Blog · Choosing help
Done-for-you marketing vs an agency vs a freelancer.
When you are too busy running the business to market it, the options look similar from the outside and very different in practice. Here is how we'd compare them if we weren't selling one of them, and where each is the wrong choice.
A freelancer
A good freelancer is often the best value for one clearly defined job: a website's search setup, a batch of articles, a Google profile cleanup. You get a specialist without the overhead.
The limit is breadth and continuity. One person covers one skill, holidays included, and you become the project manager who joins the pieces together.
An agency
An agency brings a team, process and usually paid advertising. It suits a business that already knows what works, has a budget to scale it, and wants someone else to run the machine.
For a business that just opened, the retainers can be more than the problem needs, and you can end up paying mostly for the account management around the work.
Done-for-you
Done-for-you sits between the two: a defined service run for you, with one point of contact. tellfinch is one of these, built around being found without ads: a search audit first, then posts and replies written for each place, then a monthly report.
It is a poor fit if you want paid ads managed, a full brand and website build, or guaranteed numbers. No honest provider can guarantee traffic or revenue, and you should be wary of any that does.
Questions to ask any of them before you sign
- Whose accounts does the work go out from? They should be yours, with access you can remove. If you can't leave with your own accounts, you are locked in.
- Who actually writes and checks the work? Ask for a named person, and whether anything goes out without your approval.
- What will the report show? A good one has where you started, what moved and what else changed that month, including the parts they can't take credit for.
- What do you not do? A provider that says yes to everything isn't telling you where the edges are.
- How do I stop? Look for a short notice period and no fee to take your accounts back.
Red flags
- Promised rankings or revenue. Nobody controls Google or your customers.
- Bought or written reviews. They put your listing at risk, and in many places they are illegal.
- The same post everywhere. Every platform has its own style. Pasted content reads as spam on all of them.
Want this handled for you?
tellfinch does the posts, replies and search work for new businesses. A person checks every piece, and you approve it before it goes out.