Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency vs. Building an In-House Team

Regardless of whether you decide to opt for a digital marketing agency or invest in an in-house marketing team, the right choice to make depends on your structure, budget, goals, and pace of growth.

Both approaches have strengths and potential drawbacks that can leave many executives and business owners uncertain about the best way to move forward. Making the right choice involves understanding important factors such as expertise, costs, scalability, and flexibility.

A Digital Marketing Agency Offers Broader Expertise

One of the strongest reasons businesses choose to hire a digital marketing agency is easy access to a diverse team of specialists and skill sets rather than needing to build them up internally. 

Instead of relying on a few internal employees to handle all marketing channels, agencies offer expertise across multiple marketing disciplines like SEO, PPC campaigns, social media management, content creation, and analytics.

An in-house marketing team, although well-integrated into your business, may struggle to match the breadth of specialized skills an agency provides. Employees are often required to multitask, which can cut down on their ability to develop deep expertise in any single area. 

Agencies, meanwhile, have experts dedicated specifically to each service that’s offered. Their specific specialization means higher-quality work along with quicker results, and campaigns that are informed by extensive industry experience.

Enjoying Greater Flexibility (As Needed)

Trying to hire and train an internal marketing team tends to take plenty of time and resources. The recruiting process alone can delay your campaigns significantly since it often takes months to fully build up and train a functional team. 

While HR spends an average of 44 days filling each role, an agency can spin up paid search, SEO, and content programs in weeks with talent already on deck. Once established internal teams might operate efficiently, but ramping up activities or adding new marketing channels typically requires further training or additional hires.

But as mentioned previously, a digital marketing agency comes ready to launch campaigns almost immediately. Experienced agencies quickly grasp your company’s messaging and target audience to turn your objectives into real campaigns within mere weeks rather than months. 

So should you want to shift your strategy or introduce a new marketing initiative later on down the line, agencies can swiftly adapt by allocating more resources or additional specialists to your existing account.

One of the biggest perks of working with an agency is the flexibility they provide since you can ramp up fast or scale back without reorganizing everything. Agencies easily adjust to changing priorities that allow your business to stay agile and responsive to market dynamics without the trouble of burdensome overhead and delay of internal restructuring.

Better Access to Advanced Tools

Contemporary digital marketing strategies are built on a solid foundation of analytics-driven insights, automated processes, and integrated software solutions. The cost of acquiring licenses for these high-end marketing platforms can pose a significant financial barrier for small- and medium-sized companies attempting to create their own internal capabilities.

When outsourcing digital marketing to an agency, your business immediately gains access to advanced tools and platforms that the agency already uses rather than having to source them on your own. 

Agencies typically utilize enterprise-grade analytics platforms, SEO and keyword analysis tools, paid advertising dashboards, and sophisticated email marketing software. Agencies also have access to beta features and the latest technology releases thanks to their working relationships with major advertising platforms.

Unfortunately, internal teams would require a significant investment to match these many significant capabilities. Thankfully, agencies include them as part of their service package to allow your company to benefit without the need for any additional costs.

More Cost-Effective Over the Long-Term

Hiring an in-house marketing team carries high upfront and ongoing expenses including salaries, benefits, training, and the cost of tools and software subscriptions.

For instance, a single internal manager at around the average salary of $77,000 quickly climbs past upwards of $106,000 once you tack on the average 38.4% benefit load, and that’s before you even buy analytics seats, SEO tool subscriptions, or creative software.

Because of this, even smaller internal marketing teams often require budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, and this figure climbs rapidly when factoring in continued professional development, turnover, and additional hires for skill gaps or new projects. 

Unlike other models, agencies tend to organize their pricing around predictable monthly retainers or specific project scopes to make budgeting more straightforward.

Although some companies fear that these agency fees add up quickly, outsourcing digital marketing services frequently prove more cost-effective, particularly when considering their scalability and overall efficiency. Without the need for internal overhead and fixed salary commitments businesses have greater financial flexibility to allocate resources to other strategic priorities.

When comparing the two models over multiple years, outsourcing digital marketing consistently shows better ROI since companies can save significantly on added costs and expenses.

Greater Capacity for Innovation

While closely aligned with your company’s brand, internal teams can sometimes suffer from tunnel vision. After months or years focusing exclusively on your products or services, core elements of marketing, such as creativity and innovation, can stagnate. 

Without consistent exposure to wider industry trends and diverse challenges, internal marketers may find themselves recycling familiar strategies, missing opportunities for fresh approaches to take. Outsourced digital marketing teams, however, thrive on innovation. 

Recent data shows that only 14% of brands rely exclusively on vendors for video, yet nearly a third juggle both, suggesting that even established in-house teams still turn to agencies for specialized executions like motion graphics, 3D animation, or even advanced analytics.

Because agencies are able to handle multiple accounts across various industries they constantly run into new ideas, utilities, methods, and trends. Regularly collaborating with companies on an array of diverse projects allows agency specialists to bring fresh insights and innovative strategies to each campaign that they take on. 

Agencies also routinely test and refine their approaches based on broad data by quickly identifying any essential trends and best practices your business might otherwise overlook.

Why a Digital Marketing Agency is the Right Choice

While there are benefits to an in-house marketing team, such as direct communication and deep brand integration, hiring a digital marketing agency consistently proves more efficient and beneficial for long-term growth. 

If you’re ready to elevate your marketing strategy and achieve measurable results faster then consider connecting with an experienced digital marketing agency, such as CloudMellow. Book a free marketing strategy consultation today and see how our team can support your broader business goals.