5 Benefits of Hiring a
Marketing Agency

Marketing best practices evolve at a dizzying pace. Whether it’s an upstart social media platform or yet another Google algorithm update, there’s always something new on the horizon, which means what worked yesterday won’t necessarily work today. Most businesses require a dedicated team to monitor and adapt to changes in the advertising landscape.

For some, it makes sense to hire an in-house team. For others, an external agency offers better value and higher performance. We explored the pros and cons of in-house vs. outsourced marketing in a recent article. Here, we’ll take a deeper dive into the benefits of hiring a marketing agency.

1. Get a Fresh Perspective.

While in-house marketing teams have a deep knowledge of company culture and goals, this insider perspective can also inhibit out-of-the-box thinking. It’s easy to develop blind spots and fall into patterns when you’re too close to your own brand. An internal group may become so familiar with its target audience, for example, that it fails to scrutinize changes in user behavior, or even misses untapped consumer groups that might engage positively with the brand.

By working with an external team, you’ll gain a different view of your business and its existing marketing efforts. The best agencies get to know your company and industry, then help you identify new opportunities and strategies. And because marketers are plugged into the latest trends, they can identify up-to-the-minute tools and techniques that will work for your business.

2. Save Money.

Most agencies charge a flat project fee or monthly retainer, depending on your needs. The average project fee is anywhere from $1,000 to $7,500, while the monthly retainer for small-to-midsized businesses ranges from $2,500 to $12,000 per month¹. On the higher end of the spectrum, this adds up to a cost of about $144,000 per year. That may seem like a lot, but it’s downright affordable compared with the cost of hiring your own team. Let’s look at the additional costs associated with even one in-house marketer.

Let’s say you decide to hire a Marketing Associate. The average salary for this role in Houston, Texas, is roughly $67,000 per year, and benefits would increase this total to around $77,000 annually. On top of that, recruitment could cost anywhere from three to four times the position’s salary, according to 2022 benchmarking data from the Society for Human Resource Management². This means you would pay far more for an in-house team member within their first year at the company than you would for an entire team of collaborators.

3. Avoid the New Hire Learning Curve.

On-the-job training accounts for a large percentage of the additional costs associated with hiring new employees. When you partner with an external team of subject matter experts, there’s no training period. A marketing agency can hit the ground running, deploying savvy strategies in a fraction of the time it would take an unseasoned hire to do so.

Why? Because full-time marketers have years of experience, often with a range of industries. This allows them to research, plan and deploy campaigns efficiently — and effectively.

4. Make It Easy to Scale.

If you’re looking to grow your business, scalability is important to keep in mind. Let’s say you want to enter new geographical regions. Marketing for this initiative might include location-specific sales materials and website content, geotargeted advertising and local search engine optimization to help users find your services in their area. You may not have content marketers, digital ad specialists or graphic designers on staff — but a marketing agency does.

With an agency by your side, you can easily expand your strategy and increase your monthly hours, if necessary, rather than engaging in a lengthy and expensive recruiting process. Just as importantly, you can easily scale back when your needs or budget change. Reducing your monthly hours with an agency is far less complicated than cutting bonuses or parting ways with employees.

5. Gain Access to the Latest Software.

Technologies that make it easier to manage and deploy marketing initiatives are emerging all the time. While this is great, those monthly software subscriptions can add up to significant annual costs. Working with a marketing agency allows you to enjoy a suite of sophisticated software, without footing the bill.

These are just a few of the benefits associated with outsourced marketing. Interested in learning more about how an agency can help your business reach its goals? Let’s talk!