Is it always better to outsource your marketing to an agency?

In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses face a critical decision: Should you handle marketing in-house or partner with a specialised agency? While both approaches have their merits, many companies are finding that partnering with an experienced marketing agency delivers more value, flexibility, and results, particularly for businesses looking to grow quickly while keeping costs manageable. 

If you’re weighing up your options, here’s why partnering with a digital marketing agency like Qoob could be the smarter, more efficient choice for your business.

Throughout this blog, we’ve added in some real life costs (accurate at the time of publication) to help explain our thinking. However, we’re well aware that the world changes all the time, so these numbers may go down (or, more realistically, up!) depending on when you’re reading this, so whilst we’ve tried to be as accurate as possible, bear in mind these numbers might not be exact. 

1. Experience & Expertise: Gain Instant Access to Proven Specialists

Building an in-house marketing team means you need to invest in specialists for different areas like SEO, paid advertising, content marketing, and social media management. However, in the UK—especially in regions like Northamptonshire—hiring these experts comes with significant financial commitments. 

• Marketing Manager: The average salary for a full-time marketing manager can be around £37,000 – £53,000 per year depending on experience and location.   

This is the sort of person who will be leading your strategy for marketing as a whole and may have some experience across the board, but is unlikely to be an expert in any one area of marketing. They’re strategists, and generalists, and can lead and liaise with a team both internally and externally and they’re intrinsic to your marketing activity. We’ve often found that it’s important to have a Marketing Manager in-house for us to deliver our best work.  

• SEO Specialist: Hiring an SEO expert could cost between £25,000 – £39,000 annually. 

An SEO specialist is vital for improving a website’s visibility in search engines, driving organic traffic, and boosting brand awareness. They optimise content, structure, and technical elements to ensure a website ranks higher in search results. By staying updated on algorithm changes, they help you to attract the right audience and improve your conversion rates, meaning you get more sales. Depending upon the complexity of your site, you may not need a full-time SEO specialist. 

• Paid Media Specialist: For someone experienced in managing Google and social media ads, expect to pay at least £22,000 – £37,000. 

A paid media specialist plays a crucial role in driving targeted traffic and maximising your return on investment through online advertising. They manage campaigns across platforms like Google Ads and social media, optimising your budgets, targeting, and ad creatives. By analysing performance data, they ensure ads reach the right audience, increasing conversions and boosting brand visibility effectively. They’re absolutely essential for ecommerce brands looking to grow. 

• Copy Writer: A content specialist could demand anywhere from £24,000 – £36,000 per year. 

A copywriter is essential for creating compelling and persuasive content that engages your audiences and drives action. They craft engaging product copy for you, put together wording for ads, emails, and social media ensuring it’s tailored to your target audience and geared towards selling your product. You always need skilled copy writers to create this content regularly for you and all of your marketing. 

• Designer: A digital designer could demand anywhere from £26,000 – £42,000 per year. 

A designer is crucial for creating visually appealing content that really sells your brand. They can craft everything from logos to website layouts for you, as well as engaging imagery like banners for your sales to use on your website, in emails and anywhere else. Having a designer on hand means you can put out engaging visual content to support all of your marketing.  

(Stats taken from Glassdoor, Sept 2024) 

This doesn’t include the time needed to recruit, any recruiter fees (often around 20% of annual salary) and the resources you need to invest in onboarding and continuously training these employees to keep up with industry trends; expect to spend at least 40% more on top of annual salary in the first year – and don’t forget all of the software and tools they will need to do their job too (more on this below!). 

Agencies, on the other hand, bring a ready-made team of specialists. At Qoob, we’ve already invested in attracting and developing the best talent. We offer a full team of experts for a fraction of what it would cost to hire each individual in-house. Plus, because digital marketing is all we do, we’re always up to date on the latest techniques and working practices. This means your business immediately benefits from a full team of seasoned professionals without the time, effort, and cost of building a team from scratch. 

Alternatively, you and your team might be pushed to capacity, so you need someone to work alongside your in-house team. It’s not uncommon for many businesses like yours to have a single marketing resource, often a more experienced marketing manager but with a more generalist background who can “speak the lingo” of lots of different marketing channels, but isn’t an expert in any of them. While this sort of person is really valuable to you as a business, you may need them to have more specialist skills – and usually more time to invest in specialist marketing – so partnering with an agency can be a great step in the right direction.  

2. Cost-Effectiveness: Save on Salaries, Benefits, and Tools

The cost of hiring an in-house team doesn’t stop with salaries. Once you’ve hired these professionals, you’ll also need to provide them with the necessary benefits and equipment to do their job effectively. This includes: 

• Employer National Insurance contributions: Around 13.8% on salaries over £12,570. 

• Pension contributions: Employers must contribute a minimum of 3% of earnings. 

• Annual leave: Employees are entitled to at least 28 days of paid holiday annually, adding to costs in terms of both salary and lost productivity. 

In addition, there are the hidden costs of managing an in-house team: 

• Marketing software: Tools for SEO, email marketing, automation, and paid ad management are essential, but they aren’t cheap. Below are just a few that we use at Qoob 

• SEMrush used for SEO and competitor analysis, is around £189 per month, for a single user 

• Ahrefs similar to the above, with other functionality that’s essential for SEO , around £200 per month, for a single user 

• Social pilot is a social media management tool and costs between £21 and £141 per month, depending on what you need it for 

• Whatagraph – a reporting tool that’s key to showing marketing results in a digestible form for stakeholders, is upwards of £200 p/m 

• Asana, a project management tools like used to collaborate with our team and clients on all projects and accounts is between £20-50 p/m 

• Adobe Creative Cloud for design work costs £57/month per user for the full package 

There are a range of other tools that we already have access to and they’re included as part of the service you get when you partner with an agency like Qoob. Instead of spending £100’s a month on marketing tools, you get full access to these industry-leading technologies through us—without the hassle of managing them yourself. 

3. Scalability & Flexibility: Adapt Quickly to Changing Needs

Hiring in-house means locking into long-term salary commitments, whether or not you always need a full team. We know that businesses go through periods of growth and slowdown, and scaling an in-house team to match these fluctuations can be difficult. We specialise in working with teams of varying sizes, so you can benefit from the experience that you need when you need it. 

In quieter periods, you might find yourself paying full salaries for underutilised employees. On the flip side, scaling up an in-house team during busy times takes months of recruitment, onboarding, and training—a time-consuming and costly process. 

You’ll benefit from a longer term relationship that gives you a comprehensive strategy and activity throughout the year, but with the understanding that some months will be more intense than others. You won’t get sold a package of hours, you’ll get access to a team of experts who you can work with throughout the relationship. 

During quieter periods, you’ll get a team who will work with you to develop strategies for those busy periods. Black Friday, Christmas, Easter, seasonal times etc, all of these can take up huge swathes of time, that you may not be able to manage internally. We understand peak periods require more work, so we usually end up putting a lot more into these times than other months – and that’s fine! It’s what we expect, and we’re built to scale to support you, something that you might find harder to do in-house. 

4. Proven Track Record: Leverage Experience and Results

One of the biggest risks for you, in building an in-house team is the time and investment it takes to generate results. Even after hiring, training, and equipping your team, there’s no guarantee that they’ll perform at the level your business needs straight away.  

Agencies like Qoob, however, bring a wealth of experience and a portfolio of proven success. You’ll benefit from the help we’ve given to businesses across sectors—from emerging DTC brands to specialist eCommerce companies.  

We’ve gone through all the ups and downs across a range of markets, an our strategies are informed by years of industry experience and tested across various campaigns, so you can be confident that your marketing efforts are in expert hands. You’ll be benefiting from the work that we’ve done with other clients over the years – learning from the successes and failures, and also from the ever-changing landscape. You can’t always get that experience from an in-house team, and you can’t always access it as quickly as you need.  

When you work with and agency Qoob, you’re partnering with a team that knows what works and has the evidence to prove it so you can be sure you’re in good hands. 

Ready to Partner with Qoob? 

At Qoob, we understand the challenges that businesses like yours face when it comes to digital marketing. From the costs of hiring and retaining staff to the steep expenses of marketing tools and technologies, building an in-house team can be an overwhelming task—especially for growing businesses. 

Why spend time and resources building an in-house team when you can partner with a dedicated agency that already has the expertise, tools, and proven strategies to help your business thrive? We’re here to help you grow your brand, drive sales, and achieve long-term success. 

Contact us today for a free discovery call before your competitors do, and let’s discuss how we can work together to elevate your marketing efforts and hit your business goals for the next quarter!