How to choose between an in-house team vs. external marketing team

Is your internal marketing team experienced enough to develop the necessary marketing objectives to support your business goals?

Do you have people that can analyze the market, make scenarios, decide which activities would bring the biggest ROI in the given time frame and carry them out?

Also, take into account that you need at least one marketing senior with enough expertise to also manage the team and guide them.

What’s undoubtful is that an external marketing team is well-versed and experienced in their field of activity, with an overview of many industries, many projects, and clients for which they planned and implemented a marketing plan.

The more marketing objectives you have with high complexity, the more you might opt for an external team.

We saw in one of our articles that a Romanian in-house marketing team costs around 5.562 euros/month.

If your business is in the beginning and your budget is quite limited, take into account the costs of hiring a team, training them, paying and offering benefits so that they decide it is worth staying for a long time in your company.

Also, you need to offer salaries at the minimum level of the market, otherwise your turnover rates could become unbearable and disrupt your activities.

Another aspect is related to the types of marketing activities you expect to happen and if they can be accomplished only by one person.

How specialized or well-versed should this person be? Is it possible for such a person to exist in the market?

Agencies have different prices when it comes to their activities, which can be an advantage.

You can research the market and services that they offer and negotiate the contract and budget.

Also, an agency can offer you estimative predictions of your spending and also accurate reports about this.

Specialized agencies also have a closer relationship with third-parties such as ash media outlets and marketing platforms that would cost you less if you have a marketing agency as a partner to do your marketing.

If you already have a marketing team, you need to evaluate their skills, knowledge, and abilities to see if they are well equipped to fulfill their tasks and acquire new customers.

If they are not prepared enough, do you have the resources and time to allocate for their growth?

If you don’t have someone specialized and responsible for your marketing activities, what kind of expertise and experience should that person have?

Can you also offer an adequate payment and is only one person enough for everything that you want to accomplish?

Marketing agencies are each specialized in different types of services.

The good news is that you can most probably find all or almost all of the necessary skills and knowledge in one agency.

They evolve in time as well and bring new capabilities into their services packs.

It is very important to know exactly what you need in order to simplify your search and to know how to answer the “What can we help you with?”.

An in-house team works best for companies that want to have all its operations and support functions inside, supervise them and direct them.

If you want a team that knows your company inside out and is highly capable of marketing its product 10 years from now on, you can opt to grow your own in-house marketers.

It is definitely not an option when you need skills for a short or medium length of time.

Hire and grow an internal marketing team if you anticipate that you will need constant marketing efforts in the future, not only now.

Outsourcing marketing activities is both a short-term and long-term solution, depending on your business objectives.

If you wish to focus solely on your core activities, we recommend to partner with an agency and negotiate contracts when you anticipate your marketing plans need to be put again into motion.

The wider the range of services, the more people you will need. Or the harder it becomes to find employees good at many types of tasks.

Also, take into consideration the limited amount of time in a day in the end that people can work.

Outsourced team means you can ask for a wide variety of marketing services.

Marketing agencies are agile and flexible thanks to all the employees with various skills that it has.

Therefore, assembling a team for a project is a matter of a few days.

This refers to how much control do you want to have over the marketing activities done and how fast communication works.

An in-house team is easier to supervise, offer feedback and communicate with it.

Information reaches your ears very fast.

There is a certain degree of control that you can establish from the beginning to have with the agency.

You can always ask to have updates, calls to check up on what is happening, weekly and monthly reports.

You cannot control and supervise all the people that are involved in your marketing activities, but at the same time, since they are experts in your field, you should rest assured and focus on your core business activities while the team does its job and keeps you posted with what’s happening.

If you envision that in your company people collaborate face-to-face, know each other and solve problems together, an in-house marketing team could be your answer.

Also, if you want to be involved in the marketing plan and give ideas and inputs constantly, grow your in-house team.

Sounds good to receive weekly and monthly updates and reports about how the marketing activities are going?

Do you prefer to discuss only when it's necessary about what results were achieved and what are the next strategies? We recommend you partner with an external marketing team in this case.