Choosing between in-house and agency marketing is a critical decision for business owners. Although marketing revolves around theoretical and practical ideas, today’s most striking trend about marketing is its role within the organization.
Marketing plays a critical role in any organization. There’s no doubt that great marketing can make or break a brand. This department tends to have their hard work cut out for them.
Research published by Marketing Week found that only 8% of brands are very satisfied with their agency partners, and more brands are considering taking activities in-house. According to Harvard Business Review, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) have the shortest lifespans among C-suite executives. A LinkedIn analysis shows that marketing roles had the highest turnover rate with 17%, compared to other functions, when compared to senior marketing managers.
Whether the marketing is in-house or outsourced, the issue remains the same. Most organizations consider marketing to be their most unstable department.
What is the best route to take?
Content marketing can be deployed in three ways:
- In-house Content Marketing: Making use of existing resources to implement a strategy (the “DIY” approach).
- Implementation with the assistance of a content marketing consultant or agency.
- Assigning the entire project to an external partner.
Let’s examine their advantages and disadvantages.
In-house Content Marketing
Is it really possible for you to do all of this by yourself? Basically, yes.
It will take time to build your own internal content marketing team. Roles, responsibilities, and accountability, as well as processes, will require you to dig deep, establish budgets, create job descriptions, and hire the right people.
This can be a challenging task that will take at least a couple of years to complete. Would you be able to wait that long for results? Establishing a content marketing team takes time, but you can benefit from direct management of your resources and efforts.
If you do everything yourself, you can just engage an agency when you need assistance or where you feel comfortable with their expertise. There will be more on that later.
Learn how to do what you need to do with tutorials, how-to guides, checklists, and quick-start guides.
When implementing an in-house content marketing program, consider the following:
- It’s important to understand that content marketing isn’t a campaign. It doesn’t start and then stop. If you do it right, it becomes part of your culture. Whether you use an agency or do it in-house, you must commit for the long term.
- You will be amazed at how many great ideas and content your internal team will generate. The content on our website is largely created by our staff. There is one caveat to DIY content marketing: you need a few resources to draw from. This will be difficult for a one-person marketing team.
- To be successful, you need a written digital marketing strategy. By identifying your audience, tone, and resources, you can plan your campaign. Having a plan will give you a road map to success. Without a written record, it doesn’t exist. As a team sport, content marketing relies on written documents for internal communication and execution.
You may achieve a few quick wins without a plan, but in the long run, you will fail. Content marketing efforts without plans often result in creating ‘content’ for content’s sake and not for strategic reasons aligned with business objectives. As a result of the written strategy, you will be able to create a detailed content calendar for each stage of the customer journey.
Benefits of in-house content marketing
Company Expertise
Your in-house marketing team will know your business, its goals, culture, and competitors inside and out. In addition, they should be aware of the tone, brand, and voice of your company.
Industry Specialization
It is only you who knows your space better than anyone else. By knowing your space and your competition, you will be able to write better content than anyone else. It is also important for your team to have a clear understanding of the tone, brand, and voice of your company. With an internal team, you can move faster and be more authoritative with your content because agencies take time to learn your business products and services.
Efficiency
You’ll also benefit from faster turnaround times and faster approvals by working on an internal team. Consider rewarding content creators with small incentives. It is what gets rewarded that gets repeated. Ensure that people adhere to agreed-upon deadlines. Make sure your team is recognized for their great work.
Disadvantages of in-house content marketing
Content marketing expertise
There can be a lot of limitations because of this. There are many companies that don’t have a content marketing strategist or a content writer on staff. Most DIY content marketing departments are started by the marketing team that handles all the other marketing, and creating content becomes one of their responsibilities. Even though you may have capable people on your team, starting an internal content marketing program is often limited by the knowledge, skills, and resources available to you.
Agencies have access to more expertise, knowledge, and lessons learned that can be applied to your plan.
Hard to scale
It may not be feasible to add more responsibilities to your current team due to its small size and busy schedule.
Expense
Implementing a content marketing plan will cost you money. To fully implement a plan, you’ll need additional expertise. In most cases, this requires hiring more employees.
Agency-based content marketing
Having an internal resource knowledgeable about your company act as a liaison between the content marketing agency and your company is a great idea.
In addition to alerting the agency to internal initiatives and goals, this person provides them with the internal knowledge of your company, products and audience they need to be successful.
Having this bridge also gives you the advantage of incorporating agency knowledge into your company. Your content marketing DNA starts to develop.
You can learn about content marketing from the agency and use their expertise to advance your internal knowledge and skills.
Is it a good idea to hire an agency to handle my content marketing?
Many companies make this choice. It is the only option available to companies without enough internal resources to form a team. The agency becomes part of their team, creating the website’s content along with them.
It is also possible for agencies to handle complex content. In other words, they can create infographics, videos, interactive surveys, quizzes, and free guides. You may not have specific skills on your current team to produce this kind of content. Building your database of potential clients can be made easier by gating complex content pieces and requiring a name and email address. You can communicate with them one-on-one once you have their email address. This type of content marketing is called hub and spoke.
In what ways are content marketing agencies beneficial?
The quick start
Utilizing the agency’s resources and their network of writers can help you ramp up a program very quickly.
Insights
Ask yourself, “Do you really want to entrust your entire digital marketing effort to a couple of people, or should you hire an entire team of digital marketing experts?”
Based on their experience and lessons learned, an agency can provide a clearer picture of how to rank for your priority keywords.
Having worked with multiple clients, agencies have a good understanding of what works and what doesn’t. As a result, you will save time and resources by doing what is known to work rather than going on your own and learning lessons.
Conclusion
Whatever content you produce, you are closest to your customers and your industry. If you want to inform, inspire, and teach your audience, you need to create the best content.
A content agency can help you scale your quality and quantity. Incorporate what you learn from them into the DNA of your company.
ClinkIT Digital is a great choice if you plan to hire a marketing agency.
Our digital marketing agency offers everything from SEO and PPC to web design, blog articles, email marketing, graphic design, and more. We also offer branding and strategy creation.
You can count on ClinkIT Digital to handle any size marketing campaign.
Get a free quote from us today!
