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Is Your In-House Marketing Team Limiting Your Growth?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Maybe you’re experimenting with Google AdWords, but suffering from a low CTR on your ads. Or you started posting on Instagram lately, but you’re not getting any engagement. Some of your marketing channels are performing excellently, but for others, it feels more like you’re marketing for the sake of marketing … without any clear direction behind why you’re doing it.

Sound familiar? These are all signs you could benefit from some outside marketing help.

In-house marketing vs. an outside agency

Besides the joy of growing a team, there are some real, clear benefits to having your own in-house marketing team. Your marketers understand your brand voice, your business goals, and the competitive landscape of your particular industry better than anyone.

But there are plenty of disadvantages to relying on in-house marketing alone. It’s more expensive, difficult to scale, and prone to silos and productivity issues.

Pair the unique value of your team with the expertise of an outside agency, and see your growth skyrocket.

Easily scale your marketing efforts

With an in-house marketing team, you’re limited to the specific skills, growth potential, and experience of your team members. Especially for smaller teams and startups, it’s common for employees to get stretched into generalist roles. This distracts your team from their core competencies, leading to less-than-optimal output, mistakes, and job dissatisfaction.

With an agency, you can scale as needed to fully complement your in-house team. Ready to expand into PPC but your team’s expertise lies in content marketing and affiliate programs? Hire an agency to build out a PPC program that fits your needs and budget, from just a few hours of work here and there to the equivalent of a full team member.

Agencies are exceptionally helpful during periods of rapid growth or downsizing for your business. Simply scale their hours so your marketing output stays the same.

Benefit from an outside perspective

It’s normal to get caught up in your company’s worldview and make misguided business goals or decisions.

Marketing agencies offer a fresh, outside perspective to your overall strategy. Thanks to their experience working with other businesses in and outside of your industry, marketing agencies know what works and what doesn’t. They’ve seen the larger picture, and they’re better off for it. As such, they can raise questions that help you reevaluate your strategy to get the best results.

Lean in for expert help

Many marketers are specialized, so they live within their marketing channel. Content marketers do content, digital advertisers focus on Facebook and other platforms, and so on. Plus, while your employees have to keep up on your industry, their professional development can languish due to lack of mentorship or training opportunities within your company.

This can result in a stagnant strategy that leads nowhere for your business.

Agencies breathe fresh air into outdated marketing plans. In order to stay competitive, agencies have to keep up with trends and be experts. They’ve proven out processes that work, from outreach templates to ad creation set up. Instead of starting from scratch, instantly upgrade the knowhow of your team.

Get more out of your budget

People often forget the additional ways employees impact your budget. Besides their base salary, benefits and vacation time, they can represent as much as 30 percent of an employee’s total compensation.

With an agency, you don’t have to worry about vacation time or turnover. A good agency will maintain a consistent output, regardless of their employee headcount. Agencies are way cheaper than salaried employees – in terms of turnover risk, benefits, management and coaching costs.

Agencies benefit your bottom line in other ways, too. Because they work at scale with multiple clients, they can negotiate better deals with software platforms and pass the savings onto you.