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With freelancers, you can keep your marketing department moving at a high pace – without wearing out your team

By Carsten Bjerregaard, CEO and founder of MarketingCapacity.com

The pace of modern marketing is fast. New channels, new technology and increasing expectations for personalized and effective efforts make it difficult for even large marketing teams to keep up. But what do you do when the calendar is full, the ambitions are high – and your team starts to show signs of overload?

A growing number of companies are finding the answer in a flexible approach to capacity: Freelance specialists who can support, accelerate and inspire without burdening the organization. Or even relieve the organization.

Marketing requires speed – and flexibility

According to Deloitte’s 2023 CMO Survey, it is more important than ever for marketing to be able to respond quickly to market changes. 59% of marketing leaders indicate that flexible capacity is one of their top priorities for delivering faster and more targeted campaigns (Source: Deloitte Global Marketing Trends 2023).

Freelancers offer the opportunity to do just that: Scale up – quickly – without having to recruit, train and permanently hire new employees in an already stressed setup.

Avoid overload – without throttling down

An analysis from McKinsey & Company (2022) highlights that the lack of capacity and surplus in marketing departments is one of the biggest barriers to innovation and impact. Many teams spend up to 60% of their time delivering “business as usual” – and therefore have limited time to develop or rethink their work (Source: McKinsey, “The future of marketing talent”).

Here, freelancers can relieve the burden by solving tasks that require specialized knowledge or execution power – and at the same time free up time for core tasks, strategy and innovation.

More than hands – freelancers also bring new knowledge

When you hire a freelancer, you not only get deliveries – you also get access to updated expertise, new methods and experiences from other industries and companies. According to Harvard Business Review (2023), several leading brands use freelancers as a way to ensure constant learning and external impulses in the organization (Source: HBR, “How Freelancers Are Becoming a Permanent Part of the Workforce”).

This knowledge can be beneficially brought into the team – for example by having freelancers present their approach to colleagues, participate in sparring meetings or co-create solutions in short sprints.

Make the team more resilient – ​​and less stressed

A study from Workday (2023) shows that significantly more employees in marketing experience work-related stress compared to other functions. At the same time, companies with flexible capacity report fewer sick leaves and higher well-being (Source: Workday, “Global Workforce Resilience Report”).

When you use freelancers to absorb peak loads – instead of putting additional pressure on the team – you also send a signal that sustainable performance is more important than constant overtime.

From ad hoc to strategic resource

The use of freelancers should not be firefighting. It should be thought of as an integrated part of the overall marketing capacity. Today, more companies are using platform-based solutions (such as MarketingCapacity.com) to build a curated network of regular freelance partners who know the company and can be onboarded quickly (Source: Forbes, “The Rise of Strategic Freelance Ecosystems”, 2023).

In this way, freelancers become not just a plan B – but an active part of your plan A.

When stress hits, it’s too late – and it’s expensive for all parties

We’ve probably all tried to think that “it’s just about getting through the next campaign”. But many employees work in a constant cross-pressure between short deadlines, high expectations and continuous change – and it’s tiring. According to a study by the Confederation of Danish Industries (2022), stress-related absence is the single biggest cause of long-term sick leave in knowledge-intensive functions such as marketing and communications.

When stress first hits, the damage has usually already spread. This affects both the individual, the team and the business:

  • The employee loses energy, focus and motivation – and risks long-term sick leave
  • The team loses knowledge and continuity
  • Projects are delayed or cancelled
  • It becomes necessary to spend time and money on rehabilitation, recruitment or crisis management
  • And on top of it all: Well-being and culture suffer

An analysis from the Knowledge Center for Working Environment (2023) shows that it costs a company an average of DKK 1 million to replace a stressed specialist after sick leave and termination – including lost productivity and recruitment costs.

Therefore, it is not just a soft value to take into account the well-being of the team – it is hard economic and operational sense. By using freelancers as flexible support during busy periods, you can give your team a break without slowing down the pace. It creates results – and it creates resilience.

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