Should You Hire An In House Marketing Agency or An External Marketing Agency?

As a business owner, deciding whether to hire an in house marketing team or collaborate with a marketing agency is a crucial choice. In this post, digital marketing experts will take a close look at the issues you should consider when choosing between bringing in an in house marketing agency and becoming a customer of an external marketing company. This blog was written alongside the digital marketing professionals at Seek Social in the UK, so if you’re looking for a UK based provider feel free to click the link and take a look at their website.

Cost: Getting Bang For Your Buck

One of the primary factors to consider when comparing putting together an in house marketing agency versus working with an external marketing agency is the cost. An in house marketing agency requires you to identify and hire a whole group of people with the talent and skills that you need to make your marketing efforts succeed – and once you’ve found that team you’ll need to provide them with benefits, and invest in equipment and tools. On the other hand, becoming a client of an external marketing agency offers a variety of services and specialists at a more affordable rate. You only pay for the specific services you require, and there are no recruitment costs or employee overheads.

Effectiveness: Comparing Results

The effectiveness of your marketing efforts can be the deciding factor. Depending on who takes up those positions, an in house marketing agency may have a deep understanding of your brand, but they may lack the sheer marketing expertise to make the different marketing channels at your disposal work well. An external agency is more likely to have a more diverse skillset as a whole, with individual team members who are specialists in one or more areas of digital marketing. In our experience this approach is usually more effective, and can help you achieve better results across multiple platforms, leading to a higher return on investment.

Efficiency: Streamlining Your Marketing Efforts

The speed and efficiency of your marketing strategies are essential for success. Team members at an in house marketing agency may be forced to multi-task and work on different aspects of a marketing campaign at the same time, or even juggle marketing tasks alongside another unrelated project – resulting in a slower response to market changes.

However, marketing agencies take a different approach. They are dedicated to marketing activities – it’s what they do, all day every day. As part of this approach their staff dedicate time to personal learning and development staying up-to-date with the latest trends in digital marketing, and as a result they can generally adapt more quickly to new trends and practices. This allows them to be both proactive and reactive – developing solutions to potential problems before they happen, and having them on-hand, ready to react if that problem occurs in your campaign. This agility enables them to execute efficient marketing campaigns that yield better results in a shorter time frame.

Results: Measuring Success

The ultimate goal of any marketing strategy is to generate positive results. An in house marketing agency may provide more control over your campaigns, but their limited expertise may hinder your growth. Teams at external marketing agencies truly have a passion for what they do – they eat, sleep and breathe marketing – and this passion drives them to seek out information, tools and solutions related to marketing, and understand them.

In practice what this means for a client is that external marketing teams are more likely than an in house marketing agency to have a thorough knowledge of digital marketing, including the various analytics metrics that can be used to track campaign performance. They will know what all the data presented to you via an analytics or reporting platform means, they will know if those numbers are indicating success or underachievement (and why), they’ll be able to better spot areas where improvements could be made, and they’re also more likely to have access to cutting-edge tools and techniques, to help them easily make changes to improve campaign performance.

Additional Considerations: Making the Right Choice

When choosing between an in house marketing agency and partnering with an external team, you should also consider your company’s culture, values, and long-term goals. Likewise, if you choose to partner with an external agency, you should bear your values and goals in mind when looking for your digital marketing provider, and choose an agency that pairs well with those goals and values.

Remember that while an in-house team may work more seamlessly with your existing departments and have a better understanding of your business, brand, and goals, an external agency can offer an unbiased perspective and a fresh approach, and there’s nothing stopping them from learning more about your business while they do so. In fact, the very best agencies make a point of getting to know your business well, and early on in your partnership.

Conclusion

The choice between an in house marketing agency and an external company depends on your business’s unique requirements, goals, and budget. Make sure to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each option thoroughly, in order to put yourself in a position to make a well-informed decision that will drive your marketing success.