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Written by: Emily Brungard
Businesses have been the big winners with the expansion of the freelance economy. Companies searching for experts have more choices than ever, which empowers marketing teams as silos come down and transparency is increasingly in demand. The world is the marketer’s oyster, and an abundance of highly skilled, full-time freelancers makes it easier for you to achieve your marketing objectives.
Freelancers have also impacted your company’s bottom line for the better. The freedom to hire experts to perform tasks without having to commit to a full-time salary has transformed the way marketers work. Thanks to technology, your marketing team has the power to access and engage professionals with extensive experience in a variety of skills at the touch of a button.
There are more benefits to hiring freelancers than we can count, but we’ve narrowed down five reasons to consider freelancers to get the most bang for your budget.
Freelancers save you money
Torchlite’s marketing team has saved more than $250,000 over the last year by leveraging our own business model. By harnessing the power of the Torchlite Marketplace , we throttle our marketing team when and where we need it, allowing us to create the output of a larger organization with more resources.
Onboarding an employee costs, on average, $4,000 and takes between three and four weeks. Who has that kind of time? When you factor in recruiting, paperwork, administrative time, and the time it takes for your new hire to reach peak productivity, you might ask yourself if it’s all worth it.
Freelancers can be productive immediately, and they’re only paid when you need specific work done. There’s no need to hire a full-time web developer, for example, if you only need occasional work done on your website. Companies that use freelancers also save on benefits like insurance, retirement contributions and PTO—freelancers aren’t employees, after all. This saves companies an average of $4,708 per employee per year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. If a company can hire ten freelancers instead of ten employees, that adds up to $47,000 in annual savings on healthcare alone (that means an entire additional employee!).
Freelancers are experts
Marketers say they spend only 44 percent of their day performing their primary job duty—more than half of the time marketers spend at work isn’t even spent doing what they were hired to do!
With freelancers, your workers come highly specialized and fully trained. Businesses have a wider talent pool than when they search for employees , and since freelancers charge by the hour or project, businesses can often afford a higher level of expertise than they could with salaried workers. They’re not putting professional development on hold, either: 55 percent of freelancers participated in skill-related education in the last six months versus only 30 percent of non-freelancers.
Freelancers provide flexibility
Companies with fluctuating workloads can reap the benefits of the gig economy by hiring a freelancer for a specific project, knowing that the worker will be gone when the job is finished. This eliminates the expenses and potential legal trouble that come with firings and layoffs.
With a workforce that increasingly demands flexibility, and companies whose needs may change frequently, freelancers are a no-brainer. By hiring freelancers, your business escapes the commitment that comes with salaried workers. You can work with an expert on one project or on longer terms depending on your needs.
Freelance work is merit-based
Freelancers are incentivized to provide their top work every time because they are typically hired on a per-project basis. If a freelancer is being well paid, you know you’re more likely to get a great result. On the flip side, if a freelancer sends in low-quality work, they simply won’t be hired for another project.
Freelancers are paid based on the work and results they produce, unlike salaried employees. They don’t have the benefit of a time clock-punching mentality, since they’re often paid for accomplishing a set goal, and freelancers know that they need to meet your company’s objectives in order to be considered for another project.
Freelancers do more in less time
Let’s play a game. Would you rather:
Try to remember the Design 101 class you took your freshman year of college that taught you which Adobe design program was the best for manipulating text, or…
Hire an expert graphic designer to get it all done in less time than it takes you to open InDesign?
If you’re anything like us, you’d choose the second option in a heartbeat. Why waste time designing collateral when your time could be spent strategizing your next marketing campaign ? The gig economy is more than just graphic designers, though. It’s comprised of approximately 162 million people in the U.S. and Europe, with 15 percent of those workers using a digital marketplace to source and complete work.
Related: 5 Marketing Conferences to Attend in the 2nd Half of 2018
Turn your two hour project into a 10 minute one with Torchlite.
Take yourself out of the maker’s seat and slide into the reviewer’s seat, quickly assigning tasks to a digital marketing expert, tracking progress, and getting more done.