. What you need is someone who can hit the ground running, take on your lead generation and provide excellent results.

Generally speaking, freelancers have probably worked or had experience in their particular industry. For example, a marketing freelancer may have been employed by a big company or by a marketing agency before for a period of time. Now they have decided to use their expertise and launch out on their own.

Pros Of A Freelancer

A freelancer is an individual who can dedicate time and personal attention to your project because you are paying for them to do a great job. Excellent work reflects on them as an individual, hence they want to get it right every time.

A freelancer can also be a potential customer for your business. Hence you can also use them to test out different marketing efforts and get a professional marketer’s opinion.

• Wide Experience

Usually, freelancers don’t start out their career on their own. Perhaps they have worked in a few or several marketing businesses in the past. Therefore they have a broad spectrum of experience and can potentially offer you something that a digital agency cannot.

Moreover, you can choose a freelancer with particular experience in your industry or niche. Therefore you know they understand your product and how to market it. Whereas a digital agency may have a team of marketers whose expertise is limited to that particular agency.

• Reputation

As freelancers work on their own, their reputation is king. They will work hard to provide you with an excellent service. Because if the results are poor, this will reflect on their reputation, in the same way as if their results are excellent.

Hence it is in the best interests of the freelance to work to get results as well as possible. Clearly, they want to provide you with good work, so you will then tell others.

• Priority

Generally speaking, freelancers have less projects going on at the same time. Hence they can make your work a priority. With a large amount of work from one client, the freelancer may work on one project at a time. So it’s almost like you have a hand picked marketing professional as a member of your in-house team.

• Flexibility

The flexibility of a freelancer is a big positive point. Marketing doesn’t stop within normal working hours. So if there’s a potential crisis at any point, you can hopefully get a quick response from your freelancer.

It also means they work flexible hours, so you don’t have to rely on the 9-5 structure. This can be beneficial to both parties.

• Salary

A freelancer might offer a per project price which is a lot less than employing a full time in-house salary person. Moreover, because freelancers work on their own time, they can often be more productive. This could be due to less distractions, or breaks.

It’s up to a freelancer how they work and when, as long as they get the project delivered to you on time. However, the initial cost may be a lot higher than if you were to pay for an agency over a period of time.

Cons of Freelancers

• Skillset

Meanwhile, maybe you need someone with a wider range of focused skills. For example, it’s great if your freelancer has experience with SEO, but if you need support with advertising and email marketing as well and they don’t have it, will this cause problems further on?

Then, you might need to look for more than one freelancer. One who is an expert in SEO and one who is an expert in email marketing. This leads to extra expense and can be time consuming dealing with more than one person.

• Remote Working

Generally speaking, freelancers don’t have a contract. The arrangement is made between you and the freelancer. It means that if you are unlucky and don’t get a decent freelancer, then they might start the job and not finish it.

Or they could disappear and not contact you again. Furthermore, if you don’t have a contract, it can make any legal issues ever harder to work through.

• Resources

Obviously a freelancer works alone. Which means they don’t have a wealth of resources to work from. They have to invest in any equipment and training themselves. Perhaps they haven’t done this for a long while. Also there is no team to share ideas with and consider different options.

What Is A Digital Agency?

A digital agency is a larger team of marketing professionals. They have a set of expected targets and goals each year and they are managed by a boss or leadership team. Often they are working on several projects at once.

However, as a team, they can share ideas and bounce off each other to come up with great results.

Pros of Digital Agencies

• Experience

Firstly, you will have access to a group of experienced marketers with a wide range of skills. Therefore you will probably have all your marketing needs covered by this one team. They are all working to make sure your marketing is the best it can be.

• Communication

A digital agency team will have good communication in place. You know where they work, who to call and who you want to speak to personally if there is a problem. Also, there will be routine meetings and check ups on the progress of your work.

An excellent digital agency will do everything they can to ensure you get your investment and more. Their reputation is also affected by the work they do for you.

• More Resources

With a bigger team, there will be more resources to use. A digital agency invests in training, technology and equipment to make sure their team is working at their best. Besides, marketing techniques are forever changing, and it takes time and effort to keep up.

• Timing

With an agency, you can put a clear time line to your project. The team need to deliver on your investment within an agreed time.

Whereas even if a freelancer promises a certain time limit, you never know for sure if they will deliver the project within the time constraints. Perhaps they have set themselves a task that just can’t be delivered.

• Payment Schedule

With an ongoing project, you’ll be able to set a payment schedule with an agency over a period of time. Hence this could be more comfortable for your business than if you were to spend a lot of money quickly on a freelancer.

Cons of Digital Agencies

Meanwhile, you can’t hand pick who you work with. Obviously you can choose which agency you work with, just not the individual members of the team. Generally speaking, the agency will allocate a marketer to your business.

• Accountability

Obviously the reputation of the Agency is affected in the same way. They need to do excellent work for you. However, there is not the same level of accountability with individual marketers. It’s not their priority to provide you with exceptional service.

• Costs and Attention

To an agency, a larger client will provide more money. This client may also be applying more pressure. A smaller client may not be as valuable. Both are equally important in terms of effort. But perhaps the smaller client may get less dedicated time or energy, missing out on attention.

• Working hours

A digital agency marketing team works within normal hours. Therefore they will only be available during normal business hours and even then you could be competing with other projects. You may require more flexibility than this.

• Extra Overheads

Digital agencies generally work out of rented space and hire experts in graphic design and other creative experts to work within their team.

Whereas a freelancer works alone from home or an office that they have to rent themselves. Hence you will find the costs of using a digital agency include a lot of additional aspects you probably hadn’t thought of.

How Do Lead Generation Companies Work?

Lead generation is not easy and requires a lot of work using a wide range of marketing techniques. Therefore you need a team who are experts in attracting and converting potential customers into buying ones.

It’s not all about the number of leads you get, it’s about the quality of the leads. Do these leads already show an interest in your business?

Generally speaking, a lead generation company brings consumer and business information together, so it can then sell on to a business wishing to buy new leads. A lead generation company uses different categories to organise the data collected so it’s relevant to the target market.

Services include database marketing, in-house marketing and databases of professional information. The team will gather leads by building and optimising your business website to attract visitors and obtain useful data.

They can also personalise your business campaigns to reach people and create leads that you probably can’t reach on your own. All this data creates useful leads who are more likely to buy from you, rather than just random ones.

Furthermore, it’s not just left there. A lead generation company will go on to nurture those new leads and use other marketing techniques to get the information you need so they convert to customers.

Moreover, they will use a number of sources to gather information, such as public records, trade references, print, digital and trade publications.

So you can see how using a lead generation company can get you access to many more new leads in a way that you may not have thought of before. Or that you have time to do. This will take a lot of work off your hands if you’ve been doing the lead generation on your own or in-house up until this point.

What Should You Look For In A Lead Generation Company?

If you choose to use a lead generation company, what should you look for?

Lead generation companies help businesses become more efficient by delivering warmed up and qualified leads directly to them. Leads that are ready to go and are waiting to hear from your business.

It’s good to start with a strong lead generation strategy in place, however, you can also get expert advice here. Ideally, you need someone who can understand your business quickly and target the right audience.

Here are some questions you can ask the lead generation company:

• Do you have experience in my business industry
• Can I see some reviews and performance data
• Do you respond quickly to customers
• Do you understand the characteristics of my business and product
• How easy is it for me to get hold of you

Finally, do you think you can work with this team for a length of time? It’s important that you feel involved and looked after, and of course, that you will get the results you are paying for.

Why Hire A Company Instead Of Paying For Data?

Of course, you could go down the route of paying for data without using a lead generation company. Thus you may think you are saving money.

However, the data you purchase isn’t necessarily of a high quality. It’s possible that you already have this data anyway, that lead may already be a customer. So you have wasted money on data.

Whereas, a lead generation company will focus on quality leads, those with intent, who are far more likely to become customers. Rather than a quantity of leads.

By partnering with a company that understands and shares the goals, aims and needs of your business, you could really transform the way your business gets new leads.

How Does A Freelancer Work?

If you don’t have the time to focus on lead generation but you want a short term solution, a freelancer with expertise in lead generation may provide you with the answer.

You should look for a freelancer who has specific experience in lead generation and who understands your product. Because you don’t want to spend your valuable time explaining how lead generation works, or the results you need. They should know this.

However, you can spend time explaining your business and building up a rapport with this person so that you feel you can trust them with this service.

If you find a ‘generic’ marketing freelancer, what expertise do they have with lead generation? Is it enough for you or do you need an expert team of people?

What You Should Look For In A Freelancer?

Just like a lead generation company, a good lead generation freelancer will ensure the leads you are getting are qualified. So the amount of leads they give you is less important that the quality of the leads.

Essentially, a qualified lead is ready to choose a supplier or business for their needs. This makes if far more likely that your leads will convert to sales.

Do you think you will get the results you need for your business from this particular freelancer?

Also, can they show you positive data from any previous clients they have supported with lead generation. Can they prove they helped that company to grow?

Conclusion: Lead Genera

In conclusion, are lead generation freelancers better than choosing a digital agency with lead generation expertise?

As you can see from this article, there are pros and cons to each.

However, if you are very serious about growing your business much larger with the peace of mind of having an expert team behind you, then choosing Lead Genera is a great decision.

Firstly, Lead Genera, as you can tell by the name, are experts in this. One of their main services is to provide your company with excellent lead generation. So you’ve already chosen well.

Lead Genera offers quality leads. The team can provide a measurable impact for your business in days, rather than months. Moreover, they view each client as if you are their own business, taking the time to understand you and your product.

Their other services include branding, design and corporate identity, marketing consultancy, search engine optimisation and web development among others. Hence, if you are looking for more support than lead generation, then you can benefit from additional advice and services here.

Furthermore, by choosing Lead Genera over a freelancer, you have several ways to get in contact. Therefore, you should always be able to get hold of a member of the team within business hours.

This can be through a phone call, website, email, or chat bot on the website, where you can talk to a member of the team in real time. Basically, you will be able to get your questions answered as soon as possible. And if you have a technical enquiry about any aspect of the work, you can easily raise a support ticket.

As well as this, you can visit the website at leadgenera.com and see previous work which showcases the wide range of business that Lead Genera have worked with. If you see something here that is like your industry or that you want more information about, feel free to ask the team questions about it.

Would you still like to learn a bit more before you commit? There is a wealth of information to explore in the knowledge hub on the Lead Genera website. Or contact the team to talk through the position your business is currently at. They will be able to provide you with new qualified leads within a few days.