The Rise of the Self-Marketing Agency

Newsflash – unless you’re a superhero, you probably can’t do it all. While possessing all of the skills, all of the time to be a successful marketer might seem far-fetched, it’s certainly easier in the rise of the gig economy to recruit others to help you to enhance your own self-marketing power. We have come to a time when companies can start to build their own internal agencies and the smaller companies alongside X-preneurs (made this word up) have access to global talent to create theirs too.

Don’t get me wrong, this will never replace the big agencies and a lot of specialty niche marketing consultancies. But the idea that you have to hire one of these companies in order to succeed has passed. The convergence of online tools helps us to automate so much more of what we used to provide for clients. I’m sure you’ll have come across freelance creators, who have commodified their services and made it possible to easily create components of your marketing strategy for you, like graphics, websites, blog content, and videos.

The convergence of online tools helps us to automate so much more of what we used to provide for clients. I’m sure you’ll have come across freelance creators, who have commodified their services and made it possible to easily create components of your marketing strategy for you, like graphics, websites, blog content, and videos.

In the agency world, we’re always on the cusp of the next big thing and trying to anticipate what fresh innovations are on the horizon. We become masters of this, so we’re able to continue to create value and sell.

Now you can find other masters to help your brand and it’s this collaboration that fuels the acceleration of the self-marketing agency model. The agency world is changing, and fast.

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Freedom to hire ad-hoc based on skillsets

There are vast opportunities to access anyone, from any country around the world and tap into the bountiful ecosystem of skillsets and on-demand assistance. Most of the time, this pool of expertise for self-marketing can be accessed in a much more cost-effective way than hiring new employees on a long-term basis and through a formal process.

Need a UX expert, a skilled content creator or a graphic designer? You might only need to commission a small piece of work, but being able to get in contact with people who can provide ad-hoc services takes away the effort and hassle of having to go through more traditional methods.

Anyone can have access to graphics programs like Canva and Wordswag and website builders like Wix, WordPress, or Squarespace. Videos can be created with resources like Fiverr, animation with Spark and Adobe for vignettes.

If you’re looking to take on a new client that needs you to do something beyond your skillset, you don’t necessarily have to turn them down and decline their project. You can work with freelance creatives and achieve results. You can expand your capacities as a marketer by expanding your circle of freelancers and outsourcing.

Increased productivity by outsourcing what you truly don’t want to do

Everyone has their own specific strengths and weaknesses, so what’s the point in taking the whole day to get a task done that could take someone else a couple of hours? Outsourcing doesn’t have to be because you have a lack of skill either, you might just absolutely hate having to do something and it bores you to tears. And that’s fine. There’ll be a freelancer out there who thinks the opposite, so why not ask them to help?

This leaves you with much more time to build your business and market yourself in other ways. Time is the most important resource that you have, so outsourcing eases the burden on your time and frees you up to make more sales and generate more leads whilst a freelancer is simultaneously creating more value for your brand.

Agencies have always been better at building the right strategy around a creative project, but that’s changing over time. We can now start to hire for strategy or support. The community and on-demand resources for high-level thinking are also becoming a commodity.

Tapping into the crowd

Collaboration fosters creativity and a community is always more creative and idea-rich together. You can increase your learning on who and why and then hire someone for the how. With new developments being made all the time and the rapidly evolving digital sphere continuing to grow, tapping into the crowd can help you to stay ahead of the competition and give you an edge.

Refresh and reinvigorate your efforts with new, experimental collaborators that can keep your brand on its toes. Hiring innovative perspectives and freelancers with different backgrounds and experiences makes your ideas more robust.

Turning on a dime

Media and social channels are swiftly changing and we can’t keep up or be expected to understand and master all of them. Hiring out can become your own competitive advantage. For example, the power of Instagram and Snapchat are being constantly boosted and new generations are growing up on these platforms and becoming creators themselves.

Turning to influencers or experts on these platforms can help you to tap into revenue and resources that you don’t have the strategy to capitalize on and don’t have access to. A small investment in a consultant, coach or communities can have a big payback because they’re widening your reach. You don’t have to have a traditional, bricks-and-mortar framework to hire expertise.

More creativity outside the box

Creativity is no longer bound to the idea of just one person. Thankfully, we can tap into ideas and even design anywhere. The ideas that we come up with can be built on and enhanced with ad-hoc help. More creativity and more creating are always positive movements in the digital marketing sphere – it’s how we strengthen our concepts and create better products and services.

Allowing your ideas to be improved on by others or even constructively criticized means that your creating will be more authentic and resolute when it comes to fruition.

More and more collaboration is the sign of a healthy industry and the outlying freelancers who aren’t affiliated with just one company can breathe new ideas into your brand and help you to outsource a skill set and build your own self marketing-agency.

Final Thoughts

You can flexibly change your collaborators according to what you need, meaning that you can become a self-marketing agency that can adapt to suit the requirements of your particular clients. This gives you the tools to keep up with the demand of social and data that is helping to drive real-time creative decisions and essentially allows you to become an inclusive and expansive one-person agency.