Digital marketing has numerous benefits for your marketing strategy. You can easily reach a wider audience by properly implementing online advertising. However, hiring employees that will manage your business’ digital marketing might be time-consuming. Good thing, there exists a team that caters to your needs: a digital agency.
You might be struggling between two decisions: should I hire a digital agency or build an in-house team for my marketing strategies? This article narrows down your decision into different sections. You’ll get to know how digital agency differs from in-house marketing, along with services, skill sets, cost-effectiveness, and results.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing consists of smaller advertising strategies to help businesses plan for their promotional campaigns. Strategies included in digital marketing involve search engine optimization, content marketing, email marketing, web development, and social media management. All of these strategies provide useful tactics in helping enterprises target and reach a wider audience online.
Without proper planning of digital marketing, you might find yourself burdened with these challenges: the inability to promote your product, strengthen brand reputation, and increase brand awareness. These difficulties can result in a downfall of your business, so ensure that you invest in online marketing strategies.
Now that you’ve heard the importance of digital marketing, you decided to pursue it. Great! But, you have no idea how and when to start, being torn on the hiring employees to incorporate in your business team. Here are the insights you need to know regarding digital agency and in-house marketing team.
Digital Agency vs. In-House Marketing Team
Services
A digital agency encompasses a group of expert people who specialize in online marketing. They usually combine graphic designing and copywriting techniques in creating online advertisements. Digital agencies focus not only on the aesthetics of designs but also on the users’ experiences on digital content.
When it comes to your marketing needs, hiring a digital agency is a good decision. It delivers a wide range of services, including and not limited to web design and development, user experience research, social media management, SEO management, data integration, video creation, and many more. Additionally, hiring a digital agency makes the most out of your money, considering that it has gained experience in focused areas. Unlike an in-house marketing team, a digital agency understands the value of technology in the digital world. It offers robust services to clients, like multiple online solutions, functional design, and branding strategies to businesses.
Another option for businesses is hiring an in-house team to handle online advertising. Compared to a digital agency that can handle multiple clients, in-house only caters to one: their mother company. A great thing about in-house marketing is that the employees know their company’s structure, values, and goals. These people have insights into the processes that they know will work best for their company. Since the in-house team knows its brand, it is much easier for them to create advertisements that could engage and generate leads for their product.
However, an in-house team may lack some expert skills. For instance, you cannot assign your content marketer to do web development, as both require the specific skill sets to create one. You also need to have all the necessary software, tools, and equipment to create your digital ad campaigns. Be mindful that you’re likely to spend more money on in-house compared to hiring a digital agency.
Winner: Digital Agency
Horse Power
In terms of digital solutions, digital agencies have your back. Most of them had processed multiple clients over time. Instead of hiring a full-time senior-level web developer for your in- house marketing team, you can get a team of ten people in a digital agency for the same price. This type of agency dealt with numerous clients, acquiring more collective experiences that will give your business an edge on the competition. Since digital agencies adapt to technological changes, they deliver a more consistent approach in keeping your online marketing strategies updated. Branding and SEO strategies may change; yet, your digital agency consistently applies knowledge and skills to meet your business goals.
Digital agencies always give businesses innovative, fresher ideas for marketing strategies. They will help you create new looks for your ad campaigns, which engages more audience in social media platforms. With digital agencies’ senior-level approaches, your business is likely to have better brand engagement and online visibility.
Compared to digital agencies, an in-house team has working dynamics. They know their company’s values and goals, making it more manageable to handle marketing content. Another benefit of an in-house marketing team is that it is already familiar with the brand. Considering that they work inside, they have direct access to stakeholders, project managers, and the marketing department. This idea makes it more convenient for them to communicate what needs to be done and implemented.
Despite straightforward communication and familiarity with the brand, an in-house team may lack the expertise you need to create digital marketing strategies. Expertise or skill may be lacking, which means that you need to determine how experienced they are in implementing engaging content for digital advertising.
Winner: Digital Agency
Cost-Effectiveness
Not being biased, hiring a digital agency is cheaper than acquiring employees in an in-house marketing team. We can classify business expenses into three categories: hiring process, tools and training, and turnover.
Implementing a team that will manage your digital marketing would be time-consuming. Yet, a digital agency does the job. It contains full-services and skills that cater to your marketing needs. You only need to pay a monthly fee to your digital agency, unlike paying the salary of individual employees in an in-house team. Hiring a digital agency and paying them monthly gets you to access diverse skill sets. Meanwhile, an in-house team can eat more of your business’ resources and can take a longer time to fill the team.
Here’s another fact. If you want to hire an in-house team, make sure that you have all the necessary software or tools needed to create compelling online content. You may want to upgrade your employees’ skills by providing them significant training related to their job. This implies that the more training, the more you need to provide for your in-house team. You don’t have to worry about these things, as the digital agency have leading-edge technologies required to create online marketing. The digital agency is solely responsible for giving proper training to its employees; you only need to pay them monthly to maintain their services on your marketing strategies.
Lastly, a digital agency’s turnover rate is cheaper. Your business is less likely to experience disruptions since the agency is mostly familiar with their accounts. An in-house team does the contrary; it can be time-consuming to hire specific skill sets and provide training. Take note that you should also be considering the major obstructions in the turnover process.
Winner: Digital Agency
Goal-oriented Results
Although both a digital agency and an in-house team help in achieving your business’ objectives, it is undeniable that the latter has some restrictions.
The in-house marketing team knows the company’s values, goals, and processes. This means a great advantage over hiring a digital agency since an in-house team is familiar with its brand. Yet,
digital agencies can overcome this weakness through constant communication with the stakeholders and project manager.
In case you want to focus on your business sales (well, who doesn’t?), you need to hire an expert. Digital agencies spent thousands of dollars to determine the efficiency of a particular tool or software before using them to multiple clients. The most beneficial part of hiring a digital agency is that it delivers excellent services that cater to your marketing needs. While your in-house team stresses the company’s values, it is still important for them to acquire the necessary insights to create cost-efficient ad campaigns online. Aside from this, digital agencies use particular software to track their clients’ success. They usually give a detailed report to clients emphasizing how well their campaign ads reach their target market.
Winner: Digital Agency
Key Takeaways
Based on our comparison, hiring a digital agency is undoubtedly a great decision compared to employing an in-house team. Although both have benefits, digital agencies are more likely to deliver exceptional services, expertise, cost-effectiveness, and goal-oriented results in your marketing strategies.
Digital agencies give you access to diverse specializations and minds, giving you fresher and newer perspectives on creating online advertisements. You can also reach your target audience through digital agencies’ latest tools and technologies that will give you an edge over the competition.
Nevertheless, take note that hiring an in-house team has “hidden” costs. During the duration of your advertisement campaigns, you need to provide training to equip your members updated with innovative ideas. You also need to invest heavily in software and tools to help your in-house employees create captivating online ads.
This article provides the insights you need before hiring a digital agency or an in-house team. Hopefully, you end up in a decision that will accommodate your business marketing needs effectively.
