In-House Vs. Marketing Agency: Why You Should Think About Hiring An Agency

There comes a time in every business owner's life where they ask themselves an important question and business decision. “Should I hire an in-house marketing employee or work with a marketing agency?” Whether you are a two-person start-up or a rising organization with 50+ employees, this isn’t an easy question to answer.

There are pros and cons to working with both types of marketing solutions. We’ve put together a few reasons why you should consider hiring an agency to further your business and marketing efforts.

Variety of Skillsets

One of the greatest benefits of working with a marketing agency is the range of skills you’ll have access to. No one is good at everything. When you’re deciding on marketing strategies, you’re probably going to want a mix of social media, website development, SEO, PPC ads, print ads, and maybe even more.

An individual marketing employee can dabble in all of those things, but becoming an expert on each channel is difficult. This makes it difficult to deliver for your brand.

An agency, on the other hand, had a whole staff of experts in each marketing channel. At Big Marlin Group, we have a PPC specialist, a social media strategist, a team of graphic designers, a team of web developers, and more.

When you work with an agency, each service you need isn’t just something checked off a to-do list. It is a project that an expert in that field is dedicating their time and knowledge to.

Partner Perks

Most businesses don’t spend enough money on any given platform to warrant that platform’s attention. When you have questions or concerns about your accounts, you’ll have to get through a series of customer service calls in order to get what you were looking for.

Agencies manage a much larger ad spend on platforms such as Facebook and Google Ads. These budgets are enough have their own specialist dedicated to the accounts. This perk gets passed to you and means more accurate information quickly to ensure your account stays on track.

Additionally, agencies often have a lot of tools and technologies that your business benefits from. These might be services many businesses wouldn’t normally be able to afford on their own. It can be hard for an individual business to keep up with all the latest marketing tools and annual subscriptions, especially if you don’t even know if that tool will work for you. Agencies will test and invest thousands of dollars into the latest technologies to ensure their clients have the best tools. Since an agency has multiple clients, it’s a lot more feasible budget-wise to stay up to date on their end.

Unique Ideas

An in-house marketer will live and breathe your company because they work there full-time. The person in charge of marketing your company is the one who knows everything about your business.

The downside to that is it can become repetitive and they may find that their ideas dry up after a certain point after being so involved. At an agency, you work with an Account Manager and a multitude of other marketing specialists to come up with unique ideas to make your business stand out. This offers multiple perspectives on how to approach marketing your business and takes into account what has and hasn’t worked with their other clients in similar industries.

Budget

The average salary of a marketing manager in the United States is around $82,011 per year, according to Glassdoor. Add in the salaries of any additional members you want on your in-house marketing team, plus software and other marketing tools, and the expenses start to build!

When you hire an agency, while it may seem pricey at first, you’ll be paying a lot less for the amount of work and materials that you’re getting. An agency pays for its own software, tools, tech and more as well as all their specialized employees. You may not have the budget to hire a dedicated social media specialist, but you can afford to have your marketing agency dedicated a few hours a month towards growing your social presence.

So back to the question of whether you should hire an in-house marketing team or an agency.

If you have the resources and workload to justify hiring multiple full-time employees in your business, do it! If you have smaller staff and want a variety of marketing services, you’re better off with an agency.

Let Big Marlin Group provide all the marketing services your business needs so you can do what you do best.