Many business owners underestimate what it really takes to handle marketing campaigns in-house. While hiring an in-house team seems like a good way to save money at first glance, it’s usually more expensive. Once you factor in salaries, benefits, tools, training, and skill gaps that generate limited results and costly mistakes, in-house marketing teams are expensive. Working with a marketing agency can provide better results at a lower cost.
The hidden costs of building an in-house marketing team
When you start calculating the costs of creating an in-house marketing team, it’s easy to look at base salaries and assume that’s the total cost. However, recruiting and training marketing professionals in-house comes with extra costs that add up fast.
Staff wages or salaries are only the beginning of what it costs to manage an in-house marketing team. You’ll also need to cover payroll taxes, health insurance, retirement plan contributions, paid time off, training, and other benefits that can add between 25% and 50% on top of each person’s base salary.
Internal teams need access to expensive tools like SEO platforms, analytics, design tools, advertising platforms, email platforms, and more. These subscriptions can cost thousands of dollars per month. When you hire a marketing agency, their teams already have access to these tools and absorb the cost as part of their service. This can save you between $6,000 and $24,000 per year.
Training an in-house marketing team is another big expense that often gets overlooked. Marketing isn’t something someone learns once. Teams need ongoing development to get results, and that gets expensive.
Another cost to consider is the time it takes to find and develop an in-house marketing team – time that could be spent on higher-value tasks when you outsource your marketing. All of these financial considerations make an in-house marketing team cost up to 50% more than just base salaries. And that doesn’t even account for mistakes caused by lack of experience.
Agencies provide predictable costs
When you hire a marketing agency, you’ll pay a set retainer or rate that makes budgeting predictable. Most marketing agencies charge a monthly retainer or price their work per project. By contrast, the cost of running an in-house team will vary with turnover, raises, software upgrades, and the need to hire experts to fill in the gaps.
Hiring an agency also allows you to avoid unemployment taxes, recruiting fees, severance costs, and benefits that come with hiring full-time staff. You also get flexibility with no long-term employment obligations. If your needs change, you can scale your services up or down as needed without worrying about hiring or firing anyone to accommodate. This not only saves you money but drastically reduces the risk of employment lawsuits.
Agencies provide specialized expertise
Many in-house marketing teams consist of general marketing professionals, but big results can only come from specialized expertise. To get exceptional results, you need experts in SEO, paid media, analytics, creative development, conversion optimization, email marketing, social media, and branding. It’s not easy to create an in-house team consisting of specialists in every area. Even if you could round up local experts, it would cost more than you think. Experts know their worth and won’t settle for low salaries.
An agency gives you access to these experts all at once. There’s also a good chance they’ll know how to reach your market better than you. Since agencies work with multiple clients across a variety of industries, they bring a wealth of tested strategies and tools that an in-house team would take months or years to match.
Agencies avoid the cost of trial and error
When an in-house team lacks sufficient expertise, mistakes are unavoidable. For instance, inexperienced team members might not bid right with your PPC ads, build landing pages that don’t convert, or run advertising campaigns that don’t speak to the right market. One mistake can cost tens of thousands of dollars before someone spots the error. Hiring an agency eliminates this risk. Agency teams are experts at optimizing advertising campaigns to reduce wasted time and money. With agency oversight, these mistakes are far less likely to happen.
Agencies provide cost-effective marketing expertise
When you add up the cost of in-house salaries, benefits, overhead, software, training, mistakes, and time lost to trial and error, hiring an agency becomes the obvious choice. Agencies provide access to specialized experts, predictable costs, premium tools, and no learning curves. For businesses focused on growth and efficiency, partnering with a marketing agency is the most cost-effective way to grow.