What you need to know before hiring a freelancer or a presentation design agency

However, the road ahead remains long, because the initial desire is quickly confronted with a jungle of service providers with various prices and skills that can be classified into two categories: specialized PowerPoint agencies and freelancers. So how to make the right choice?

Agencies and freelancers manage their projects differently

Because of his situation, a freelance must necessarily manage alone all the tasks related to the good realization of a PowerPoint support. The commercial relationship, the creation of the artistic direction, the declension of the slides, the verification of the integrity of the content are as many skills that the freelance must master in order to offer a service up to standard. Such versatility being reached by few chosen ones, the delivered services can lack one or several of these aspects (lack of reactivity, non respect of deadlines, errors of rigor) and imply an often draconian selection of the freelancer dedicated to accompany you. It is not for nothing that Google is full of articles to help you avoid the worst.

On the other hand, agencies have specialized collaborators in each of the key stages of the service (commercial relationship, realization of graphic proposals, verification of the integrity of the content) in order to ensure a strong value proposition and to optimize the time spent in project management by the client. To facilitate exchanges, you are in direct contact with a project manager who coordinates all the collaborators involved, and can at your convenience directly exchange with the teams of designers on the creative aspect.

Creative assets differ from one provider to another

"There are more ideas in two heads than in one", said Jacques Chirac. Although this quote is another tautology, it puts the finger on the interest of collaborating and exchanging during a creative process in order to multiply the graphic quality of the proposals.

In this sense, a freelancer necessarily has a disadvantage compared to an agency, which :

• Has its own creative direction, with which all the designers adhere, which makes it possible to propose deliverables that perfectly meet the needs of the clients.
• Pushes for a permanent confrontation of the achievements in-house in order to raise the level of the productions.
• Has a multiplicity of designers who can quickly propose several relevant graphic proposals, where a freelancer will have difficulty making several proposals with an equal graphic level.
• Ensures a deliverable that perfectly meets the specifications given the necessary validation of the graphic proposal by the art director and the project manager.

On the other hand, agencies can take longer to offer a graphic proposal than a freelancer because of the necessary internal validations.

If you want to handle an important presentation, choose an agency

It can be interesting to turn to a freelance for a project of commercial presentation redesign or the creation of a template for your company because of the often very competitive costs of these actors, their graphic skills and their habit of working on unconventional hours (weekends or after 8pm on weekdays). However, this indisputable quality/price ratio on the paper is generally confronted with a very different reality on the side of the freelance considering :

• His availability, which depends on his current projects, his state of health and his personal convenience. Also, always validate the different deadlines before a service, and don't hesitate to remind them throughout the service in order to make sure that your provider is organized accordingly. Keep in mind that a freelancer also has personal, administrative and other project-related contingencies that can jeopardize the established schedule at any time.
• The scope of the work to be done. An agency can mobilize several teams of designers in order to realize a very large number of slides on tight deadlines and to manage last minute unforeseen events, where the freelance has a maximum daily productivity.
• The necessary project management. Collaborations on important projects generally include a multiplicity of interlocutors and the consequent work to be carried out can prevent the freelance from delivering the reactivity and the presence in appointments necessary to the exercise.

A freelancer is however very relevant for projects with short deadlines, because he can work on unconventional hours. An available freelancer can realize in a weekend an urgent presentation at a much lower cost than the one that would have been defined by an agency, and remains a very good solution when a strong availability in the evening is desired (between 8pm and 4am). In the other cases, always prefer an agency which will be able to offer you a superior reactivity thanks to the availability of a dedicated project manager, as well as a speed of execution and a management of the unforeseen much more interesting.

Costs differ between agencies and freelancers

Where freelancers have low fixed costs (working from their own apartment or in a coworking space) and attractive tax rates, agencies need to offer suitable working conditions and attractive remuneration to recruit and retain the best talent. These efforts have a direct influence on the daily rates offered. However, this important cost structure is essential for agencies to stay on top of creativity and to offer the best value proposition to their clients.

Also, daily rates for a freelance PowerPoint designer will range from €150 to €450 per day on Malt, while PowerPoint agencies will offer rates of between €600 and €800 per day.

Alternative solutions exist

If a freelancer or a presentation design agency don't seem ideal to make your presentation, a plethora of new solutions have appeared over the last few years to shake up these two types of providers. Among them, we find products that propose to replace PowerPoint(Beautiful.ai, Pitch.io or Zoho Show), or softwares directly integrated to PowerPoint that help you to build your slides with ease like Power-user.

To conclude

Freelancers, PowerPoint agencies, software directly integrated into your presentation: the solutions mentioned are above all a matter of taste, but above all of cost. If these costs prevent you from offering one of these solutions, all is not lost. Take the time to :

• Discover Glide, our free template with 80 layouts to cover your needs
• Take advantage of Selfone, the ideal free template to present your application
• Rediscover Peetch, a free custom-made template for your next fundraiser

See you soon!

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