Which one should you choose? Marketing freelancer vs marketing agency.

Weighing the pros and cons of four types of contractual marketers: General freelancer, platform specialist, Fractional CMO, marketing agency.

🎙️Listen to the podcast episode on Savvy Startup Marketer.

It’s very common for entrepreneurs to want to outsource marketing as one of the very first things. Between content creation, post publishing, copy editing, email composing and so-on, the sheer volume of work can become a time-sucking black hole.

As a small marketing agency owner based in Charlotte, North Carolina, I am in conversation after conversation with small business owners who would love nothing more than to hand off some marketing, and usually their question isn’t “should I?” as much as it is “but to who?”

I get it – choosing the right type of marketer for your business is more confusing than ever.

These days, the “marketer” label covers social media managers, SEO specialists, brand developers, paid ads strategists, video producers, and more. Once you narrow down the type of job, you then have to figure out the type of hire: Freelancer? Agency? Project-based? Contract?

I want to help us get out of the mindset that we have to default to some of the older, more traditional types of marketing hiring.

Here is the lay of the land, broken down by type, with honest pros and cons for each.

1. The Short-Term Freelancer (Your Per-Project Solution)

This is a professional you hire for a very specific, one-off task.

Think: writing your website copy, setting up a single email platform, or designing a specific one-page launch asset. This is often how many successful agencies (including mine!) start out.

I still remember my own side-hustle days of email campaigns, website building and brand messaging mapping. Here’s what you’re looking at with a per-project marketing freelancer.

Pros	Cons
Low Commitment: Very non-committal, low-risk way to test the waters.	No Long-Term Ownership: Not the right fit if you want someone to own an entire channel (like social) for a year.
Budget-Friendly: Rates are often lower, especially if they are newer in their experience.	Less Experience: They are often still learning their skill and the business side of supporting a client.
Quick Offload: Fantastic for tasks that have a clear start and end date.	Narrow View: Their focus is on their specific project, not your broad, holistic business needs.

What I will warn about with this type of freelancer is that it’s very tempting to hire the cheapest candidate. Even more tempting to run straight to a site like Fiverr to find any old graphic designer or copywriter. As a pro-local and pro-quality promoter, I beg you to first try and find someone within your own community. Use your own network to put out the ask and don’t hire the person who is overly excited to take on the project and quick to quote you a rock bottom price. You’ll only guarantee inexperience, low quality and possibly a nightmare scenario.

The Bottom Line: Use this option if you know exactly what you need and it has a firm deadline. Make sure your contract includes clear checkpoints for approval and final revisions to lower the risk.

2. The Single Method Manager (The Time Saver)

This type is your long-term, contracted specialist who focuses entirely on one method: a dedicated SEO manager, a social media manager, or an email marketer. You’re hiring them to own that channel for months, if not years.

Pros	Cons
Frees Up Hours: Ideally, this should free up significant time for you every week.	Strategy gap: This is the main pitfall. Most business owners hire this type to offload the task that consumes the most time (hello, social media!) not the task that is generating the most revenue.
Lower Risk: If it doesn’t work out, you can pull them off that one thing without completely derailing your whole marketing ecosystem.	Neglecting ROI: You risk investing in a task that is doing the least for your business simply because you were frustrated by the time it took.
Deep Focus: You get someone laser-focused on one area, which means mastery of that specific skill.	Siloed thinking: They only see their specific platform; they don’t see how that platform is (or isn’t) connecting to your website, email, and sales goals.

The Bottom Line: Only hire a Single Method Manager if you are absolutely confident that the area you’re delegating is already adding to your revenue and truly needs hours put in every week.

I’ve seen this type of professional support work really well for businesses – up to a point. What can easily happen is the business owner outsources someone different for each marketing method and then ends up in a position of having to meet with and manage each of these professionals, costing them just as much time as they had hoped to offload.

This is why it’s best to utilize a single method manager in the early years, then graduate to more of a marketing leader who can begin to own your whole marketing strategy and take on the oversight, accountability and execution completely. This is where the marketing agency and/or fractional CMO leader comes in…

3. The Small/Boutique Agency (The Fractional Leader)

As a full-service business marketing consultant and agency owner in Charlotte, North Carolina, this is where my business fits. A small agency manages multiple types of marketing for your business, offering a customized, flexible plan.

You’re getting a small team and experienced leadership, but with considerable flexibility.

Pros	Cons
Holistic Expertise: The leadership has more experience, providing a wider, better business sense and a truly strategic view.	Cost: Naturally pricier than a less experienced agency or freelancer.
Flexibility & Cost-Efficiency: We operate like an internal marketing team, often for less than the cost of paying the salary plus the extra employment costs of hiring full-time staff.	Full Delegation Required: We can only do our job well if the business owner is ready to fully step away from the marketing process and treat the agency lead like another leader in the business.
Scalable Support: We can flex based on your needs, growing from just a leader and one team member to a fully custom team of three or four.	Not for Everyone: If you still want to do most of your own marketing, this commitment level is probably too much.

Is this option going to cost you more than you can afford? You really don’t know until you ask. I recently had a client state they didn’t think they could afford someone with my experience. But they asked, and were pleasantly surprised when I offered an agreement they felt was reasonable. Oh, and now we’re heading into their 6th straight month of revenue growth, by the way. Totally worth it.

The Bottom Line: A boutique marketing agency is a perfect fit when you are ready to fully delegate, want strategic leadership, and need multiple marketing channels managed seamlessly without the headache of hiring employees.

4. The Large Agency (The Big Campaign)

These are the big players—the agencies with massive teams and the impressive portfolios you envy.

Pros	Cons
Exceptional Output: Their quality is often outstanding for big projects like full website builds or massive, multi-channel campaigns.	High Price Tag: Only justifiable for companies with substantial, secure revenue.
Ready Team: They have a deep bench of experienced professionals ready to execute large-scale, full-throttle marketing campaigns immediately.	Less Flexible: Their processes and contracts tend to be less nimble and flexible than a smaller operation.

The Bottom Line: If you’re a multi-million dollar company looking for a massive campaign or a full rebrand, and your budget is fully sorted, a large agency can deliver exceptional, impressive results.

Your Goal Should Be to Outgrow

Here’s my final hot take: Even as a small agency owner, my hope for every smaller client is that after a couple of years, I am helping them grow to the level of being able to hire internally—to actually hire employees for their own team.

In fact, my hope is that you work through each phase of your business, hiring what fits best at the time, and then continuing to grow toward full-time marketing employees.

While an agency is perfect for strategic, efficient growth, a company that has reached a certain size needs someone day-to-day, in the inner workings of their industry. I am never threatened by that growth; I want businesses to grow to that level.

So, whether your next step is a $500 project or a full-service partnership, I hope you approach your hiring decision strategically. Don’t hire out of frustration—hire for growth.

Listen to my full podcast episode on this topic here.