You've decided you're not going to write your own content. Smart. That decision probably took longer than it should have, but you're here now.
Next question: do you hire a freelancer and manage them yourself, or use a done-for-you service that handles everything?
Both can work. But they're different in ways that matter, especially if your entire reason for outsourcing is to get marketing off your plate.
In this article:
1. The Core Difference
2. Cost: What You'll Actually Pay Freelancers
3. Cost: What You Pay An Agency
4. Time & Quality: What You'll Actually Spend & Get
5. Reliability: What Actually Happens Over Time
6. When Freelancers Make Sense
7. When An Agency Makes Sense
Freelancer:You find a writer, tell them what to make, review their drafts, give feedback, manage the relationship. You're the project manager. They're the execution.
Agency:A team plans your marketing and delivers it finished and ready to publish. You review, request revisions if needed, and post. At Brooks Advertising, our In-House Marketing service works this way: onboarding is a single form, and each month's work arrives as one batch on the 1st.
Rates are all over the map.
Social posts:$25–50 per post at the low end (often writers just starting out), $75–150 for experienced generalists, and $150–300+ for ghostwriters who really capture your voice.
Blog posts:$150–300 in the mid range, and $400–600+ for specialists who deliver polished drafts.
Most businesses need more than writing, though. Social graphics need a designer. Emails need someone who knows how to write them. Someone needs to build your lead funnel. Someone needs to plan what goes out and when.
Each one can mean a separate hire, invoice, and relationship. That's before your time managing them, which has a cost too, even if you never bill for it.
Agency pricing depends on the scope of the project. Some agencies take on large custom engagements, while others offer flat monthly plans for ongoing marketing. Brooks Advertising's In-House Marketing plans start at $1,200/month, month-to-month, with no contract.
You're paying for planning, writing, and design from experienced marketing specialists. All of it is coordinated so your social, email, and content all work together, plus the management you'd otherwise do yourself.
It's also far less than the salary, payroll, and benefits of your first marketing hire.
Finding one: Reading portfolios, reviewing samples, maybe running a test project. 5-20 hours upfront, depending on how picky you are and how quickly you find someone good.
Briefing: Each batch needs direction. Topics, angles, audience, goals. 30-60 minutes per batch, more if your writer needs a lot of context.
Reviewing and revising: Reading drafts, catching what's off, sending notes, reviewing again. 1-3 hours per batch, depending on how close they get on the first pass.
Managing the relationship: Check-ins, payments, scheduling, dealing with their life events that affect availability. Ongoing low-grade friction.
Replacing them: Freelancers move on, get too busy, or burn out. When it happens—and it will eventually—you restart the finding process.
Conservative estimate: 4-8 hours monthly managing a freelancer, plus significant time upfront to find one.
Intake: A one-time form. Your business, your audience, your voice. Usually 30-60 minutes total.
Monthly review: Content lands. You scan it, make tweaks if needed, schedule it. 30-60 minutes monthly. That's the entire list.
1 hour upfront, then 30-60 minutes per month.
Bottom line: Freelancers require ongoing management that never fully goes away. A good agency front-loads the effort into intake and minimizes everything after.
Customization. You can direct every piece individually.
Voice matching. A good ghostwriter, given enough time, can sound almost exactly like you.
Flexibility. Need something different this month? Just brief them.
Variability. Quality is entirely dependent on who you found. Bad hires are expensive in time and frustration.
Reliability. People get sick, get busy, take other clients. Your content schedule becomes dependent on their life.
Your Editing Burden. Less experienced writers mean more rewriting from you.
No Big Picture. A freelancer delivers pieces, but no one connects your social, email, and content to one plan.
Consistency. Work is planned ahead, so there's never a gap in your presence.
No single point of failure. If one writer is unavailable, another steps in. Your schedule doesn't break.
Process discipline. Skilled experts who have refined their operations over hundreds of clients.
Bundled strategy. A content calendar maps every post to a date, platform, and purpose.
Defined Scope. Monthly plans cover a set amount of work, not unlimited custom requests.
A Set Process. You shape the work through revisions, if they are needed. Instead of working from scratch.
This is where agency services tend to pull ahead, especially for people who outsourced specifically to stop thinking about marketing.
Freelancer Reliability Issues
Your freelancer can:
• Get a better-paying client and deprioritize you
• Have a personal crisis that blows up their availability
• Burn out on the work, go quiet, or move on to something else
When any of these happen, you're restarting the onboarding process. Meanwhile, your marketing sits idle.
Agency Reliability
• Content shows up on the scheduled date regardless of any one person's availability
• You're buying into a system, not depending on one person's circumstances
• Onboarding happens once, not every time someone leaves
• Quality stays consistent because processes are documented
Bottom line:If reliable marketing is the entire point (and it probably is), Brooks Advertising's In-House Marketing service reduces the risk of disruption.
Hire a freelancer if:
You want deep customization and don't mind investing time in briefing and review
You've found someone exceptional and want to build a long-term partnership
Budget is tight and you'd rather pay per piece than subscribe
You enjoy collaborating on content and don't see it as a burden
You have the bandwidth to manage another working relationship
The ideal freelancer scenario: you find a great writer, invest in training them on your voice, and they become a trusted partner for years. It can absolutely work. But it requires real upfront effort and ongoing management.
Use an agency when:
You want marketing solved you've outgrown doing it yourself and it keeps slipping
You're thinking about hiring but you're not sure if you want to take on the salary and management
You need social, email, and content working together, not just a few pieces
You've tried managing freelancers and found the overhead frustrating
You want predictable costs without per-piece variability
With In-House Marketing you complete intake once, content arrives monthly, and you spend almost no time on it. You're buying consistency and freedom from management.
Freelancers work if you find a good one and have time to manage them.
Agency services work if you want marketing solved without you running the project yourself. Neither is universally better. The right choice depends on your bandwidth, your need for customization, and how much management overhead you're willing to absorb.
For most business owners who are already stretched thin, who outsourced specifically because they couldn't sustain DIY—An agency gives you more leverage with less friction.
What matters most is that your marketing actually happens. Pick the path you'll actually stick with.
More on this:
Should You Outsource Your Content?
Why Small Businesses Struggle with Content Marketing
How to Stay Visible on LinkedIn Without Burning Out
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