Should you hire an Agency or build an in house marketing team? This article will try and explain the old debate of agency vs in house marketing – Which one is the right choice for your company.
Personally, I am torn between the two and I think there is no clear and cut answer because every business is different and has different needs. Also every situation is different, some companies just don’t have the budget to build an in house marketing team while other can’t afford an agency retainer.
So the question is not a straight and clear answer, but I will do my best to explain and help those who struggle with this question in person.
Agency vs in house marketing team – What’s the difference?
Well, generally speaking, the differences are pretty obvious, when you hire a marketing agency or even an internet marketing specialist to promote your business, they usually come with a variety of skills and people that can pretty much do anything you want. PPC, SEO, Content Marketing, Email Marketing and more.
But usually the price will higher for multiple services, and you have zero control about the work. These agencies have all the knowledge and you are basically paying them to share it with you on a loan basis. As long as you keep them on a retainer, they will promote you, once you stop, they stop everything.
Now don’t get me wrong. Agencies can get amazing results that can make or break any business, and if done correctly, their work can help you for years. But you still only borrow their knowledge. It’s not yours.
On the flip side, you don’t have to deal with the employees, you tell them what you want, and they do it, you can basically sit back and watch as the results start coming in. It’s pay to play in it’s purest form, and it can work wonders to the right business.
Hiring an in house marketing team has many advantages. You know exactly who you hired and what they are capable of. You can control the work, you can see exactly what everyone is doing all the time and the knowledge is basically yours.
Another big advantage is that when you have a team in place in house, you can use their work power to do many things and they are not caught up into one thing, opposite to an agency which has a set number of services they offer and they are usually not flexible with what they do.
Another great thing about building an in house marketing team is that mostly likely you can hire them for a set price, and if the work increases and you need to scale, the expenses will stay the same. If your team does an amazing job and revenues are 10x, they still cost the same while agencies usually charge more as the work load increases.
Agency vs In house
So, which one is it? Agency vs in house, what is the best choice for your business. I think it comes down to funding and your own time and managerial skills.
If you run a big company that will have no issues increasing their expenses to hire a few marketing ninjas that will take over your marketing efforts, that can be a great choice. Think about what you can do with an SEO guru, PPC specialist and a killer graphic designer at your finger tips.
If you can manage them, and see that they work on the goals you want and keep track of the expenses and makes sure everything is going according to plan, this could be a great success story.
Great marketers are very creative people, and like most creative people, they can get board quickly, it’s not a great thing for a marketer to work on the same thing for 12 months without switching it up every now and than.
When your team starts to get board, they will leave you, and you will have to pick up the slack or replace them with a new team and do that every X amount of time.
Marketers that work in an agency usually don’t get board so quickly because they tend to work with many other businesses and niches and that keeps them interested and fresh all the time.
However, if you don’t have a lot of funds to spend, and you don’t really have the time to start hiring and managing a couple of creative people, an agency can be a great choice too.
You just have a few meetings, write a cheque and let them take care of everything. The only thing you need to do is check their results and make sure you’re getting back more than what you put out.
Marketing Agency vs In house – The Perks
If you ever worked with Adwords before or other ad network, you know that you need to spend a lot of money to get someone to notice you. If you think your $180,000 a year in marketing spend will tickle someone over at Google, think again.
This is where partnering with an agency has a big advantage. Agencies usually manage millions of dollars in ad spend and the ad networks do pay attention to them and help them do well.
Think about it, if a certain ad agency that manages let’s say $10,000,000 per year for many clients and they spend most of that on Google Adwords, Google will need to take good care of them right? If they suddenly decide to spend that money elsewhere, they will be sorry.
So it’s not uncommon that agencies get many perks that are a nice touch and you as a business owner working with an agency can enjoy. Here are a few examples:
1. Support – If you ever tried to get in touch with a Google support person, you know it’s not likely to talk to a real person. But agencies get the inside track. They usually have on call support and compliance person available to help them with whatever they need. And you get to enjoy it too as a client.
2. Early access to new features – Agencies usually get early access to new ad formats and features. Using these early bird features sometimes make a lot of difference in your ROI.
3. Inside help and partnerships – Agencies usually have an inside team looking out for them. Companies like Google and Facebook want ad agencies to do well, for obvious reasons, so they will help them out with inside information and sharing of internal data that the general public don’t have access too.
Another thing agencies have that puts them in an advantage point over an in house team, is the fact they usually have special partnerships with other businesses so they can offer you a discounted price on complimentary services as needed.
So Agency vs In house marketing. Did you decide yet?
I tried to review the main reasons why an agency will be better for your business, or you would rather build an in house marketing team instead. I hope you have a better understanding now about both options.
What’s your take on this subject, do you have experience working with an agency or an in house marketing team? Share with me in the comment section below