For many businesses, it doesn't make sense to hire full-time in-house marketing staff to manage their marketing efforts. Which leaves them with 2 main options:

1. Hiring an agency
2. Hiring individual freelancers

I've been in digital marketing honestly since I was 16 and I'm now 40 years old. I've mostly been a freelancer for the past 15 years, starting as a marketing generalist and over the past 8 years I've been focusing on Google Ad Management specifically. I have worked as a freelance contractor for a few agencies in that time. It's actually really common for agencies to outsource the work to freelancers instead of in-house staff, often for the same reasons you're not hiring an in-house staff; it's more expensive to have employees than it is to hire freelance contractors.

Obviously, it's difficult to give a blanket statement saying you should never hire a marketing agency and you should always just hire individual freelancers. Every agency and freelancer is different and your personal experiences may vary.

With that said, if the agency you end up hiring is just outsourcing the work to freelancers while charging you a premium, what's stopping you from just hiring those freelancer's directly and saving $ while achieving the same or better results? It may seem very time consuming to find freelancers but honestly these days, with sites like Upwork and Fiverr, it's often easier to find talented freelancers than it is to find a quality agency. Upwork does also have agencies on the platform but it's mostly about individual freelancers.

Sure, I'm bias since I myself am a freelancer but I'm just calling it as I see it. If you're looking to outsource your marketing, consider looking for a few freelancers instead of hiring an agency. I think you're much more likely to get better results for less money.

It's also possible to hire a marketing coach to help train you or your existing staff to handle marketing tasks yourself. In fact, at Freak.Marketing we offer 1-on-1 Google Ads Coaching for those who rather take control of their marketing by learning how to do it themselves. It's not rocket science and at the end of the day, it'll probably give you the best results because nobody cares about your business more than you do.