An in-house marketing team gives you day-to-day control and knowledge of your business. An agency adds specialist skills, an outside perspective and capacity when you need it. A hybrid setup combines the two: your team owns the priorities, while agency specialists support the strategy or delivery.
The useful question is who should own the work, which skills you need regularly, and where your team needs a bit more muscle.
At a glance: in-house, agency or both?
- In-house: a good fit for a steady workload that needs close knowledge of your products, customers and internal teams.
- Agency: useful for specialist projects, an outside view or extra capacity without building every discipline into your team.
- Hybrid: useful when you have an internal marketing lead but need senior advice, creative skills or help getting the work out of the door.
When an agency is the better fit
An agency can give you access to specialist experience without building every discipline into your team. That is useful for a new brand, a website, a campaign or work that sits outside your usual skillset. Handing it over to people with the right experience and cross-industry knowledge can take a weight off.
It still takes a clear brief, regular contact and someone inside the business to make decisions. Delegation works better when everyone knows who is holding the steering wheel.
The trade-off with an agency
You’ll need to agree how decisions, feedback and budgets work. If you’re a control freak, handing over the work might take a deep breath. The aim is to pay for the expertise you need, with enough access to your team for the agency to understand the business. The insider knowledge of how you work is still yours to share.
When an in-house marketing team is the better fit
If you like to keep all aspects of your business close, the in-house route could be a great option. You get full control and no one knows the organisation like you do. You’ve built relationships with your team and you have a clear working process. You can hire and train the disciplines you want and need.
The trade-off with an in-house team
You’ll need to budget for recruitment, salaries, software, equipment and time to train and manage the team. A small team may still need outside help for specialist work or busy periods. Bringing the work in-house doesn’t automatically make it cheaper; that depends on the workload and skills you need.
What costs more: in-house marketing or an agency?
There isn’t a universal cheaper option. Start with the same brief and compare the total cost of delivering it.
- For an in-house team, include recruitment, salaries, employer costs, training, tools and management time.
- For an agency, include the agreed project fee or retainer, production or third-party costs, and your team’s time on briefing and approvals. Check what happens when the scope changes.
- For a hybrid setup, add both sides together and be clear about which work stays with your team.
Then ask whether each option gives you the skills and capacity you actually need. A lower fee is less useful if the work sits on a to-do list for six months.
When a hybrid marketing setup makes sense
A bit of both can be a sensible answer. Suspiciously convenient coming from an agency? Fair point. It works when the responsibilities are clear.
Your team keeps the insider knowledge and day-to-day decisions. The agency provides senior advice, specialist delivery or extra capacity. The useful bit is deciding who owns each part of the work.
But there’s another choice to make.
We know. Life gives us too many choices and sometimes you don’t want to have to make another but we’ve only got two for you to pick from.
Agency strategy, in-house delivery
You hire agency marketing managers to drive the strategy and your own team carry out the work.
What you get:
You get access to senior-level experts across different disciplines. The agency helps with priorities, planning and direction; your team manages the day-to-day activity. Agree what advice, reviews and handovers are included, so a strategy document doesn’t become an expensive doorstop.
In-house strategy, agency delivery
In this situation the strategy sits with your organisation. You handover to the agency to execute the work.
What you get:
You can bring in the disciplines the brief needs, from design and copy to web development. Your team sets the priorities and gives feedback, while the agency handles agreed parts of the delivery. Extra capacity can also help with busy periods or gaps in the team.
Either model can be scoped around a specific project or ongoing support. Agree the work, responsibilities and terms up front, so you know what you’re paying for.
How to make an in-house and agency partnership work
Now for the prep work, and you know how important that is. Don’t cut corners here.
If you fake tan over skin that hasn’t been properly exfoliated, patches happen. Patches are not a good thing in this metaphor.
- Start with the business objective. Agree what the work needs to achieve and how you’ll judge whether it has helped.
- Map the work and the skills. Decide what your team can handle, where you need specialist input and where extra capacity would help.
- Name the decision-makers. Be clear about who briefs, who approves and who gives the final answer when feedback conflicts.
- Make the handover useful. Share brand guidelines, customer knowledge, existing work and the access needed to do the job.
- Agree the practical bits. Set the scope, budget, timing, review points and what happens if priorities change.
This is all about tailoring the agency to your business. It doesn’t have to be like the old days, you can have a pick-and-mix approach – and everyone loves a pick and mix!
Do you want an agency that can give you the best of both worlds? Explore our marketing support for in-house teams, see how we approach branding and web design, or tell us what your team needs.
