In-house vs Agency
This gets argued on cost and decided on capacity. One marketing hire cannot be a good SEO, a good paid media buyer, a good designer and a good developer — and most businesses do not have enough of any one of those to fill a role.
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In-house
Your own team
Choose it when there is enough sustained work to occupy a specialist and the knowledge is worth keeping inside.
Strengths
- Deep product and customer knowledge accumulates internally
- Immediately available, fully aligned with your priorities
- Institutional memory stays when a vendor relationship ends
- Cheaper per hour at high volume
Trade-offs
- Fully loaded cost of $85k–$140k for one generalist
- One person cannot cover every discipline well
- Recruitment takes months and can fail
- Holidays, sickness and resignation are single points of failure
- Tooling costs $500–$2,000 a month on top
Agency
An outside team
Choose it when you need several disciplines, want to start this month, or the work is not steady enough for a full role.
Strengths
- Several specialists for less than one salary
- Starts in weeks, not months
- Tooling and training are the agency’s cost
- Pattern recognition across many similar businesses
- Scales up and down without a redundancy process
Trade-offs
- Divided attention across clients
- Slower to learn your product
- Knowledge leaves with the relationship unless documented
- Quality varies enormously between firms
Where each one actually wins
| Criterion | In-house | Agency |
|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | $85k–$140k plus tooling | $36k–$120k typical |
| Disciplines covered | One, well | Several |
| Time to start | 2–4 months | 2–4 weeks |
| Product knowledge | Deep | Learned over time |
| Availability | Full time, one person | Contracted hours, several people |
| Continuity risk | Single point of failure | Team covers absence |
| Knowledge retention | Stays with you | Leaves unless documented |
Our recommendation
Under about $10,000 a month of marketing activity, an agency almost always returns more — you get several specialists instead of one generalist, and you are not carrying a salary through quiet quarters. Above that, a hybrid usually wins: an in-house marketing manager who owns strategy, brand and the customer relationship, with agencies for the specialist execution. Full in-house makes sense when marketing is your primary growth engine and the volume genuinely supports a team. Whichever you choose, insist that the work is documented — the failure mode of both is knowledge that only exists in one head.
Any question in your mind?
The questions we get asked most, answered without the sales gloss. If yours is not here, ask us directly — you will get a straight answer either way.
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