Why Brands (Big and Small) Are Flocking to Marketing Consultants. Hint: It’s More Than Just the Money

The downside of having an Advertising or Marketing agency, even a high performing one, has been covered endlessly. Companies hire agencies for convenience and speed of acquiring expertise – paying huge fees in the process. But it all begins with that brand lacking either access or resources to pursue and acquire great talent for themselves.

That’s changing, fast. Brands, small businesses and startups are realizing that freelance marketers are a short and long term solution. More marketers than ever want the freedom and earning power of freelance work as well as platforms like MarketerHire that make it easy for them to do so.

The irony is that Marketing agencies have known this forever. Agencies rely on freelance talent to quickly avoid overhead with an ever-changing clientbase and to adapt their team’s expertise to each client. It’s common for an agency to win a client after bringing in subject-matter expert freelancers as ringers, and then staff it with completely different people (and more freelancers) once the engagement begins.

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Now, brands are getting in on the action with consultants. Why?

Reason #1 – Consultants are adaptable.

In any organization, Marketing has to move the fastest, be the most agile and stay at the front lines. Digital Marketing is constantly transforming the way Marketing is conducted, and companies must match that speed. Consultants are nimble and provide a path to instantly change a brand’s mix of expertise. They offer something in between the expense of agencies and the burden of pursuing and retaining full-time hires.

You can get the right amount of the right marketer, which is priceless in today’s digital-driven Marketing world, changes by the day. Consultants are proven experts in exactly what you need and can start immediately with minimal commitment if it doesn’t work out.

Reason #2 – They are the best in their fields.

The best marketers often don’t work at agencies or even in-house at brands, they freelance or start their own small shop and instantly earn multiples of their previous earnings. Working for someone else creates ceilings on their earning potential, how they work, where they work – freelancing sets them, well, free. It’s no wonder the best talent in all categories is flocking to freelance work.

Reason #3 – The ROI is crystal clear.

Recently a MarketerHire client (The Chivery, a leading men’s e-commerce site) replaced two brand name agencies with a full team of expert freelancers. Not only did they save a lot of money on agency fees, they saw their highest growth rate in several years. The whole switch took just a couple of weeks and the change in ROI was easy to quantify.

Reason #4 – Hiring marketers is hard.

According to DigiDay, hiring good talent is the #1 struggle for bringing media buying in-house. 85% of agencies claimed they found hiring good talent difficult, and 83% of marketers feeling the same way, according to AdWeek. Marketers can be very good at selling themselves making it difficult for brands to figure out how to sift through real talent and personalities to find the right match for their organization.

Reason #5 – Brands can scale quicker.

It’s tough to scale Marketing professionals quickly, and with Marketing budgets typically the most volatile in any organization it can be difficult to add and subtract quality Marketing professionals quickly. The problem is compounded as platforms change, algorithms get tweaked, or ad creative gets saturated. Scaling a Marketing team for a brand is not just going deeper, but also wider, and that requires the company to constantly adjust its talent mix to support growth.

The good news is that companies are catching up and recognizing the value of remote and freelance work, realizing that Digital Marketing is changing far faster than their static teams can keep up with. Remote and freelance work can lead to “astonishing” productivity. A two-year study by Stanford University found that there was an increase in work productivity among people who worked from home. The study of 500 people who worked both remotely and in a traditional setting concluded that the productivity among home-based workers was equal to a full day’s work each week. Platforms like MarketerHire are crucial to facilitating this shift, as it provides direct on-demand access to freelance talent that saves companies the headache of sourcing themselves.

Ultimately the media world in general is going in this direction. Influencers have replaced major media outlets, YouTube has replaced television and celebrities are now anchoring billion-dollar businesses. The rise of the amazing individuals connecting directly with their customers is not going to slow down and in marketing. In Marketing, that means brands are directly hiring the best consultants who they know deliver the best work – not a brand name agency.

Ultimately, freelancers provide a brand with agility, on-demand expertise and cost savings as long as they open themselves up to modern workflows. More brands than ever are finding that a no-brainer tradeoff.

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