Hiring a digital marketing agency can be smart. Hiring an in-house marketing team can be smart. So how do you decide which one is right for you, or whether a hybrid approach fits your company best?
My take is that it depends on your goals, your budget, and how much control and day-to-day task management you want on your plate. Here is what I would consider:
Sometimes a few in-house hires are necessary. That's particularly true when your brand voice is incredibly specific, when your industry or company is very niche or very large with multiple campaigns running daily, or when you have a lot of highly opinionated board members, owners, or C-suite leaders (yes, we’ve all met them).
Outsourcing creative work specifically can be really tricky, even to the best creative agencies, when your standards are high, your volume is large, or your brand voice is highly custom.
In this case, a hybrid approach can still work really well. You'd have an in-house hire or team who protects your brand, plus a creative agency that handles the volume of requests. That setup works especially well when you're a big enough company to afford a dedicated team within your creative agency (as opposed to a team who has 18 brand guides to keep top of mind concurrently).
If your company has a lot going on and you're better positioned to delegate, give feedback, set tasks, review work, and make requests, a digital marketing agency like Two Trees can be a real extension of your team.
We have in-house experts in SEO, PPC, paid social, streaming TV, CRM, conversion tracking, reporting, and client success. The goal isn't to steer you toward the strategy that spends the most money. It's to help you show up where it matters and win where you need to.
If your goals center on performance marketing (think lead quality and conversions), an agency can take a lot off your plate, save you on overhead and lower your risk. There's no training, supervision, benefits, or HR paperwork to deal with. You bring on an agency of record and get the work you actually need done.
Most of our clients work with us in a hybrid setup. They have a few key people in-house, usually in marketing, sales, or both. Often a Director of Marketing (or someone in a similar role) is our main contact, and we (or they) partner with their sales team to make sure lead quality is where it needs to be.
On the other hand, we work with partners and owners at law firms and in other niche industries or at smaller companies, where we function as their entire marketing department.
Both setups work really well, it just depends on what you're trying to accomplish and at what speed.
If you're a smaller business and can only afford one marketing hire or one sales hire, I'll tell you every time: make the sales hire and bring in an agency to support your marketing funnel.
Your salesperson will know which leads are qualified and what's actually closing. That's exactly the feedback a good performance marketing agency needs to make campaigns perform. You're basically getting a team of experts for the cost of one hire in this scenario.
If you're a mid-market company (think $10 million or more in annual revenue) and you haven't hired an agency or an in-house team yet, please ask yourself what you're waiting for!
There's so much opportunity out there. We've seen a lot of success with companies like this, including ones who come to us after a less-than-stellar experience with another agency and need a cleanup. We've brought clients their first conversion after years of trying, right when they were convinced paid marketing just doesn't work for them.
As an agency advocate, I'll always say this: if you find a good one, they'll be your best friend. Agencies that are transparent and focused on outcomes like lead quality and conversions help bridge the gap between sales and marketing. Your whole marketing engine runs smoother, and you skip the heavy lifting of scouting, hiring, onboarding, training, and managing.
But not all agencies are created equal! My best advice:
In-house, agency, or a mix of both, the right answer is the one that fits your goals. If you need help figuring it out, we’re more than happy to have a quick discovery call to review your current setup, your scope, and your goals to help you determine an ideal strategy and timeline for accomplishing what you need.
For most small and mid-sized businesses, an agency costs less for what you get. One in-house hire comes with salary, benefits, tools, and training, and still only covers one skill set. An agency gives you access to specialists in SEO, paid media, tracking, and reporting for a single fee.
Yes, and it's the setup most of our clients use. Your in-house team owns the brand, the internal knowledge, and the sales feedback. The agency handles specialized execution. It works best when everyone knows who owns what and is looking at the same reporting.
An agency of record is the main agency responsible for your marketing, or for specific channels like paid media. They handle strategy and execution and are usually your go-to point of contact, so you're not managing a handful of freelancers or vendors on your own.
Ask how their fees are structured and whether they're separate from your ad spend. Ask who owns your ad accounts (it should be you). Ask to meet the people who'd actually work on your account and ask what their reporting looks like. A transparent agency will answer all of this easily.
Once you have someone handling sales and you're ready to invest in bringing in more leads, it's a good time. Your salesperson can tell the agency which leads are qualified, and that feedback is what makes campaigns actually perform.