Everybody has a dream. Without dreams, there is no reality!
Someone has rightly said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
If you’re reading this, you too have a dream. It’s also safe to assume that you have a digital marketing dream.
Dreams are dreams, be it personal or professional. It hurts a lot when dreams shatter and it hurts more intensely when dreams are shattered due to a decision that we had taken in the past.
A lot of businesses nowadays are taking the approach of hiring freelancers to manage and handle their digital marketing efforts. We will not ponder why these businesses are doing so, but there are more cons than pros to having a freelancer for digital marketing. It is crystal clear and we are saying with a lot of conviction and grit.
We will try to to understand in a simple way as to why engaging freelancers isn’t right and suitable approach to reap the immense benefits of digital marketing.
1. Lack of commitment
Freelancers are self-employed individual professionals. They work for many clients simultaneously and aren’t committed to a particular employer. Due to scattered attention caused by excessive workload, they are unable to concentrate on only one task at a time. Focused commitment is a choice and freelancers are no exception to it. Being committed to you and your business is not the top priority for the freelancers and that’s quite obvious. Had they been committed to their clients, they weren’t in the freelancing business at the first place.
2. No long term relationship
Though Freelancers are connected to the business, they are hardly able to develop a deep relationship with the essence of the business. Their approach to work is assignment dependent and it is convenient for them to continue with the same as long as they are getting paid for it. They are more inclined towards getting more and more assignments, rather than keeping their focus on building relationships with the individual businesses.
Its not Short Term Which Pays in the #DigitalMarketing Rather Long Term Strategic Digital Marketing Plan is the Way Forward for Companies to Consider for Arriving at Expected Results of #BrandAwareness & #Engagement Fetching #ROI to the Organization. https://t.co/XrgyhJ3WvT
— Ascent Brand Communications Pvt. Ltd (@AscentGroupIN) March 13, 2018
3. Myth of Low-cost phenomenon
Most of the entrepreneurs and startups believe in engaging freelancers as a cost cutting measure for business. They themselves either do not have the basic understanding of the digital marketing space or they simply underrate the cutting edge benefits of digital marketing. So, it is just a matter of time that an approach, which was considered as valid, may end up being the most unreliable part of your business. Cost-cutting measures are important but certainly not at the cost of creating negative ripple effects on a business.
4. Low-quality work
It is okay to be a little blunt sometimes. More often than not, the quality of work produced by freelancers is poor. This happens due to a variety of reasons. There is a lack of transparency over the modus operandi of the freelancers. For them, you may be just one of the multiple options to receive money from around the world. A majority of people, who pretend to work as freelancers, are employed full time in an organization. They are lurking in the dark.
5. Trust Factor
Trust is the cornerstone of the success in any business relationship. Without trust, business relationship is doomed for failure. As soon as you engage freelancers, a lot of apprehension often comes into the picture. Freelancers usually do not make any efforts in the direction of generating trust with the business. Their prime focus is to complete the assignment as soon as possible so that they get the remunerations.
6. Communication lacuna
Communication, especially one-on-one communication, is important within the business. It plays a key role in all the aspects of your business. It relates even more strongly for freelancers. Communication gap is a serious concern when it comes to outsourcing business functions to external players.
7. Isolation
By taking the risk of engaging a freelancer, businesses turn a blind eye towards the fact that digital marketing channels do not operate in a vacuum. Freelancers work remotely and it’s not practical for them to manage all marketing channels. Especially when they don’t even have a clue how these channels work.
8. Lack of Team Spirit
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships. When a set of people work together to achieve a common goal, it is called team spirit. Freelancers work independently, act independently. They have no intent whatsoever to pursue a long-term arrangement and agreement with your business. Since they secludedly facilitate your business, they can never become a part of your intrinsic team.
9. Fly-by-night factor
Freelancers by name they are free to move and fly by night as they have nothing concrete investment in the business which keeps them light and free to move anytime irresponsibly. Its been seen they take up the work initially to earn and out of excitement but after some time when responsibilities pile up, they run away or become non-responsive leaving client bewildered with stalled or uncompleted work.
10. Missed deadlines
Freelancers take the assignments in a routine manner without properly understanding the goals and objectives of the business. They start without a prepared plan of action only to stuck in the middle of nowhere. That is the first and foremost reason why freelancers are infamous for missing deadlines. Freelancer with an ability to never miss a deadline is a rare virtue.
11. No control
Last but not least, you will never be able to gain full control of freelancers and their working style. They are freelancers and will remain so. They are comfortable enough in their own skin and they will never allow anyone to barge in their territories. That’s the bottomline!
Digital marketing is too serious a matter to be left to the freelancers. If you care about your business, you should care about your business decisions too. Your decision making is your path to business success.
