Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency vs. In-House Staff

When it comes to starting a new marketing plan from the ground up or rethinking your current strategy and plan, the biggest debate is deciding whether to hire an outside agency partner or building an internal marketing staff. Both options have their own various advantages and disadvantages. 

In-House Marketing Staff

An advantaged of having a marketing staff in-house is that at all times you have direct access with them, allowing your marketing program as a whole to have better day-to-day integration. For digital and offline media projects it can be very beneficial to have an in-house team, as the team can collaborate closely on a larger marketing goal for the entire business, and the timeline of these projects will be more accelerated. 

When it comes to affording an in-housing marketing team financially, it can either be less or more expensive than hiring an agency. This will depend on the size of your business and the needs of your digital marketing. For instance, a full-time SEO expert has an average salary of approximately $70,000; hiring an agency will vary in cost, depending on the required services. Cost is not the only factor to consider – you must also think about the effort and time that is necessary in order to find, hire, and train the correct in-house talent instead of having a seasoned agency brought in from the beginning. 

Digital Marketing Agency

There are many benefits when it comes to working with a digital marketing agency. First thing’s first – these agencies offer expertise that goes unrivaled; entire teams are in place already, which offer more diverse skillsets that are more challenging (and sometimes impossible) to bring on with a single internal hire. When working with agencies, they have a much more diverse set of sites they work on across both multiple industries and companies, along with more versatile marketing knowledge. The way they spread the use of their marketing tactics across several verticals can often better inform the strategies you are experimenting with to meet your digital marketing goals. 

Resources wise, there is more to offer from digital marketing agencies, thanks to the multiple teams they have collaborated in order to produce results for your business, which in turn frees up the bandwidth of your internal teams to be able to focus on other marketing initiatives that require your particular business’s intricacies in the deepest understanding. 

The account teams of these digital marketing agencies are created to aid you in developing an efficient and scalable digital marketing agency. This will allow them to be able to leverage the best tools and technology the industry has to offer on your behalf, which you may not always be able to have access to due to limitations from the budget. 

The expertise that comes with a  digital marketing agency allows them to be able to provide highly strategic direction, objective leadership, and even education. For instance, if a new Google algorithm update that affects your site’s SEO, an agency will normally notice first because the change can impact multiple sites across all their clients. For in-house, they might not notice because it is more difficult to determine the large context for what is happening on other sites across the web.  

Conclusion

Ultimately, the path you choose depends on your business:  where you are today, where you want to go, and the resources you have available. Many times, a blend of both in-house and agency resources proves to be most effective when both internal and external teams can work collaboratively to produce better results for your business. We are a full-service digital marketing agency. We have expertise in every field of digital marketing and are here to serve you and help your company grow. For more information on the services we provide, click here.