In-House vs. Agency: My Completely Biased Perspective

Before I even get a full sentence into writing this post on whether it’s better to utilize in-house marketing resources or a marketing agency, I’ll acknowledge that I am the president of a marketing agency. That said, if I didn’t believe in the value agencies provide and the advantages of working with them, I would no longer be the president of a marketing agency. I’d find myself a job as a VP of marketing somewhere and go that route.

But I do believe in them. Here are my top six reasons for believing that virtually every company with more than a million in revenues can benefit from working with a quality agency.

1. Cost-effectiveness. If you’ve never calculated what you spend hourly on an in-house resource, don’t do it now. With salary, benefits, paid time off, paid time discussing last night’s game around the water cooler (yes, I worked in corporate America once), etc., the number can be pretty staggering. Agencies may charge what seems like a pretty significant hourly rate or retainer, but it pales in comparison.
2. The pivot, perfected. When circumstances require you to ask a member of your in-house team to jump immediately from one project to the next a half dozen times in one day, you get resentment (even if it’s well-disguised) and you get a delay as the person reprioritizes, refocuses, and ramps up for the new task. At an agency, pivoting is second nature. It’s a finely honed skill that allows us to come up to full speed and full productivity in the blink of an eye.
3. The best of the best practices. The members of your marketing team surely have a strong background, or you wouldn’t have hired them. But the longer they work for you, the less exposure they have to what’s working (and not working) for other companies. Agency teams are immersed in new strategies, tactics, and approaches all day, every day. And they bring everything they learn to bear on your marketing challenges.
4. Speedy specialists. Unless yours is a very large marketing department, you probably don’t have a different person to handle each kind of task. Your team members are probably generalists, to a degree. There’s nothing wrong with that, really, but if you want a task done quickly and done especially well, handing it off to a person who eats, sleeps, and breathes that particular skill—which is what you get with the experts an agency typically employs—is the way to go.  
5. Teamwork with a capital “T”. Agencies, through their own resources and connections within the industry, have the ability to expand to meet any workload. And the beauty is, when your project is complete, you’re no longer paying any of them. The person you added to your in-house team last year when business was booming represents a tough decision when sales go into a serious nosedive this year.
6. Training in new trends and tools. Agencies like ours understand the critical importance of constantly learning new things, especially because marketing is evolving at break-neck speeds. That's why we allocate time each week for our team to receive quality training. When our team members each spend five hours a week in training, the cumulative impact of an eight person staff is a whopping 40 hours of training. A single in-house staff member (who is often swamped) would be challenged to spend that much time training over a two month period.

So, there's my perspective on the value a firm brings to the table. As biased as it may be, I do believe these truths are hard to argue with! If you agree and are wondering how your content marketing efforts could benefit from a relationship with a leading Colorado inbound marketing agency, please contact us!