How Should You Source Your Digital Marketing - In-House Staff or Digital Agency?

When it comes to your business, a strong digital marketing strategy can make or break your success. We understand that deciding upon a strategy is not a simple task; there are many factors and influences that need to be taken into account, including business goals and current market trends.

The question is, who will best help you to achieve these goals, an in-house team or outsourcing to a digital agency?

In this blog, we’ll look at the pros and cons of each approach to help you decide which marketing solution is best for your business.

In-House Team

Often, creating an in-house marketing team is fairly straightforward. If you already have the talent within your company, all you need to do is bring everyone together.  An in-house team needs to be made up of individuals with the right skills, attitudes and enthusiasm to establish and achieve your business’s marketing goals.

A huge plus of working with an in-house team is that they are already familiar with your business’s brand, mission and vision. They will also have an understanding of your company’s processes and procedures. 

You’ll also have the benefit of being able to express your views, monitor the progress of the current marketing activity and whether it’s achieving the goals set out in your strategy. If you aren’t happy with something, all you have to do is go over to your marketing team and have a chat. This communication isn’t always as instant or casual with an outside team although a good agency will always make sure that they maintain frequent, transparent communication.

However, if you don’t have this strong team working for you already, finding the right people isn’t an easy task.

Sourcing new talent is time-consuming and expensive - both in terms of recruiting costs and paying their salaries moving forwards. And the cost of hiring and setting up a new team is money that could be put into your marketing budget.

Outsourcing to a Digital Agency

Often, established digital agencies have experience and success in working with businesses similar to yours, making them ideally placed to help you achieve your growth plans.

You can reap the benefits of having multiple experts working on your marketing activity without having to hire a full team to work in-house. Having access to a broad range of skills for only the hours you need them, rather than having to hire a specialist full-time, means outsourcing is usually a more cost-effective choice. In effect, you don’t just hire an agency, you hire a whole team of experts - often for less than the cost of a single additional staff member.

Outsourcing can also free up time for your in-house staff to focus on business operations and nurturing new clients and leads.

Also, when working with a marketing agency, you can easily scale up your activity depending on what's working best for you, seasonal trends and changes in market conditions. For example, if you were using social media and content marketing but later saw benefits through email marketing, you could easily change your strategy and plan without the problems you might face in-house.

What do we think?

We, obviously, may be a little biased on whether or not to use a digital agency, but we do understand how important the decision about resourcing your marketing is.

Building a full in-house marketing team may be expensive and time-consuming, but it can give you total control and visibility over all of your marketing activity.

But if you want the benefits and scalability that come with working with experts on your marketing strategy, then outsourcing to a digital agency can offer you this. And if you already have an in-house marketing team, but want the benefits of additional skills without having to incur the cost of hiring additional staff, why not consider outsourcing the work you need help with?

Agencies can work alongside and support in-house teams, providing access to a wider skill set and more manpower on projects (e.g designers, developers, branding experts, content writers, SEO and PPC specialists who can help where necessary), creating a better input and enhancing campaign performance.

If you’d like to find out more about how working with a digital agency can benefit your business, contact us here or give us a call on 01484 30 20 10.