For most growing businesses, creating and maintaining their own marketing department is expensive. Consider the average salaries of marketing managers ($120K), social media managers ($50k), and SEO mangers ($60k), and you can see how the costs of a marketing department mount pretty quickly.
At the same time, though, business owners recognize that marketing is an integral part of their business. After all, marketing is what drives sales, which means that somebody has to do it. Is it worth it, though, to have an in-house marketing department – or should you fire your marketing department and outsource your marketing instead?
Before we get started, we need to include a disclaimer: To be completely honest, firing your existing marketing department would probably be a hasty decision. Often, they can be a great complement to a marketing agency.
At the same time, though, investing too heavily in in-house marketing can be a hasty decision as well. Take the time to decide how to invest your marketing budget based on what will generate the best results for your business.
Now, let’s take a look at why you might want to choose a marketing agency.
1. Save money.
Simply put, choosing an agency over an in-house marketing department can save you a lot of expenses.
We’ve mentioned the salary costs of a typical marketing staff, but that’s not all you need to consider. From training time, to benefits packages, to taxes, there are a variety of hidden costs.
An agency, on the other hand, generally offers a monthly retainer at a fraction of the cost of a single employee’s salary – and that’s before factoring in all of those hidden costs. Choosing an agency over a marketing department means choosing to save money.
2. Optimize your existing staff
For growing businesses, the responsibilities of marketing often spill over to employees whose time is better spent doing other things. Even if you have a three-person marketing department, they probably won’t be equipped to handle all of the marketing needs that you have – and that means that other people in the company will need to carry some of the load as well. Ultimately, that ends up hampering your business’ productivity.
If you go with a marketing agency, on the other hand, they’ll be able to shoulder the entire burden of your marketing – it’s what they do, after all. Your employees will be able to focus on other priorities, and your company will become more efficient.
3. Scale easily
Marketing agencies also scale easily to your needs. Whether that means introducing new technologies as you need them, or adding to the team that’s managing your account, you’ll be able to grow your capabilities easily and quickly to match your companies needs.
Adding an employee to an in-house marketing department, on the other hand, takes hours of training, months of on-boarding, and costs more. Agencies are just better equipped to scale your marketing to your needs.
4. Access a team of experts
This, ultimately, is the core value proposition of marketing agencies: they’re marketing experts, and you’ll have access to an entire team. That’s a level of expertise that in-house departments just can’t match.
So, there you have it: four reasons to choose an agency over an in-house marketing department.
Ready to fire your marketing department? Or maybe just take a look at adding an agency team to complement their work? Get in touch with us. At New North, we have decades of expertise to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your marketing efforts – whether you actually fire your marketing department or not.
