It might only be August, but for plenty of marketing, creative and ecommerce teams, the busiest part of the year is already starting to take shape.
Black Friday campaigns need planning. Christmas creative needs producing. Paid activity ramps up. Email schedules get busier. Websites need updating and there are often projects everyone wants finished before the end of the calendar year.
All of that lands on top of the work the permanent team is already doing.
It is one of the most predictable pressure points of the year, yet additional resource is often only considered once the team is already struggling.
By then, the brief usually becomes:
“We just need someone who can start on Monday.”
Sometimes that is unavoidable. But when the busy period is predictable, it is worth planning for it.
The temporary market is already picking up
There is a wider shift towards flexible hiring happening at the moment too.
The latest KPMG and REC Report on Jobs found that temporary billings increased for the fourth consecutive month in July, with growth remaining among the strongest seen in the past three years.
Temporary vacancies also increased for the first time in two years, suggesting businesses are becoming more willing to add flexible resource while remaining cautious about longer-term permanent headcount.
That does not mean every business should suddenly hire freelancers or contractors.
It does show why flexible talent can be valuable when workload increases for a defined period rather than permanently.
The autumn run-up to Black Friday, Christmas and year-end deadlines is a good example.
Work out where the pressure will actually be
Before searching for a freelancer, look at what is coming and ask where your team is most likely to struggle.
Sometimes it is simply capacity.
Your internal creative team may have all the right skills but not enough hours to produce every campaign asset, landing page, email and social post required.
Sometimes it is capability.
Perhaps the coming months require motion design, specialist paid media, ecommerce, CRM or copywriting expertise that the business does not need often enough to justify another permanent hire.
And sometimes it is cover.
Annual leave, parental leave or an existing vacancy may leave an otherwise well-resourced team temporarily short.
Those are different problems and they require different solutions.
Taking the time to understand the gap first makes it much easier to find somebody who will genuinely help.
Availability should not be your main selection criteria
Leaving freelance recruitment until the workload becomes urgent limits your options.
When someone needs to start immediately, availability can quickly become the most important requirement.
There are brilliant freelancers who can step into those situations, but with more planning you can be much more selective.
You can find somebody who understands the type of work you are doing, has relevant experience and can operate at the level your team actually needs.
You also have more time to understand how they work.
A freelancer may only be with you for a few months, but working style still matters. Some people thrive with a loose brief and lots of autonomy. Others work best with clearer processes and regular direction.
Someone can be technically excellent and still struggle if the environment is completely different from the one in which they perform best.
Earlier planning gives you time to consider fit as well as availability.
Flexible support does not have to mean five days a week
One reason businesses sometimes dismiss freelance support is the assumption that it means bringing somebody into the team full-time for several months.
It can be much more flexible than that.
Perhaps you need a designer three days a week during October and November.
A copywriter might only be required for a defined batch of campaign work.
A paid media specialist could support the team during the busiest campaign period.
A CRM contractor might be heavily involved initially and then reduce their days once everything is running.
The better question is not:
“How many months do we need a freelancer for?”
It is:
“What support would make the biggest difference to the team?”
You can then build the arrangement around the answer.
Good freelancers plan ahead too
There is another reason not to leave everything until the last minute.
The freelancers you most want to work with are managing their own pipeline.
They may already know what they are doing several weeks or months ahead, particularly around traditionally busy periods.
The wider seasonal jobs market follows a similar pattern, with UK Christmas hiring typically beginning to build from August and accelerating through September and October.
Marketing and creative freelance work is different from traditional seasonal recruitment, but the principle is the same: predictable peaks are easier to manage when you prepare for them before they arrive.
Freelancers are planning ahead too.
Make it easy for somebody to add value quickly
Bringing in extra support solves very little if their first week is spent trying to work out what they are supposed to be doing.
The clearer you can be before they start, the quicker they can contribute.
Make sure somebody internally owns the relationship. Agree the priorities, expected output and deadlines. Provide access to the systems and information they will need.
And be realistic about how much of the organisation they actually need to understand.
A freelancer probably does not need to attend every internal meeting or learn every process.
They need enough context to make good decisions and deliver the work they have been brought in to do.
Busy does not always mean permanently understaffed
A difficult few months do not automatically mean the permanent team is too small.
There are periods when a team is correctly sized for most of the year but needs additional capacity during a predictable peak.
Increasing permanent headcount to solve a three-month problem may create another problem once the workload settles.
Flexible talent gives businesses the ability to scale the team around the work.
The important part is using it deliberately rather than waiting until everybody is overwhelmed.
If Black Friday, Christmas campaigns or calendar year-end projects are likely to stretch your marketing team, now is a good time to identify where the pressure will come from and what kind of support would make the biggest difference.
You may not need somebody to start tomorrow.
But you probably do not want to wait until tomorrow is already too late.
Expecting a busy end to the year? We can talk through the workload; help you identify the type of support you need and find freelance or contract talent that fits your team and timescales.
