The Golden Question: Should I Handle Digital Marketing In-House or Hire an Agency?

Your company has reached a critical juncture, you’re either:

1)  Growing beyond your ability to keep up

2)  Stagnating

3)  Or gasp… shrinking …

In other words…you need help.

Your sales team needs more leads in the pipeline and they need to either close that business fast, or access an automated system for long-term cultivation. It’s time to decide: Should you hire a marketing agency for help or bring someone in-house? That is the critical question for every business at this stage of development. Here are a few points to consider:

Broad Range of Capability – One Roof

Businesses hire marketing agencies for a specific amount of time each month, sometimes they are on a contract and sometimes they are outsourced on an hourly rate. What’s so great about this though, is if you hire a full-service digital agency – that time can be split between a wide range of capabilities, anywhere from brand development, content creation and social media to website creative, landing pages, SEO, paid media and logo design. It is pretty hard to find all of those skill sets in a single marketing director, or even with a small in-house team.

Agencies always have to prove their worth with measurable returns.

• Agencies don’t have job security. You can fire an agency very easily; however, firing your entire department and getting a new one would be very expensive (and personally damaging to your now former staffers).
• A company can hire an agency and get a team of people dedicated to your account for the price (or less than) one typical salaried employee.
• A marketing agency can negotiate on price and rate. Once you hire people internally, you can’t easily re-negotiate their salaries.

Expertise and Transferred Knowledge

Your business focuses on its core competency; a marketing agency does the same. Here at Oneupweb we always say, “You are great at what you do, and we are great at what we do.” Let’s work together to create and implement successful campaigns.

Expand your company’s capabilities.

• Agencies are filled with people who are senior, mid, and junior, meaning there are many levels of expertise that will be at your service, for any variety of campaign or project.
• Agencies work with many different industries, the learnings of which are sometimes transferred to clients as the good agencies learn how to share knowledge from client to client. Internal departments only learn from their own mistakes.
• Agencies are focused on delivering marketing services, so their processes are developed and tested to be competitive.

Competition

Speaking of competition, agencies are competitive with one another and large corporations benefit from this every day.

• A great agency partner will be up-to-date on all trending topics in the industry. With the fast pace that things change in the digital world, it is a full-time job just to keep in-the-know about the latest best practices.
• Businesses compete with one another for business, and in order to stay competitive, they must continue to be innovative.

Talent Thrives in the Agency Atmosphere

Agencies attract great talent because they offer talent opportunities to do interesting work.

• The Agency atmosphere is conducive to talent – the atmosphere is generally more laid back whereas the corporate side tends to have more influential HR departments.
• Agencies have an atmosphere and expectation of hard work. Marketers are more likely to burn the midnight oil in a setting they’re comfortable and where amazing work is rewarded by the entire organization. In a big company it’s easier to get lost and even easier to not be noticed.

After making the decision to hire a digital marketing agency, the most important next step is choosing the right agency. Make sure that the agency understands your goals and key objectives, brings campaign ideas and action steps, and fits with the culture of your organization.

If you’re looking for an agency, let’s talk.