The Pros & Cons of Outsourced Marketing vs In-House Marketing

Every day we hear of CEOs and company executives debating whether to outsource their marketing or handle it in house. This is a serious decision as this is a long-term investment in your company, and effective marketing controls not only your company’s image and brand, but your traffic and sales.

Today we are going to go over some of the Pros and Cons of Outsourced Marketing vs In House, and at the end you can decide which is the best fit for your own company.

In-House Marketing Team:

Pros:

Familiarity: An in-house marketing team is a part of your company. They are your employee so will be involved in all company training, activities and meetings. They will know your products, team and niche very thoroughly and by being in the office, they may get inspired by things they see and come up with ingenious marketing ideas.
Dedication: They are your employee so they are working for you full-time. This means they are available whenever you need them and are fully focused around your marketing campaigns.
Easily Accessible: They can rapidly communicate with you and get their marketing campaigns approved by the executives of the company, suggest various social media posts, get a new email marketing campaign going, etc. As a marketer, their job is easier by being in the building with those they are doing the marketing for.

Cons:

High Expense: An in-house marketing team will always be more expensive than an outsourced agency. There is a high-demand for good marketers and most marketing agencies pay a good salary so you would have to compete with that. Additionally, it’s not just the expense of the employees, but the expense of any software, programs or equipment they may need. It’s easily double the cost to hire just one in-house marketer than it is to hire a marketing agency.
Lack of Versatility: The chances of you finding an in-house marketer who can handle every aspect of your marketing including web-design, SEO, paid ads, blogging, social media and email marketing, is very slim. You will most likely have to hire a 3 person team to cover these subjects as each of these subjects have their own specialists. For example somebody who is great at social media and blogging may not be good at SEO and somebody who is an SEO expert may not be good at content writing.
One-Track Minded: This could be a good and a bad thing. The familiarity and being in the office day to day, can help a marketer come up with a good idea that an outsourced agency may have never thought of. On the reverse, an in-house team may not have the perspective that an outsourced team has. An in-house team only works with one industry and one company and because of that tunnel-visioned approach, may miss cool marketing trends or ideas in the whole field of marketing. They may not catch something such as one social media platform suddenly becoming less effective for ALL companies in that industry while another social media platform suddenly goes on the rise.

Outsourced Marketing:

Pros:

Full Toolbox and Connections: Not only do they have access to all of the software and digital equipment they need to market, but any good marketing agency has several different relationships and partnerships with other companies that you may need. A marketing agency has the ability to get bloggers, influencers and different like-minded organizations to mention your company, and this is from established relationships that agency has built. Also, there’s a lot of software you need to create and run marketing campaigns and they have it all.
Far Less Expense: You could hire a holistic marketing agency to do the work of 3 full-time employees for a fraction of the price. It will always be less expensive to outsource your marketing to a marketing agency.
Perspective: Marketing agencies can bring a new perspective to a company and create marketing campaigns that perhaps nobody looked at before. If you take a group of 20 or so marketing gurus, sit them at a table and have them research your company, go through your website, read about your products and any information you give them, chances are they will come up with some pretty incredible ideas. A lot of marketing agencies do competitor research, find out key words and do a pretty thorough study of your company before they even start working on the campaign. Also, many marketing agencies take a sort of “round table” approach where they come up with many great ideas.

Cons:

Lack of Familiarity: A marketing agency may not be as familiar with your products. You have to meet with them and give them as much knowledge as possible so they get familiar. It will be your job to make sure they fully understand what you are selling as a company, so that they can market it.
Multiple Clients: A marketing agency has multiple clients, so they won’t be at your beck and call. They will be balancing your campaign with other marketing campaigns.
Risk of Hiring Wrong Agency: There are a lot of amazing agencies out there, but there are also a lot of bad ones. As a marketing agency has the ability to market themselves and look amazing whether they are or not, it’s hard to pick the right one.

The above are just some of the points to consider when making your marketing plans. There is a third option of hiring one in-house marketing coordinator or director and having that person be in charge of working with a marketing agency. This is still less expensive than hiring a full team and you get the “best of both worlds”.

Here at DG Studio we strive to create partnerships with our clients and are a part of your team. You get a dedicated account manager who you can reach 24/7, and we have an unparalleled level of transparency where you have access to every aspect of your marketing, editable and transferable files for all content and graphics, and you can see your statistics and marketing return on investment at any time.

If interested, please call for a free marketing consultation and you can decide if we are a good fit or if an in-house team might be better.