In today’s competitive world, every business needs digital marketing to help the business grow, generate leads and increase revenue. Whether, you need SEO, email marketing or social media marketing, digital marketing can really help your business.A dilemma about digital marketing that companies face is whether to keep it in-house or partner with an external agency. It is a critical decision requiring a thorough analysis.
Let’s look at the pros and cons of such a decision.
A full-time employee is closely invested in a company’s success and growth than any external agency team can ever be. So, alignment with company’s values will be easier to accomplish. Moreover, the team knows the brand intimately and can make informed marketing decisions. This will be possible from day 1, as compared to an external agency which will take time.
It’s easy to access an in-house team for brainstorming sessions, content approval, or meetings as compared to an external agency, where you need to call, email or make appointments to meet each other.
External agency with multiple clients will not be able to focus the same way on your business as an in-house team can. If you want a team to focus 100% of the time on your business, in-house team will be a better bet.
Businesses that prefer to have complete control over their marketing should go for an in-house team.
Your team needs to have a deep expertise in different aspects of digital marketing (SEO,PPC, web development etc). Building an on-house team with all this skill sets is very difficult. Agencies, naturally have professionals specialising in all aspects of digital marketing.
For small-to-midsized companies, an in-house marketing team is a massive commitment. The cost of maintaining these teams is one of the most significant drawbacks of internal marketing.
Besides the cost of hiring and maintaining an in-house marketing team, you also have marketing software expenses ranging from SEO tools, to freelance services, like graphic design or web development.
Quality of work can suffer when office politics gets in the way. But this is a non-factor when your marketing is managed by an outside agency.
Scalability is a real issue with internal teams as it takes time and effort to train new members to join the team etc. External agencies on the other hand, have a large number of employees with various skill sets, which helps them to scale quickly.
Exit of a key team member can completely derail your marketing efforts if you have an in-house team. On the other hand, external agencies have a deep pool of relevant talent and can replace the team member without affecting the digital marketing campaign.
An experienced agency can make all the difference to a business when used correctly. Having a wide range of expertise allows the agency to take on any kind of requirement that may arise.
Digital marketing agencies come with an arsenal of software and tools to help them achieve client objectives. Moreover, since they use the tools across a section of clients, the price amortised over the number of clients, than if the same service is purchased by the in-house team directly.
The width and depth of the degree of specialisation of an external agency allows the business to take advantage of multiple channels from PPC to SEO. Compared to this, an in-house team will have to get by with a limited set of specialties.
This is a major advantage of external agencies as mentioned earlier.
The overall cost of hiring and running an in-house digital marketing team is much higher than if you choose an external agency.
Accessing an external agency on a regular basis is much more difficult than doing the same with an in-house team.
The focus of an external agency is not completely on your business as they handle multiple clients.
Companies that prefer to have complete control over their marketing campaign will experience issues when working with a digital marketing agency.
A business can decide on going for an in-house team or an external agency based on their particular requirements and abilities. They could even prefer a hybrid system if it so suits them.
