Situation 1
There's a full week of work every week
A SaaS company shipping features monthly has webinars, release notes, partner content and a lifecycle email program to run. That's a job, not a project, and it needs someone who's there every day.
Marketing agency vs in-house marketing and which one fits your company
Contractors, law firms, dental practices, SaaS startups and online stores all hit the point where marketing needs an owner. Here's what an agency and an in-house team each give you, so you can decide based on the shape of your work, not habit.
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Side by side
Marketing agency vs in-house team, side by side
Each row shows how the same part of the job plays out on each side. Hold it up against your own situation: the amount of marketing work you have, how fast it changes and who in your company would manage it.
Marketing agency
In-house team
Who does the work
An account lead plus specialists the agency assigns, each one shared across several client accounts.
One or more employees on your payroll, working only on your company, often a generalist first and specialists later.
Who owns the plan
The agency proposes the plan and runs it. You approve direction and budget, usually in a monthly or quarterly meeting.
Your marketing hire owns the plan day to day and reports to you or a manager. Priorities can change as fast as you can talk.
How fast it starts
Typically two to four weeks from signing to first work, after onboarding calls and access to your accounts.
Recruiting, interviewing and a notice period usually add up to two or three months before the person is fully productive.
What you have to manage
The relationship: briefs, approvals, feedback and a periodic check on whether the agency's priorities still match yours.
The person: onboarding, tools, training, performance conversations, vacation cover and a career path that keeps them.
Who checks the quality
The agency's account lead looks over the specialists' work before it goes to you.
Your own marketing lead checks it, or you do, and what the team learns about your campaigns stays in house once it's in writing.
How work is reported
A monthly or weekly report in the agency's format, plus meetings. You see results by channel and the hours or deliverables used.
Whatever reporting you set up together. The employee can walk you through the numbers any day, in your own terms.
Breadth of skills
Wide: paid search, paid social, SEO, design, video and email under one roof, though not every agency is strong in all of them.
As wide as the people you employ. A single hire covers two or three channels well and outsources or skips the rest.
Knowledge of your business
Built over time through briefs and calls. The agency also brings what it has seen at other companies in your industry.
Deep and firsthand: the employee sits in your meetings, hears customers and knows which jobs you actually want more of.
The table leaves out cost on purpose. An agency is one monthly amount; an employee is salary plus benefits, tools and management time. Which is larger depends on your volume of work.
When marketing agency makes sense
When a marketing agency makes sense
An agency fits companies that need several skills at once, want work to start soon and would rather manage a vendor than a person. Three situations where that tends to be the right call:
Situation 1
You need three channels by next quarter
A dental group opening a second location needs Google Ads, a local SEO push and new creative at the same time. No single hire covers all of that on day one, and an agency already has the people.
Situation 2
Marketing is seasonal or project based
An HVAC contractor runs hard before summer and winter and coasts in between. Paying for a full-time seat through the slow months makes little sense. An agency's scope can grow and shrink with the season.
Situation 3
Nobody in the building can manage a marketer
If you're the owner and also the estimator, the closer and the HR department, a new employee won't get the direction they need. An agency comes with its own management layer and a set process.
When in-house team makes sense
When an in-house marketing team makes sense
An in-house hire fits companies with enough steady work to fill a week, a product or brand that takes time to learn, and a manager who can give that person direction. Three situations where hiring wins out:
Situation 2
The product is hard to explain
A law firm handling a narrow practice area, or a B2B manufacturer with a long sales cycle, needs a marketer who can speak to the buyer without a briefing. That fluency comes from living inside the business.
Situation 3
You want to build a marketing function
If you want your own marketing department within two years, the first hire is the foundation. That person picks the tools, writes the playbook and later helps you interview the people who join.
Before you decide
Four questions that settle most of these decisions.
What really differs
What really differs between an agency and an in-house team
The first difference is attention. An agency gives you a slice of several people. An employee gives you all of one person. If your work needs a paid search specialist for a few hours a week and a designer for a few more, the slice is exactly right. If your work needs somebody watching the same accounts every morning and joining the sales huddle, the whole person is what you're paying for, and no vendor can stand in for that.
The second difference is who carries the knowledge. Inside an agency, what they know about your company lives in a shared drive and in the head of your account lead, and it travels when that person moves to another account. Inside your company it lives in the employee, and it leaves when they quit. Both are real. The question is which one you can protect. With an agency, you insist on documentation and a named backup. With a hire, you train a second person or write a playbook before you need it.
The third difference is management. An agency manages its own people, and your job is to brief well, approve fast and check quarterly that its priorities still match yours. You or someone on your team manages a hire, which means recruiting, onboarding, feedback and a career path. Owners who like coaching people often get more from a hire. Owners who want to sign off on a plan and get back to running the company usually do better with a vendor.
How we fit
How Marketers.com fits between the two
Marketers.com is an outsourced marketing department. Nobody joins your payroll, yet one person is accountable for the plan: a senior project manager with 15+ years of experience who assembles vetted marketers around your industry and scope. It isn't a fit for a company that wants its marketer at a desk every day.
- One accountable person. Your project manager sets the scope, approves what goes live and sends the monthly report. You get the in-house feel of a single owner without recruiting or managing an employee yourself.
- A team sized to your scope. After the free analysis, the project manager assembles the marketers your plan actually calls for: one specialist for a focused scope, several when a launch needs search, social and email together.
- Specialists vetted before they join. Every channel marketer passes a knowledge test, a practical task and an interview about previous work before taking on a client. You get the vetting a hiring process would give you, done in advance.
How we fit
Work is billed monthly, so a growing company can start with one channel and add people once the plan starts paying off.
FAQ
Questions companies ask about this choice
Don't see your question? Request the analysis, and the project manager will answer it on the first call.
01How much marketing work is enough to justify a full-time hire?
A useful test is to list the tasks you expect to delegate every week and estimate the hours honestly. If the list fills most of a work week for the next year, a hire makes sense. If it fills a couple of days, or comes in bursts around launches and seasons, you'll end up paying a full-time person to wait, and an outside team fits better.
02Can I start with an agency and move in-house later?
Yes, and many companies do it in that order. The agency covers the early period when you need several skills and have no manager for them, and it leaves behind accounts, assets and reporting you can hand to your first hire. Ask up front who owns the ad accounts, the website and the analytics, so nobody has to rebuild anything when you bring the work inside.
03What should I ask an agency before signing?
Ask who will actually work on your account, how many other clients that person handles, what happens if they leave, and what the monthly report contains. Ask to see the report format before you start. Then ask what they'd do first for a company like yours. A specific answer tells you more than any pitch deck.
04Should my first in-house marketer be a generalist or a specialist?
For most small and mid-sized companies the first hire is a generalist who can run the website, write, brief a designer and manage a paid channel or two. Specialists come second, once you know which channel carries your growth. The exception is a company whose one channel is everything, such as an ecommerce store built on paid social, where a specialist first is the right call.
05Who checks the work if I don't understand marketing myself?
With an agency, the account lead reports to you and you judge by leads, calls and sales rather than by tactics. With a hire, that check falls to you or your manager. That's why owners without marketing experience often pair a first hire with an outside advisor for the first year. Either way, agree before the work starts on two or three numbers you'll look at every month.
Decide with data, not instinct
See what your marketing needs before you choose a model
Order the free analysis and within 24 hours you'll get a PDF that lays out where your marketing stands and what it needs next. Read it, then decide whether the answer is an agency, a hire, or a team we build for you.
- Analysis within 24 hours
- No obligation
- PDF covering 5 competitors
- Team picked by your PM
Free marketing analysis
- PDF analysis
- 5 competitors
- Prioritized action list
Your analysis is prepared by a senior project manager with 15+ years of experience in marketing.
Are you a marketer with experience in a specific industry? Join the team