Marketing Agency vs. In-House: Which One Is Better?

Any business that is interested in expanding should focus on its marketing and branding. Unfortunately, in such a saturated market, just having a good product won’t be enough. Brands constantly need to implement new, inventive ways to make customers connect with their products and services.

Due to this, there is a never-ending debate of whether it’s better to go for in-house marketing or work with an agency. Even though most arguments point out that usually, you should outsource to an agency, it makes sense to see the full picture. In this article, we’ll discuss the main factors in the decision-making process.

Who Is This Guide For?

Every business needs to develop trust and an understanding with their customers. Marketing campaigns use their insight into demographics, psychographics, and consumer behavior, to the company’s advantage.

Perhaps you don’t have a strategy for digital marketing yet. Or you have full-time staff, and you’re thinking of ways to cuts costs and increase efficiency. In any case, this guide will help you make the right decision about who is best equipped to represent your brand online.

Skillset

Let’s analyze the first factor in the “in-house vs. agency” debate. It’s an undeniable fact that an experienced agency will have an advantage in terms of skills over an in-house marketing team. This is especially true when a given agency has experience in your specific niche.

A marketing agency is armed with a great deal of information that comes from many different sources. For example, they participate in conferences and seminars as well as arrange their own. They know what contributes positively to website and brand promotion and what actions bring slow and unsatisfactory results.

You can develop a working algorithm and make the right decisions in digital marketing by making only practical decisions. A specialist who leads 5 to 10 projects at the same time can analyze and contrast them against each other. This helps them understand what actions lead to the best results quicker and with lower costs.

However, it is worth considering the drawbacks when talking about agency vs. in-house marketing. If you outsource to an agency that doesn’t have experience in your niche, their actions may lead to a  negative result.

If they can’t devote time to your project, they won’t be fully immersed in the process. Subsequently, they won’t be able to track changes quickly or implement an individual approach.

Due to this, you need a top advertising agency in NYC, such as Lasting Trend. With over ten years of experience, we have ample professional knowledge and expertise in various digital marketing areas. We know how to get great results advertising for different niches. Get in touch, and you’ll understand why you needed to hire a digital marketing agency.

Creativity

Are you sure that an in-house team can generate and execute unique ideas that communicate your brand message in an original way? If they only work on one or two projects, do they really have enough experience?

Clearly, with wider experience, specialists from an outsourced agency can approach product promotion with much more creativity. This is reinforced by a number of factors: the expertise gained from other projects, insights generated by being used to brainstorming as a problem-solving tool, the experience from solving particularly challenging cases, etc.

We’ve dealt with cases of different complexities over the years. In some, we’ve moved brands with mediocre visibility higher in Google My Business, Bing Places, and Apple Maps listings. In others, we’ve increased leads and revenue in just six months. And in every case, we aim to implement established techniques in new ways, thus, adding creativity to proven methods.

Are you looking for a blog marketing agency that will pleasantly surprise you with its creative choices? Make your website stand out with Lasting Trend!

Our specialists constantly come up with new ideas that have never been used in your industry. You will have no hesitations about deciding on the in-house vs. agency debate!

Adaptability

There is no way you can launch the product promotion process quickly without an agency. One of the many reasons is that an agency tracks daily changes in search engines, including new algorithms. This allows them to quickly modify activities aimed at product promotion and prevent your website from being lower in the list of search results.

One of the examples of quick adaptability is the reaction to the COVID-19 crisis. For example, a labor law firm, our agency’s client, has made an effective switch to their marketing. We realized that there could be a surge in cases dealing with employment and compensation. Or a signage company started producing sneeze guards for local shops and making valuable contributions.

So, we tapped into that niche by changing their ad headlines and promoting specific services that could in useful in a crisis.

There are several negative aspects of working with a marketing agency in terms of adaptability. Sometimes it’s hard to establish effective and efficient communication between the agency and the business. Also, outsourced marketing services may lack understanding of the specifics of a particular business.

An in-house agency will be very adaptive to internal changes, including mission and business goals, current priorities, etc. But it all depends on the marketing firm itself. You can most definitely outsource to an agency that will be no less responsive than an internal team.

At Lasting Trend, we are proud of our ability to maintain close connections with all of our clients. If you make an internal change, we will quickly follow and adapt. See for yourself by launching effective marketing campaigns with our help!

Access to Tools and Platforms

Services and platforms are a large expense for a specialist who needs to complete marketing activities. What does a marketing firm do? They lead multiple projects at once and may use similar specialized tools in several of them. So, an agency can use them more efficiently than a one-project team.

For example, in the process of link building, an outsource agency specialist will use 3 to 10 paid services to achieve the best results for external website promotion. But they can use these services for multiple projects at the same time.

For example, a backlinks and SEO analysis tool Ahrefs is used to do keyword research for search engines, see ‘clicks’ data, uncover content gaps, and a lot more. However, the prices start from $99 and go all the way up to $999. An agency can justify this pricing by using the tool on up to 100 projects.

An in-house marketer, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same luxury. An in-house agency, by definition, deals only with tasks that happen inside the company. If they want to keep expenses under control, they will have to give up something. However, a lack of automation and software can cause a disaster, as you’re risking getting far behind your competitors.

These days, a marketing campaign is never complete without some must-have marketing tools and platforms. Experts from Lasting Trend always make the right choices and bring our client’s advertising campaigns to a new level. Request a free consultation to learn how we would approach your case.

Cost

The last factor in the “in-house vs. agency” debate is the cost. Marketing agencies often have fixed pricing that companies are billed for once a month. This bill varies depending on the number of services provided to create the best project promotion and what is to be accomplished in a certain time frame. In other words, all expenses are objective, reasonable, and predictable.

Some companies might need a combination of services to create an all-around campaign. Our services include Search Engine Optimization, Local Blogs, and Google Adwords & Bing Ads. After carefully assessing your needs, we figure out which service(s) will suit you best.

In the case of in-house advertising agencies, it’s up to the company to regulate the course of work. There is no one to delegate tasks like monitoring the KPI, goal-setting, planning, motivating the team, and so on. This makes the cost of work more unstable.

Not to mention, an in-house marketing team will require a certain budget for their professional growth. For example, this could include participating in conferences, doing specialized courses, etc. It could also mean spending on training to operate automation programs and other software.

If you don’t want any instability when it comes to advertising expenses, Lasting Trend will take care of that. We are a leading digital marketing agency in New York that prioritizes our client’s growth and not just filling our pockets. Choose us, and you’ll get reasonable prices for the most comprehensive strategies.

Why You Should Hire a Digital Agency

These days, brands are changing their business models to be online and amplifying their marketing efforts in the same sphere. But in order to stay competitive, you need the right assistance. Now that we’ve compared the two options, let’s see why an agency is better at handling your digital marketing efforts.

They Have Experts

Agencies always try to find the most optimal solution, which will be the best for our brand and business. It requires hiring a sufficient number of narrow specialists with the necessary work experience – specialists in SEO, link building, design, analytics, and contextual advertising.

For an in-house team, it would require too much effort to generate maximum results in a short time. In other words, it’s expensive to keep specialists for an in-house team.

If you want to teach your specialists, it will take too long and require time and material resources. There is a risk that by the time your specialist is ready, your competitors might want to hire them and will lure them away. Therefore, you will lose your investment.

Another risk is that the specialist will eventually burn out, for instance, because of only working on one project. Also, any experience they gain will come from your project. That is to say that, in the process of learning, they will make mistakes that will affect the final results.

They Bring a Fresh Perspective

Outsourced marketing services have the benefit of looking at every new project from a different perspective. In contrast to an in-house team, they’re not going over the same project again and again. This allows them to come up with ideas to showcase products better and better.

Another factor is that agencies are familiar with different digital campaigns, brand engagement events, and social media visibility techniques. So, they can effectively mix them up, thus creating new combinations and innovative approaches. And they have loads of resources to implement them quickly.

As we mentioned briefly, marketing agencies draw knowledge not only from their own projects but also from competitors and thematic conferences. They are always aware of what’s trending, what tricks other companies are using, what the overall marketing sentiment in certain industries is, etc. This gives them a lot of data to build new projects around.

They Are Time-Efficient

True specialists can accomplish marketing goals extremely quickly. They have already worked on numerous similar projects and know what it takes to establish a great online presence. In marketing, time is one of the most valuable resources, so brands need to spend it sensibly.

Even though in-house employees have more knowledge about the company, they will still struggle with effective campaigns. Also, they might feel overwhelmed while mastering new duties. This will prevent them from incorporating resources and tools in bulk, and they will have to do everything one by one.

When you hire an external blog marketing agency, you don’t need to worry about additional responsibilities, training, and turnover. You will get consistently satisfying outcomes that don’t pull too many resources from your company.

They Start Straight Away

Agencies have already gone through the tough parts of hiring and testing new specialists. We don’t need lengthy explanations of what we need to do and how to implement your vision in real life. So, the work starts from day one.

They’ve created comprehensive marketing campaigns from scratch multiple times. Over time, marketing firms have developed methods suitable for all kinds of businesses. At the same time, the best firms make sure that every project is approached individually. So, you get the best of both worlds.

We’ve had extensive experience in creating full marketing strategies – for example, law firm marketing plans. Firstly, we assess the essentials – what kind of law the client specializes in, what it needs, etc. Then our specialists create a custom strategy to meet all pre-defined objectives.

As a result, our campaigns are made up of multiple components, such as website design, content, SEO, pay-per-click advertising, social media, and a lot more.

How Lasting Trend Can Help My Business Today

Why hire a digital marketing agency? As a top advertising agency in NYC, we know what to do regardless of the industry you operate in and the services/products you offer. Here is what our marketing strategies will help you with:

• Managing your reputation – Build a good or reliable brand for yourself, maintain a positive opinion of your brand, and quickly recover from any mistakes.
• Engaging customers – Tell stories, drive conversations, and address customer needs and interests. Also, we will help you maintain direct communication with your audience to know exactly what they think.
• Boosting sales – We help you increase your profits in many ways: easier access to qualified leads, more channels to sell your product, lower costs when acquiring customers, etc.
• Maintaining relevance – Adapt to the current needs of customers in the market and figure out how to make your brand a pioneer in a new market.

Are you looking for a great marketing agency in New York? Look no further than Lasting Trend! Fill out the form to get a free consultation and improve your company’s online presence today.

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