When you reach the point where you need help with the creative, marketing and promotional end of your business, it’s usually a good place to be. It means you’re growing, or have a chance to grow, and you’re savvy enough to make the most of the opportunity.

Here are some considerations that will help you get the most from this critical decision.

If you’re like most businesses (or organizations), you started off simple, with a business image created by your local printer or sign shop – or maybe you were lucky enough to have a friend or family member with some creative ability. Maybe you or someone you hired had enough ability to keep things going with simple ads, flyers, posters and the like.

Now… maybe that person isn’t available any more, or you recognize that you need better materials, a more polished business image, or something they can’t handle, like color ads, a website or product documentation that competes in your field. So it’s time to kick all your “creative” stuff into higher gear. How best to do it?

Ready for more details on those choices? Read on.

Option 1: Hire a Creative Employee

If you’re of a certain size or otherwise have the budget and have a certain level of internal creative needs, you can hire someone to handle these tasks. If you’re lucky, you’ll get someone who knows or can learn your business or industry and can do more than make things at your direction. A sharp creative person on staff can completely transform your marketing, sales and support operations.

The upside: Thirty to forty hours a week is a lot of time for someone to be able to work at your projects and needs. A good employee should be able to handle a mix of crunch, short-term and long-term projects so that urgent needs for the sales staff or sudden advertising opportunities are met, while time can be allotted to web site and catalog development, trade show presentations, and other efforts that need as many man-hours as can be thrown at them. You won’t just be able to do the things you’ve always done, even better – you’ll be able to do more. Sometimes lots more. Sometimes enough “more” that you’re going to have other happy problems managing your growth.

The downside: Hiring a good person for a role like this is tricky and expensive. You don’t want an amateur or someone with minimal training. You don’t want a solely artistic type who can make beautiful pictures but has trouble tying those images to real-world uses like ads, product guides and catalogs. You don’t want a solely creative type who has no practical understanding of what you do and no interest in learning it. You almost certainly don't want a technical specialist who has no ability to create and manage content for your materials. Someone who brings the right creative toolset and the right business/industry/field mindset to the job is going to be a rare find… and an expensive one.

The Do’s & Don’ts

• DO define the position thoroughly before searching for a candidate. You may have to define it in tiers – the things you must have from a new hire, the things you’d like to have, the things you hope the candidate can learn or grow into (perhaps with some paid education) and the wish-list of things you’d love to have if they show up on a resume.
• DON’T run an ad for a vaguely defined position asking for a vague skill set. You won’t attract many quality applicants and you will be deluged with unqualified and uninterested ones.
• DO budget to provide the new employee with a suitable work area and tools. A capable computer and creative software is required. A work area adquate to the task is required.
• DON’T expect to recycle an old computer for the job. Graphics and creative work needs a fairly powerful “workbench” and saddling a new higher with a balky, slow system that won’t run current-generation software will be an exercise in wasted time. Similarly, don’t try to use low-end or out of date software. An old copy of CorelDRAW really isn’t going to cut it. Neither are office-grade tools meant for nonprofessionals – Publisher, Powerpoint, Word, etc. are great tools in their own ways but so many tinkertoys to someone skilled enough to use professional apps.
• DO hire for the specific skill set the job needs.
• DON’T try to hire someone to do this job and all the other “fill in” tasks around the office. We’re forever seeing job ads looking for someone to do creative work, answer phones, make coffee, help the parts staff and walk the dog. You won’t get a good creative person that way, you’ll just get a person looking for a job. It is okay, though, especially in a small office or department, to make it clear that everyone in your employ does whatever needs doing – so prima donnas who want to do their narrow job or nothing are not likely to be hired. But don’t try to hire someone to fill an “octopus” job. No one will be happy with the result.
• DON’T try to define the job, specify the tools and working conditions and sift resumes unless you have substantial background in how the pro or specialist you hire will do things.
• DO call us to help you define the position, how it will fit into your company, what support and tools you’ll need to provide for them and to help you sift applicants and choose the right one. We provide such creative consulting – and our expertise in this area goes far beyond that of any general employment consultant. A few hours of our consulting time can help you get the most from this critical hiring effort.

You’re probably not in a position to add a creative person to your staff, though – most businesses have a tighter budget and lesser needs. So let’s look at two more options.

Option 2: Use a Consultant or Freelancer

We see a hundred ads a month from companies looking for someone to help them complete a creative endeavor. The most common such is to build, rebuild or improve a web site, but there are often calls for assistance with things like online and print advertising, revising a catalog, creating flyers or posters, or any of the other general business creative tasks.

There are individuals and freelancers out there who can and will take on these jobs. From experience on both sides of the equation, though – as the freelancers and as a business that hires individuals to do such projects – we can say that it’s likely to be an expensive exercise in frustration. If a business doesn’t have the expertise to do the job themselves, they’re not likely to have the expertise to hire a truly skilled and reliable contractor, freelancer or temp to do it for them. Any idea that this is a cleverly cheap way around using an professional is likely to go up in smoke with the first substandard result, especially when it comes on blown budget or missed deadline.

The upside: You can hire an individual to do this work, and get a successful result... if you plan on being with them every step of the way.

The downside: The odds are against it, especially if you don't have the skills to define and supervise the project.

The Do’s & Don’ts

• DO have the task fully defined, including desired results, budget and timeline. Understand everything that needs to go into a successful result, including collateral needs like photography or illustration, and additional steps like printing, web hosting and maintenance, and ad placement.
• DON’T assume you can hire someone who will take full charge, work from vague or incomplete instructions, make absolutely correct judgments about your needs and deliver a satisfactory result. You will need to participate in the process and keep them supplied with information, feedback and guidance.
• DO consider Option #3 instead – it helps ensure a successful outcome, and has none of the downsides of hiring a freelancer or individual consultant.

Option 3: Hire a Professional

When you need advertising, marketing or promotional services, or any business creative help, your best choice is the same as any other business need: call a pro. Call someone who can take charge, guide you through the options, keep you from making basic mistakes or wrong turns and deliver exactly what you need… without blowing budgets, deadlines or your temper.

A professional will be there when you call – now, next week and a year from now when you want to continue or add onto a project. A pro won’t have some skills and lack others – everything you and your projects need, they’ll have. A pro has access to professional-grade services like industrial printing, which cuts cost and improves quality over using a retail provider.

A professional provider becomes a partner. With every project, the files and accumulated material grow, making it that much easier (and that much more efficient, and thus that much lower in cost) to do the next project. After a project or two, all of your company information – including details like colors, font choices, and subtle details about your clientele or market – is on tap and waiting to be applied to the next (maybe rush) project, with no lost time or traction re-educating another freelancer on those basics.

A pro works in methodical, standard ways... which means nothing if you never have to worry about how they get jobs done. If you ever have to take projects to another provider, though, it can be maddening to find out that the work was done in quirky, nonstandard ways that another provider can't easily get a handle on. Amateurs and freelancers are often used to working in their own way, never having to coordinate development and changes with another person. Simply getting a usable logo file from the designer for someone else to use can be a complicated, frustrating process if the work wasn't done in a standard way. As professionals, we do work to industry standards. You want your investment in business creative to be as portable and valuable as your office furniture and plant machinery.

The number one reason businesses don’t call a professional like us is because they worry about the cost – all that polish and experience must be expensive. It ain’t necessarily so! Our bottom line on most projects is comparable to most freelancers and part-timers… and it’s often less. For one thing, we handle the entire project, or set of projects, and can thus shave the time and complications of using multiple providers. For another, we can get your project to print, production or online, however it needs to be delivered, for a lower cost than most freelancers who don’t have our industry resources. (What good is it to have a freelancer design a brochure for $200 when you have to have it printed at retail prices… when we can professionally design and commercially print it for substantially less overall?)

The Upside: Fast, professional, high-quality work from a reliable provider with unlimited skills who will be there to back up their work and provide services whenever you need them.

The Downside: None, except when measured against hiring your own in-house pro. Cost is not a downside — let us prove it.

The Do’s & Don’ts

• DO call or email us to find out more before you make a potentially expensive or frustrating mistake. No matter what direction you take things, we can help — and our initial consultation is always free.
• DON'T assume your business or organization is too small for our services. We love to work with startups, individuals, very small businesses and nonprofits.
• DON'T assume we're too expensive for your budget. We can work within most budgets... and can prove we're lower in bottom-line cost that most other options.
• DON'T rush into a decision! If you've read this far, please consider our advice before pressing ahead with your project. We can get you on track to the right solution within one business day (sometimes within the hour).

I sincerely look forward to hearing from you!

— James Gifford