In marketing, using the right channels is key to maximizing your advertising budget, however, identifying that channel doesn’t come easy. For example, the raving app Tiktok has garnered over 1.5 billion downloads and this number keeps increasing. Recently, Snapchat users have pushed on to higher numbers reducing the gap between them and Twitter.
With all this data, would it be better if you hire a contractor, or marketing agency, or go in-house for your marketing? In this article, I will briefly outline all the pros and cons of each option available and this will help you decide faster. Remember, the choice you make will affect your sales and business.
Contractors
Contractors are a unique set of professionals who work with you based on an initial agreement between the two of you. These contractors are professionals who work singularly or have a small team of few people. Contractors usually work remotely and this gives them a lot of flexibility for doing their job well.
Pros of Hiring a Contractor
A contractor offers a lot of advantages to your agency when you have a working relationship. Their experience and professionalism will ensure you devote your time to other areas of the business. Some of these advantages include:
- Highly experienced professionals
- Little or no supervision
- Don’t take payroll taxes
- Termination option available every time
These pros are instrumental especially when you don’t have a lot of office space to accommodate more people and you want the best hands with authentic experience on board.
Cons of Hiring a Contractor
Contractors offer you a lot of benefits when they come into your team, however, these benefits come at a great price. We won’t be looking at the cost of these benefits now, as we will focus on some downsides involved when you bring in a contractor to take care of your digital marketing business.
Some cons involved in hiring a contractor include:
- Impersonalized attention to you because of multiple projects
- Higher fees compared to an in-house agency
- Inability to perform a variety of tasks
These cons hit hard when you want professionals who can help you with a variety of tasks and who wouldn’t take a huge cut on your budget. So, if you’re in this category, you have about two options; hiring a digital marketing agency or going in-house.
Marketing Agency
Hiring a digital marketing agency holds a lot of advantages for you as a businessperson. However, before we delve into the details of these benefits, let’s take a sneak peek into digital marketing agencies, their functions, and what they offer to your business.
It’s really simple. A digital marketing agency is a firm involved in helping business professionals like you build their influence using all forms of digital devices. Essentially, the core aim of every digital marketing agency is to make your business visible to your target market leveraging all forms of digital platforms.
Pros of Hiring a Marketing Agency
Before you eliminate the option of hiring a digital marketing agency, let me tell you some pros you will miss out on. They include;
- Little supervision and no need for training time
- Professional counsel
- Less worry about employee problems
- Multitasking ability
With a good digital marketing agency by your side, you accrue less cost in hiring and firing of incompetent in-house staff, focus on more important tasks, and get professional counsel concerning the latest trends and platforms you must join to grow your brand and business simultaneously.
Cons of Hiring a Marketing Agency
Notwithstanding the professional help and time, you will save by hiring a marketing agency, these agencies might not give you the control you want especially when you want to see how every dollar gets spent, and every work gets done.
Some cons involved in hiring a marketing agency include:
- Little control over marketing campaigns
- High fees–which cost less when you hire an in-house professional
- Impersonalized attention to you because of multiple projects
Every marketing agency functions differently as some of them offer personalized attention to you and your business. At Socialander, this is what we do – we give you the attention you need in order to maximize results. Book a Free Marketing Consultation with our team by clicking “I want a Free Consultation Session” and you’ll marvel.
In-House
If you love to have excellent control over your marketing, then this option should perfectly suit you. Building an in-house marketing team is an interesting experience especially when you’re that leader who loves training his junior partners.
Although a lot of mega-companies opt for hiring digital agencies, you can start by building an in-house team when you don’t have a lot of capital to burn and you also command a commendable level of knowledge of digital marketing platforms, products, and processes.
Even if you don’t want expert knowledge of digital marketing, hiring a professional to train your staff for some time is also another pathway you can thread. Notwithstanding there are no guarantees of getting an in-house team, the coin can flip.
Pros of Hiring An In-House Team
Building an in-house agency can be helpful to you in so many ways and we will glance at some benefits involved. These benefits include:
- Full-time employees show higher commitment levels
- No distractions from external project
- One employee can be multi-skilled
With committed staff willing to take on over one responsibility and undistracted from external projects, your in-house team can surely deliver quality results to your clients without fail.
Cons of Hiring An In-House Team
Hiring an in-house team is pretty helpful, however, there’s a lot that comes with an in-house team that you might not see from the get-go. Some cons of hiring an in-house team include:
- Higher overhead costs
- An employee can end the contract after training
- A multi-talented employee will charge you a lot of money
- Demands your attention on almost every single matter
- Demands a recruiting process and many pieces of training
- Introduces administrative roles
If you were to make your calculations correctly, hiring in-house staff is highly demanding and there are no guarantees you’ll achieve what you want. More so, you increase the workload on yourself by adding administrative roles and rationing time for building staff morale and overseeing projects.
FAQs on Should You Hire a Contractor, Marketing Agency, or Go In-House?
Contractors offer specialized skills for specific projects without a long-term commitment. They can be cost-effective for short-term needs and bring in expertise for specific tasks.
Marketing agencies provide a comprehensive range of services and a team of experts with diverse skills. They often have experience working with various industries and can offer a strategic and holistic approach to your marketing needs.
The cost-effectiveness depends on the scope of your marketing needs. For ongoing and diverse tasks, a marketing agency might be more cost-effective than hiring multiple contractors. Agencies may also offer package deals or retainer options.
An in-house team is dedicated solely to your business, allowing for a deep understanding of your brand and goals. It promotes seamless communication and collaboration but may require more resources, including salaries, benefits, and training.
Conclusion
Before you can decide on what option will be highly beneficial to you, think about the type of business you do, your market, and the numbers involved. It’s important because not every business needs to have an in-house agency, unlike some other businesses.
Identifying the marketing channels that will give you higher profit levels is also another important thing you must determine. You must discover whether most of your target market spends time on Facebook or Twitter. Also, you must determine if you would love to occupy a top spot in all search engine page results.
When you have these results in the bag, you will consider your budget – how much money and time am I willing to put into this project? It’s a critical factor that would determine if hiring an agency would be vital in case you had less time or if getting an in-house team would be beneficial if you had more time.
You understand that hiring a team involves rounds and rounds of interviews and training, and all these hit hard on your overhead cost. The patience involved in training staff and waiting till s/he gets up to speed and performs at the level wherein you want to see them perform.
Taking any decision has its pros and cons, however, some hit harder on us. However, everything largely depends on your time, budget, organizational goals, and your weaknesses.
