I’ll be upfront: I’m a freelancer, so you might expect me to say freelancers are better. Fair enough. But I also spent years working in agencies, so I’ve seen how both sides work from the inside. And honestly? For most small and medium businesses, a good freelancer is the better deal.
Here’s why.
You talk to the person doing the work
At most agencies, the person who sells you the service isn’t the person who does the work. You meet a smooth account manager, sign the contract, and your campaigns get handed to someone you’ll never speak to. Sometimes that someone is a junior who started three months ago. Sometimes the work is outsourced overseas.
Then every question you ask goes through a chain: you tell the account manager, the account manager tells the specialist, the specialist answers the account manager, and the account manager translates it back to you. It’s a game of broken telephone, played with your marketing budget.
With a freelancer, there’s no chain. You email me, I answer. You ask why your cost per lead went up, and the person who actually built the campaign tells you why.
No big promises
You know the pitch. “Page one of Google in 30 days.” “We’ll double your leads.” Big logos on the slide deck, big promises on the proposal.
Here’s the thing: nobody can guarantee rankings. Google doesn’t let anyone pay for organic positions, and it changes its algorithm constantly. Anyone who promises you a specific ranking by a specific date is either guessing or planning to rank you for a keyword nobody searches.
I’d rather tell you what’s realistic. Sometimes that’s “SEO will take six to twelve months to pay off in your market.” Sometimes it’s “Google Ads will work, but your budget is too small for the suburbs you want to cover.” Not as exciting as a big promise, but it’s the truth, and you can plan around the truth.
You’re not paying for the office
Agencies have overheads: the office, the sales team, the account managers, the fancy coffee machine, the awards night tickets. All of that gets built into your monthly retainer.
A freelancer’s overheads are a laptop, some software and a lot of coffee. That means more of your money goes into the actual work instead of the layers around it.
No lock-in contracts
Plenty of agencies sign you up for 12 months. If the results aren’t there by month four, too bad. You’re stuck.
I don’t do lock-in contracts. If you stay, it’s because the work is paying off. That keeps me honest, and it means you never feel trapped.
You get experience, not a production line
Agencies are built to scale. That usually means templates: the same campaign structure, the same report and the same blog plan for every client. It’s efficient for them, but your business isn’t the same as the one next door.
A freelancer with a decent track record has usually seen a lot of industries and a lot of accounts. I’ve worked with tradies, miners, schools, ecommerce stores, medical clinics and not-for-profits. I use that experience to build something that fits your business, not to tick boxes.
When an agency makes sense
To be fair, agencies have their place. If you need a full team across TV, social, PR, design and search all at once, or you’re spending serious money every month across many channels, an agency can coordinate all of that.
But if you’re a small or medium business that wants more leads from Google, a specialist who knows SEO and Google Ads inside out and talks to you directly is usually the smarter spend.
What to look for in a freelancer
Not all freelancers are equal either. Before you hire one, check a few things:
- Experience. How long have they been doing it, and have they worked with businesses like yours?
- Transparency. Will you own your Google Ads account, Analytics and website? (You should. Always.)
- Reporting. Do they report on leads and sales, or just clicks and impressions?
- Honesty. Did they tell you anything you didn’t want to hear? That’s usually a good sign.
The bottom line
No middlemen. No big promises. No paying for someone else’s office. Just someone who knows what they’re doing, does the work themselves and tells you how it’s going.
That’s how I work. If it sounds like what you’re after, have a look at my SEO and Google Ads services, or get in touch and I’ll put together a quote.
