In-House vs Agency

It’s the endless debate in SLT meetings everywhere - and in the midst of a recession, it's understandable that this question keeps coming up.

Having worked both in-house and agency-side, I’ve seen the pros and cons. I could’ve written an extremely biased article about why agency is always best, but I’m not here to do that (just don’t tell Jonty).  

‍I don’t think it’s a question of which, but rather when to choose between them - and how to get your CFO to sign off on the situation.

First things first: 

The unicorn all-rounder doesn’t exist, and if they do, you need to double their salary. 

It’s a harsh reality. We often read job descriptions for a company needing an in-house “marketing coordinator” and, the requirements are comprised of the following:

• Copywriting & storytelling ability
• Experience in digital marketing tools including Google Ads, Meta Suite, TikTok, LinkedIn
• Ability to launch and optimise end-to-end digital campaigns
• CRM & Automation Experience
• SEO & CRO experience 
• Adobe Creative Cloud (Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop) 
• Figma
• Canva
• Premiere Pro
• Photography & Videography (incl editing) skills 
• Organic Social Content Creation + Community Building
• Data Analysis + Insights and Recommendations
• Ability to track + edit and update the website

You might think I’m exaggerating, but I took this from an actual job ad on Seek right now. The list above is, conservatively speaking, asking for years of training and experience (if the job is to be done well).

PS. There are three separate roles listed in that job description - really:

Creative Specialist:

Copywriting + storytelling

Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma + Canva 

Organic Social Contention Creation + Community Building

‍Performance Specialist: 

Google Ads, Meta Suite, TikTok, Linkedin

SEO & CRO Experiments

CRM & Automation 

‍Data Specialist: 

• Data Analysis + Insights 
• Ability to track website 

So, having hired marketers both in-house and agency side, here’s my process for figuring out: 

When to use an agency, and when to go in-house.

Step 1:
Categorise the work into these 4 areas

• Reactive 
• Always-on 
• Sometimes 
• Project 

Below are some examples of how I’ve categorised work within my marketing team in the past:

Reactive work:

• Organic Social Media - you need someone in-house who can film content in the moment, stay on top of trends, and work with them closely to get content quickly approved and live. 

• If you’re a company that has a large number of suppliers/clients that will be firing through promotions every other day - you might need graphic design, ad copy, and campaigns/boosted posts.

Always-on work:

• Depending on your business, this may include running Google Ads & Meta Ads, optimisations and reporting. 

• This usually requires two marketers: a performance specialist who can upload and optimise the campaigns, and a creative specialist (ideally one who can write copy + develop designs) 

• CRM maintenance + email marketing 

Sometimes work:

• Keeping website content fresh and up to date

• Running CRO experiments

• Quarterly reports on your customer data + providing insights and recommendations. 

Project Work: 

• Data consolidation + visualisation. When did you last consolidate your customer and paid ad data? This will help you gain a deeper understanding of your customers and marketing efforts. These are usually big, specialised, one-off projects that, once done, may need some light maintenance each month but are otherwise complete. 

• SEO projects get your website humming and usually need an upfront, large chunk of work to see results pay off over the following 6-12 months. 

• Tactical/promotional campaigns: If you’re an event/festival or have smaller budgets to play with - you’ll largely focus on 3-6 month campaigns that pump sales. During this time you’ll need a full suite of designers, performance specialists, data specialists and everything in between. These fast-paced campaigns don’t have room for error (or for a new in-house team to get to know each other and work together at high-level), so I would recommend using an agency in this case.

• Photography + videography: Well-planned out photography/videography can be utilised in digital advertising for 6-12 months, sometimes even longer if it's that good! For your more polished campaigns (out-of-home marketing, website, EDMs) a solid library of bespoke photography and videography can go a looooooooooooooooong way. But it's important to note: Don’t rush this process, it's an investment and you want to get the most out of it. 

Step 2:
Estimate how many hours per month you’ll need to allocate

For a small-medium sized business, spending between $7.5k-$20k per month on paid advertising in Aotearoa, New Zealand, I’d ballpark:

• Organic Social Media: ~80 hours per month
• Reactive Promo Campaigns: 60-120 hours per month
• Always On Meta + Google Ads (performance specialist): 20-60 hours per month
• Always on Meta + Google Ads (creative specialist): 20 hours per month
• CRM + Email Marketing: 10-20 hours per month 

Step 3:
Answer these questions:

• Who in the existing team can peer-review and quality control their work? 
• Who could cover them if they’re on leave?
• Who can they learn from in the company? 
• How can they grow in the company?

And there’s one last step from there!

Step 4:
As a manager, ask yourself:

• How well do I (their manager) understand what work they’d need to do? 
• Do I need to upskill more so I can be the best manager I can be for this person?
• Do I feel confident my company will continuously have work for this person, for at least 2 years? 
• With my budget, what expertise could I get? (hot tip - if you’re thinking of hiring a junior all-rounder, an agency will likely cost the same and be able to deliver in more areas?

Platforms like Google Ads & Meta change all the time. Having another team member who is in the same position as them - with whom they can bounce ideas off and have their work peer-reviewed - will help them feel confident and understood within your company. (fun fact: every campaign upload at Aro Digital requires a second Performance Specialist to peer review it prior to pushing live)

If you’ve crunched the numbers and think you have enough work for a full-timer, amazing! If you’ve then answered these questions and thought to yourself: heck I’ve never thought about that before! Then this might be a good time to book in a chat, so we can figure out your next steps.