“A world of difference.” It’s more than a tagline. It’s our very reason for doing business, and the reason why we’re the smartest choice for your creative and marketing needs. There are great benefits to outsourcing your marketing department; let’s break down the reasons why.
We’ll start by comparing a brick and mortar creative firm against freelance designers and programmers. And for good measure, we’ll throw “crowd sourcing” into the mix. And then let’s compare them all to Saturn Creative. We truly are the best of all possible worlds.
Level of benefit • low •• mid-level ••• high
Only Saturn Creative gets high marks for all of these possible benefits.
First, let’s define our terms:
A brick and mortar creative or marketing agency is one that exists in a building with offices. They employ a full-time staff, who usually get health and other benefits.
Freelancers are usually a sole proprietorship, with no employees. They generally have no formal offices.
Crowd sourcing is a relatively new term. The internet has opened up the world for outsourcing design and programming needs. Usually inexpensive, but rarely can you expect art direction or project management.
The best of all worlds. Let’s review the benefits of outsourcing your creative and marketing needs to a virtual agency like Saturn Creative:
Saturn Creative is a virtual company, sometimes called a remote company. Now, for many people, the term “virtual company” sounds intangible. However, there are many well-known companies that primarily use remote workers such as Basecamp, Citrix, FlexJobs, GitHub, Mozilla, Ozark, and Upworthy, as mentioned in this article from Forbes. FlexJobs estimates that telecommuting in the United States has grown 103% over the last decade and projects that 50% of people will work remotely by 2020. The fact that there we have no formal offices simply means that we can do more for less, saving you money.
In-house marketing departments can have huge overhead costs, including office space, training costs, health benefits for all employees, workers comp, and more. The same is true of brick and mortar creative agencies. Freelancers mitigate these costs by working out of a home office or sharing office space, and they hire independent contractors when needed. A designer may bring in a programmer on a web project, for example. Crowd sourcing is generally the lowest priced option, but it offers little in the way of art direction, project management, or accountability.
Saturn Creative can offer a lower cost solution without losing any of the benefits of a brick and mortar creative agency.
A brick and mortar creative agency can have 2 to 20 designers, as well as programmers and content creators. Crowd sourcing offers an enormous talent pool, but with no art direction… you get what you get. Freelancers generally offer no diversity of talent.
Saturn Creative has a very large pool of talent to diversify the work and offers a large variety of services, all with excellent art direction and project management. We can utilize talent from anywhere.
A creative agency will usually have a core group of designers that are highly qualified. Whereas some freelancers are extremely talented, there are many that are not capable of art directing themselves, managing a project properly or completing a job to satisfaction (if at all). Crowd sourcing a job means you’ll never meet your designer, you never know what you’re going to get, and you generally pay in advance.
Saturn Creative has vetted its talent base, through professional relationships and personal connection.
Simply put, if a creative agency – or your in-house marketing department – loses an employee, they often need time to rehire and retrain, slowing down production. A freelancer may never complete the work if tragedy strikes. Crowd sourcing projects are usually finite, like a logo design, and as such don’t suffer from such concerns.
Saturn Creative can pull another talent from its diverse pool and production stays on schedule, even on large and complicated projects.
Good agencies generally excel at project management. Some freelancers are skilled in this process, some are not, but regardless, the more successful they become the harder it is to manage all projects. And with crowd sourcing, the client has to manage their own project.
At Saturn Creative, there is always a stable core of project management, regardless of how many projects there are or talents involved. Our online project architecture is second to none. We can even give our clients access to our online project time-line with Basecamp (another remote company), allowing them to “check in”, observe project milestones, deliver digital files, and more.
The benefits of art direction are reflected in the paragraph above, with creative agencies generally excelling, freelancers being moderate, and again, the client needs to art direct their own projects.
Saturn Creative has a Creative Director with many years of experience, who can rely on the diverse talent pool to offer up exceptional work, which in turn will be molded to the client’s needs.
Generally, only a creative agency can offer a wide range of services. Most freelancers, as where perhaps talented, generally only excel at a handful of disciplines. Crowd sourcing offers no variety, as you reach a completely different talent pool for every service you seek; there is no consistent relationship.
Saturn Creative has a diverse talent pool with a myriad of skill sets, from content creation to video production to traditional design to on-going marketing services.
We have everything you need, all under one virtual roof.
