What Companies Should Consider When Hiring Their Marketing Team
Your company has been steadily on the rise and is ready to begin investing in new marketing as to continue accelerating future growth.
So you are faced with 2 immediate options:
- Hire employee(s) and handle everything in-house
- Outsource to professional freelancer(s)/full-service agency
All too often, when the need for marketing arises, most companies feel compelled to go with option 1 and bring someone on permanently to lead the new campaign. Sure, there are plenty of highly-qualified marketing professionals worthy of being hired as full-time employees — and certainly benefits of doing so. However, there are some pretty sweet benefits of outsourcing your marketing campaign to a professional agency that you should probably consider.
Benefits of Hiring a Marketing Agency Instead of New Employee(s)—
Agencies are very concerned about their reputation
Creative marketing agencies work hard to uphold their reputation as well as their repute for providing a valuable return on investment. Not to say that in-house employees aren’t concerned about their reputation, but small businesses directly rely on theirs in order to attract new customers. By hiring an agency, you will notice a genuine attempt to appease you and meet your expectations because they want you to become advocates of their business.
You will avoid “too many cooks in the kitchen”
Some companies don’t have a designated marketing director and instead divvy the company’s marketing burdens to employees in other roles. Then on the other hand, some companies get hire-happy and overstaff the company with teams far too large to be optimally productive. I think the ideal arrangement would be to have a designated marketing director who is highly competent and able to sphere head the company’s marketing initiatives — including making smart partnerships and outsourcing certain campaigns to full-service agencies that can handle all the details.
You will save time eliminating employee training
Marketing agencies come with qualified professional consultants — experienced, knowledgeable and ready to work with you. Employees come qualified too, granted, but are there to work for you — day in and day out — so they must go through the socialization process to become immersed in your company’s culture. When you hire an agency, there is definitely no need to train them, per se — which is why you are hiring them in the first place. If anything, they’ll be there to train you on best practices.
You benefit from an outside perspective
It’s easy to get tunnel-vision working from the inside of a company for a long time. Employees adapt to their surroundings at work and tend to get stuck in their ways. It becomes hard after a while to express concerns or implement new processes. I’ve seen amazing results from collaborative marketing efforts where one of the team members is not a part of the company. When we are “zoomed in” on the day-to-day tasks in our jobs, we can easily miss bigger connections. Employees resist things they don’t like about the company, yet quickly dismiss certain solutions not seen as plausible right off the bat. Agencies are better able to approach your business from the consumer’s point of view.
It’s cost-effective to outsource a full-service agency
Salaries for marketing professionals are not cheap. To effectively execute a full-service marketing campaign, you will need a variety of expertise. You will either need to hire several employees, each with specialized skills — or outsource your campaign to a full-service agency that will handle everything at a much lower rate.
Think about the average marketing employees’ salaries — plus all the associated benefits that are expected to come along — health insurance, dental/vision plans, life insurance, 401K plans, paid holidays, paid time off, sick days, training days, and more! That is not even including the cost of overhead — supplying employees with spaces to work, computers, all the necessary software programs and tools needed to perform. Here is a typical marketing team and their associated salaries — Creative Director: $73K, Web Designer + Developer: $63K, SEO Specialist: $60K, Copywriter: $55K, Graphic Designer: $53K, Social Media Manager: $49K.
Plus, when you hire full-time in-house employees, let’s face it — not each and every day is going to be utmost productive. There will be plenty of times where employees are merely milking the clock, putting in their time with very little in return. Agencies — on the other hand — are outsourced for certain tasks and are more “on a mission” to complete said task in a timely fashion, because unlike employees, time is money for agencies. Agencies don’t get a set salary from you; the more projects they take on, the more they earn — so agencies are famous for moving quickly and efficiently.
Employees cost companies way more in the long run. It is much more economical to outsource individual marketing campaigns to an agency that will ensure a team of professionals are efficiently managing your project around the clock at a more reasonable rate.
You can rest assure knowing you are in good hands
What in-house marketer has time to read up on all the latest social media, SEO, content marketing and branding news? Usually they are so buried in day-to-day tasks managing the company that there is no focus on everything else needed to ensure a well-balanced campaign. The majority of reputable digital marketing agencies take their jobs very seriously and are constantly advancing their skills and relevance in the design field through continued education programs — investing time into leveling up on the latest trends, tools, technologies and strategies to better serve their clients. Agencies spend their own time learning how to use new resources — without charging you for the time, as an employee would.
Bottom Line
There are good reasons why companies go through the trouble and expense of hiring in-house marketing employees. Keeping employees close means they are forced to learn your brand inside and out. Companies need people who are willing to eat, sleep, breathe, and promote their corporate culture around the clock. Yet, agencies do just that — and are the best route to take for your marketing campaigns.
