We get asked this regularly: "We've got a marketing problem — should our next hire be a junior, an apprentice, or a freelancer?" There's a short framework that works for most situations. Three questions, three answers.
Question 1 — Do you know what you want done?
If yes: hire a freelancer or contractor. Specific scoped work, defined timeline, clear deliverables. They execute, you pay, you move on. The market for this is good and the per-day cost is usually offset by speed.
If no: don't hire a freelancer. Freelancers can't help you figure out what to do — they can do what you tell them. If you don't know what to tell them, they will either invent a brief themselves (which may or may not be useful) or burn budget on discovery.
Question 2 — Is the work strategic or executional?
If strategic (positioning, brand, market entry, channel mix): you need a senior. £55–75k for a Head of Marketing or strategic consultant. This is not a junior-level problem and trying to make it one will cost you more in mistakes than the senior would have cost in salary.
If executional (running campaigns, producing content, managing channels): junior or apprentice can do this. The question becomes commitment vs. flexibility.
Question 3 — Are you committed to building a team?
If yes: hire an apprentice. 14 months of dedicated training paid for by levy/government, you mould them into your way of doing things, retention is around 92% in our data. The slight downside is the 6–8 week timeline to start and the off-the-job day commitment.
If no, or unsure: hire a junior on a normal contract. More flexibility (you can let them go in 3 months if it's not working) but no funding subsidy, full salary cost from day one, and more recruiter time on your end.
Where most employers go wrong
They hire a junior to solve a strategic problem. The junior is competent but can't unstick the underlying "what should we do" question, and ends up running ineffective tactics. After 9 months either the employer fires them or they leave frustrated. We've watched this happen so often it's depressing.
The other common error: hiring a freelancer hoping they'll figure out strategy as part of the brief. They won't — that's not what the day rate is paying for. You pay for execution, you get execution.
The decision tree, condensed
Strategic + you don't know what to do → senior hire. Executional + you can commit to growing them → apprentice. Executional + you can't commit → junior on a normal contract. Specific scoped task + you know what you want → freelancer. There are edge cases, but 90% of SMEs we talk to fit cleanly into one of those four boxes.