Marketing agency costs versus doing it in-house

We often see well intentioned businesses opting to plan and launch their full-scale marketing strategy in-house versus reaching out to public relations or marketing agency. It's often all done in an effort to "save costs". However, what most of these businesses discover along the way, is that when you put all of your eggs in one basket - say in the hands of an in-house marketing director, you're risking more than what you thought you were saving. In fact, you're risking the entire stability of your organization's brand reputation and communication channels. To help give you a better understanding of why hiring a marketing agency for your strategy, or at least part of it, is more cost effective and yields better ROI than doing it all in-house, we've detailed some examples below.

Disgruntled Employees Happen

Hopefully you don't have to experience this, but let's say you had to part ways with a former marketing professional; the one that held the reins to your strategy, accounts, and had direct connection with the vast majority of your customer base. Unfortunately, they often have access to accounts like social media, your website, or connections with other businesses that can literally ruin your reputation over night. While this doesn't happen often, it can and does happen and can literally take months to fix - costing your business tens of thousands of dollars in SEO efforts, digital marketing support, media relations, and program support to clean it up, and that's not including the offboarding and onboarding process from HR.

One Person Can Only Do So Much

Let's say you have a marketing superstar on your team! That's awesome. However, there are only so many tasks they can handle at one time. Even if they're on salary, the cost of over-time, paid vacations off (whose managing your strategy while they're gone), can quickly override your entire marketing budget without actually even moving the mark. With an agency, you often pay a pre-agreed upon cost, and an entire team of experts is handling your marketing strategy, building upon it, and producing results to you all within the same hour. It may seem like the upfront cost looks higher than an employee's payroll, but with an agency, you're getting a team of people to help you for the cost of one. For example, one person may be getting you on the news, the other posting a social media campaign, and a third is designing your media kit all in the same hour.

Experience is Key

Agencies often have teams of professionals who have left in-house marketing roles to take on a level-up in their career. The difference is that these professionals have decades of combined experience to bring to your campaign. Their collaborative team effort can literally scale up your efforts just in the brainstorming phase. They also often have more experience with creative campaigns because agency professionals work with dozens of client accounts to handle their marketing strategies. Seeing what other industries are doing and applying those insights to your campaign is always added value.

You Can Scale Up or Scale Down Without Overhead Costs

Agencies can seamlessly scale up or scale down their services with you without having to go through HR, and without the stress of retention. Typically, if you're not committed to an ongoing retainer with an agency, 60-days notice is enough time to adjust your scope of work with them. With employees, entire offboarding processes take up your time and resources while your marketing strategy quickly becomes forgotten.

Quality is Key

Again, only one person can do so much when they're in-house. Having a team of creative experts is helpful when using a full-service agency because you'll have access to designers, writers, strategists and more. That means, these people are providing better quality work or contacts because that's what they focus on and they often have more experience in different markets with a wider network of contacts. When you hire someone in-house they'll often outsource services like design or writing which can quickly become more time consuming and more costly than just hiring an agency to do it. In-house marketing professionals often also stick to one industry they're familiar with - which may seem like an asset if you're a very specific niche, however, that means they may also bring in their old ways of doing things and don't often have room to grow or apply new strategies or technologies.

Our team understands that every client has unique goals to accomplish and budgets to match. Let us help provide insight as to how we can help grow your business through strategic marketing and public relations so that you can start seeing the ROI you're looking for. Setup a call with us by filling out our contact form here. Or you're welcome to give us a call at 719.465.3565 today!