In-house, Freelance, or Agency? Which Option Is Best for Your Content Marketing Strategy?
Marketers do a lot. From planning campaigns to promoting events and writing briefs, it’s all in a day’s work. Somewhere amongst all of the high-priority tasks, you need to produce high-quality content that connects with your target audience.
If you’ve wondered how you’re supposed to do it all and do it well, you’re not alone. Some marketers choose to expand their team with new hires, while others partner with an agency. Others still work with freelancers or employ a blended approach.
Below, we’ll show you how to succeed with your content goals without burning out. Find out how to determine which approach best fits where your marketing department is now and where it’s headed.
Why Content Resourcing Matters
Whether you’re working solo or with a small team, you’ve likely discovered by now that you can’t do it all on your own. You need help, but exactly what kind of help makes a big difference. The right content resourcing approach will help you achieve greater output, efficiency, and some breathing room to best focus your efforts.
Below, you’ll find the three most common content resourcing approaches for small teams (plus, a bonus option). We’ll describe their pros, cons, and scenarios in which they work best to help you determine the ideal option for you.
Option 1: Hiring In-House
The first option, hiring in-house, is probably the one you’re most familiar with. This looks like bringing on a full or part-time employee to manage or create content internally. Titles vary based on what you’re looking for, but you could be bringing on a content writer, manager, or marketer to support your efforts.
Here’s what hiring in-house could look like. Say you’re a marketing director at a high-growth B2B firm. You’re wearing multiple hats from campaign planning to event marketing, but you've reached your capacity to create and syndicate content. The problem? You need regular content to support product launches and upcoming events. So, you decide to hire a full-time content marketer who can take on content creation and publication. It’s a bit of a stretch budget-wise, but it’s your most direct path to scalability and results.
Ultimately, this option is best for organizations with long-term, regular content needs who have the budget to invest in an additional employee. Let’s take a look at other pros and cons to consider
Pros:
Dedicated employee who can fully immerse in your brand, voice, operations, and team
Direct alignment with other departments such as sales, product, and leadership.
Ability to own multiple content areas and strategy if hired with the necessary skillset.
Cons:
Greater overhead (e.g., salary, benefits) than other options
Often time-consuming to recruit, hire, and onboard
Could have limited flexibility if your content needs decrease/fluctuate.
Option 2: Freelance and Contract Talent
Next up, we have freelance and contract talent. This option involves working with independent professionals such as writers, editors, and content marketers on a project or hourly basis. You may choose to work with one or multiple contractors to meet your needs.
As an example, let’s say you’re a marketing team of one at a SaaS company. You’re skilled at messaging and strategy, but don’t have the bandwidth to create multiple thought leadership articles and case studies. You want to invest your team in the most mission-critical operations. You decide to bring on a freelance writer with experience in the industry for 20 hours a week on retainer. You put together the topics, briefs, and content calendar. The writer takes on the interviewing of subject matter experts and customers as well as the content creation. This option gives you more time to focus on maximizing your efforts, and you’re still nailing your content creation goals.
As you can see, freelance and contract talent works well for smaller teams that need to fill skills gaps without investing in a full-time employee.
If you think this option is right for you, consider these additional pros and cons:
Pros:
Flexible and scalable as you can add or pause support as needed
Direct access to specialized skills without long-term commitment
Generally less costly than hiring full-time
Cons:
Time investment to find, vet, and manage freelancers or contractors
Responsibility for strategy, planning, and oversight
Could experience lapses in brand voice and quality
(Working on your marketing strategy? Find out how to supercharge it through automation.)
Option 3: Content Marketing Agency
To meet content production and management needs, many marketers often work directly with content marketing agencies. These agencies serve as a full-service partner that can provide content creation, strategy, management, etc. Some agencies focus on content alone or also offer SEO, social media, and design services. Depending on the available talent, you may be able to hire writers with industry experience.
Say, for example, you’re the vice president of marketing for a professional services firm. You’re running multiple campaigns for multiple personas and could use some help building out a content strategy to target each of them for each phase of the funnel. You decide to partner with a content marketing agency that can provide content strategy, creation, and publication. The agency handles brief creation, writing, and revisions. With this time back, you can dedicate more resources to sales alignment and marketing performance.
This option works well in the scenario described above, as the ultimate needs are to handle multiple aspects of content marketing.
Here’s what else to consider as far as pros and cons for hiring a content marketing agency:
Pros:
Plug-and-play team that can get up to speed quickly
Strategy, management execution in one place
Less management overhead compared to multiple freelancers
Generally less expensive than a full-time employee
Cons:
Could be more expensive than a freelancer
Must invest time to onboard and align on messaging
Option 4: The Hybrid Approach
Of course, you could also combine these options for a hybrid approach. This could look like hiring a full-time content marketing strategist, but outsourcing content creation to a freelance writer. Or you might bring on a content marketing agency to handle strategy and creation, and outsource publication and design to a freelancer. These options can be mixed and matched depending on your needs.
This approach generally works best when:
Your content needs vary from month to month.
You want more control over the budget.
You’re gradually building toward hiring full-time.
Take care to define roles carefully. Everyone should understand who owns strategy, who owns creation, and who owns publication to ensure alignment.
(Make your strategy sparkle with these gems of marketing wisdom.)
How to Choose What’s Right for You
To help you decide which option best suits your goals, ask yourself the following:
Do I need more help with strategy or execution? If you know exactly what content you need but don’t have the bandwidth, lean on a freelancer or agency to help with execution. If you need more support with strategy, you’d do better with a content marketing agency or employee.
Do I have the budget and workload to support an employee? If you only need support with a few assets per month, a freelancer or agency is a better option than an employee. But if content demand is steady and you have the budget, an in-house hire might pay off.
Do I have the time to manage freelancers, or do I need a turnkey solution? Managing freelancers requires greater coordination. An agency may be able to offer services that require less investment of your time.
Is my budget better suited for a short or long-term investment? Contractors and freelancers are ideal for shorter-term projects. Agencies or internal hires work better when you need ongoing or longer-term support.
What’s my growth plan? If you're ramping up campaigns, launching new products, or expanding into new markets, you’ll likely need scalable help fast. That’s where an agency or internal hire can really maximize your efforts.
Final Thoughts for Small (but Mighty) Marketing Teams
With the right structure in place, content marketing can be one of your most powerful growth engines. Solo marketers and small teams often feel pressure to do it all. But the truth is, bringing on additional support — whether that’s an additional hire, contractor, or content marketing agency — can help you get the greatest return on your investment. The best approach is the one that allows you to achieve your departmental goals and frees you up to prioritize activities that are going to move the needle.
You may even find that the “right approach” varies over time. One quarter, you’re humming along fine with a freelancer, but as things grow, you decide to partner with a content marketing agency to broaden your efforts. No matter which approach you land on, be sure to fine-tune efforts as your goals shift and evolve.
At Comma, we partner with smart marketers to save time and hit ambitious content goals. From strategy to execution, our seasoned writers and editors help you get more done and get better results. Book your free 20-minute consultation to determine if Comma is right for you.
