Should you hire in-house or hire an agency? When it comes to online marketing, this can be a critically important decision.

Now, as the market researcher of an online advertising agency, I’ll admit to being a bit biased on this issue. However, having worked in-house and hired numerous agencies over the course of my career, I’ve also learned a lot about the strengths and weaknesses of each route.

With that in mind, give you an honest breakdown of the differences between hiring in-house and hiring an agency.

Basically, there are 2 reasons why companies typically pick an agency over hiring in-house.

1. Skill Diversification

In general, online marketers tend to have very specific skill sets. You have paid search specialists, social media masters, content marketing mavens, conversion rate rulers…and the list goes on.

But the thing is, online marketing is too complex for one person to be an expert at everything.

So, if you hire a paid search specialist in-house, you can expect them to do a great job at paid search. But what if paid search isn’t panning out? Or what if the competition is driving great results with content marketing?

What do you do then?

Obviously, you could just hire a content marketer, but that may not necessarily be in the budget or you may not be completely sold on the idea yet. What should you do?

Companies that hire in-house often struggle to diversify their online marketing efforts. After all, investing in a new marketing channel is a risk. If you hire someone and it doesn’t work out, you’ve just created a very difficult situation for yourself.

As a result, these companies often end up stuck in one marketing channel. And, often, that channel isn’t even working that well.

Is that your designer’s fault?

Of course not! But, if you’re siloing your marketing skills like this, you probably won’t end up getting the results from online marketing that you’re hoping for.

On the other hand, with a good agency, you have access to a wide range of skills and experience.

Agency gives you assurity and trust of success, because they have deep knowledge about implementing marketing skills.

For example, at Disruptive, all of our account managers are members of marketing teams that include experts with a wide range of online marketing specialties: AdWords, Facebook, design, site testing, etc.

Individually, each team member is good at what they do, but collectively, they provide much more value than any single person could.

As a result, our clients don’t end up with account managers who have tunnel vision or who lose creativity over time. Instead, our clients get 7 sets of eyes on their account on a regular basis.

So, when it comes to skill diversification, should you go with an agency or hire in-house?

Really, when you get right down to it, this is a question of resources. For larger companies, it may be worth the investment to hire someone in-house to diversify their marketing efforts.

After all, if your marketing needs are significant enough that they justify hiring a dedicated expert, you may get the best results from hiring someone to work on a channel full-time.

However, for most businesses, agencies are a great option for diversification.

Most companies don’t need to hire a full team of dedicated marketers, so working with an agency can be a great way to widen your marketing net without significantly increasing your overhead.

2. Predictability

Great online marketers are brilliantly creative, but with that creativity comes an aversion to boredom.

Imagination is the key of online marketing. Online marketer are having enough knowledge , creativity and imagination power tobe successful .

Imagine looking at the same set of keywords every day and being expected to make magic happen. It’s possible but it can get boring.

If you have to get someone new up to speed every time your in-house marketers get an itch to try something new, you may find yourself struggling against a marketing “glass ceiling.”

In fact, we’ve had many clients leave us because they hired someone internally to manage their online marketing and then come back when that person leaves for bigger and better things.

On the other hand, at an agency, digital marketers get to work with a variety of businesses. This challenges them and keeps their creative juices flowing, which helps improve employee retention.

That being said, even an agency doesn’t have 100% employee retention. But, when you work with a good agency, the agency should have multiple people involved with your account.

As a result, if your primary point of contact moves on, gets sick or goes on leave for some reason, you won’t have to wait for the agency to get someone up to speed on your business. They’ve already got people on hand who understand your company and know how to keep the ball rolling.

Conclusion

There are a lot of reasons why people pick an agency or simply decide to keep things in-house. Both are completely viable ways to grow your business.

However, agencies offer a lot in the way of skill diversification, predictability and partner perks, which is why many businesses find that going with an agency is the best way to grow their business.

I hope you find this blog post knowledgeable.

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Thank you!