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As a business owner, a pressing question for you would be to decide whether to hire employees to form an in-house marketing team or to invest in an external digital marketing agency to handle your work for you.
Just as any other investment, this too will have its pros and cons. However, this is not a one-tier task! You have to make a calculated and well thought out decision and consider what suits your organisation the best.
In this article, we will discuss some factors that you have to keep in mind while deciding whether to hire a digital marketing agency or form an in-house marketing team.
So, without wasting much time let’s get started.
In-House Vs Outsourcing Digital Marketing: Factors to Consider
There are a few factors you should keep in mind while deciding between an in-house marketing team and a digital marketing agency. Here are 7 considerations to keep in mind to help you gain a clearer picture of what you need.
1. Time Vs Money
Let’s start this list with the most important factor– “Money”. The basic objective of any kind of business is to earn profit and make money. That also means spending your company’s money smartly.
If you’re considering building an in-house team, keep in mind that you’d be paying for every employee. However, at this cost, you’d be getting a fully dedicated team of digital marketers at your beck and call. You’d have complete control over the in-house marketing team.
At the same time, if you’re considering hiring a digital marketing agency, you’d definitely be saving money. However, a digital marketing agency might face difficulty in understanding your business the way your in-house team would. At the cost of saving money, you’d have to let go of the reins a bit as a third party would be taking over your marketing communication and mediums.
2. Skill Sets
Marketing strategies vary from one company to another. While hiring an in-house marketing team, you will have to find people proficient in working online, web-designing, SEO, social media marketing, and other skills associated with digital marketing to develop creative ads campaigns & more.
You may not always find one individual who possesses all these skills. This would be the time where you can outsource your marketing needs to a digital marketing agency. While dealing with a digital marketing agency, you will pay a digital marketing agency as a whole and not each individual who gets involved in the project. Whereas while dealing with an in-house marketing team, you’ll be paying every employee involved.
A digital marketing agency generally hires individuals proficient in specific fields of digital marketing, so rest assured that you will see effective progress. Thus, if you have someone working in your in-house marketing team who does not have the particular skills needed for a project, you can outsource that specific project without having to worry further.
Finding someone full-time who matches all your criteria would be a tedious job, so remember that you have the option to look at an external digital marketing agency as well.
Tip: You can train your in-house marketing team with IIDE’s Short-term Certification Course in digital marketing which will help them to enhance their skills in the specific areas of digital marketing.
And in case you want each & every employee of your team to understand every aspect of digital marketing, we recommend that you check our Online digital marketing course designed by the industry experts to help them learn everything they need to know about digital marketing.
3. What Are Your Values & Vision?
As a brand owner, there are some guiding principles you follow and you ensure that your employees follow them too. These values build an atmosphere within the company and set the pace at which you grow. Keeping your company’s values and vision in mind will help you stay on the right track and choose the most appropriate option.
Hiring a full-time marketing executive would mean that he/she would dedicate all their time and effort, following your values, culture and vision closely to get you the best outcome.
However, if you outsource this work, marketing agencies would not be able to work very closely to your company’s moral standards as they would have multiple clients to cater to at the same time.
4. Newer Age Technology & Methods
We all know that the world is rapidly developing especially in the fields of technology and digital spheres. As a digital marketing agency, they would be the first people to receive these updates and put them to the test. These ideas and progress in technology might just be what your brand needs to gain visibility.
However creative your in-house marketing team maybe, they would lack the power of immediate access to state-of-the-art technology, innovations and ideas.
5. How much are you willing to spend?
You might assume that hiring a full-time in-house marketing team would be cheaper for you in the long run. However, you must keep in mind that if you do build an in-house marketing team, you’d have to pay their salaries, give extra benefits and added perks as you normally would with your other employees.
However, hiring a digital marketing agency might cost you almost the same annually, but, as mentioned earlier, you will pay for an entire team at the cost of one person.
According to the ongoing salaries paid to different digital marketing roles, you will pay around 5-10lakhs per annum to each employee, excluding benefits. Whereas you’d pay the same or maybe a little more to an agency for higher perks. Pick what you feel suits your company best in the present and how much you can afford to invest.
6. Urgency of the Campaign
A major factor contributing to your ultimate decision would be based on how fast you need something done.
If you are looking to grow your brand by doing something new and doing it immediately, you cannot sit through the tedious process of hiring new employees. To work quickly and efficiently, you can hire marketing agencies to do the work for you. They will come up with a detailed plan to market and grow your brand and keep you looped in every step of the way.
However, if you build an in-house team now, they’d be more well versed with what your organisation needs and would treat every campaign as a priority as it would be one of the few things on their plate.
7. Tools Required
Digital marketing, although efficient, is not as straightforward as traditional marketing. You will require special tools and services offered by different organisations and companies to run your marketing campaigns. These include tools like CRM tools, SEO tools, automation tools and more. Most of these are not free or partially free.
Thus, hiring an in-house marketing team and buying these tools might pinch your pockets. However, in the long run, it could also act as an added advantage, and you could always make use of the free tools available over the internet.
A digital marketing agency will already have these tools because this is exactly what their job entails. You might have to pay a lump sum for the package you choose without having to invest in anything extra.

Kartik Mittal
SEO Manager & Corporate Trainer
Updated on: Dec 31, 2024
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Kartik Mittal
SEO Manager & Corporate Trainer
Kartik is a certified digital marketer with a passion for imparting knowledge as a digital marketing trainer. Being a Ex-Performics he specializes in SEO (Search Engine Optimization), ASO (App Store Optimization), and Website Development.