Comparing when to choose a small business marketing agency and when to hire one full time

Deciding how to most effectively grow your business isn't an easy choice for small business leaders. Marketing is an important way for people to find brand leads and turn them into prospects, but as marketing needs grow, you'll eventually need people to help.

At this point, many leaders evaluate either of the two options: hire a marketing agency or look for someone to take on marketing full time. How can I determine which approach works best for me?

Of course, the answer is rarely clear. This depends on factors such as the needs and size of your business, and your monthly budget. This article has been designed to help you make a decision by introducing some of the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.

Pros and Cons of Choosing a Marketing Agency vs. Hiring Full Time

What's right for one small business is seldom right for another. That's why it's important to know the advantages and disadvantages you can get from both small business marketing agencies and freelancers.

Advantages of marketing agencies

• Costs and risks are low. Digital marketing agencies almost always have lower costs because they don't have to incur costs such as benefits or taxes. Additionally, hiring full time poses far greater risk to the business than working with an external partner.
• There is less practical administrative work. Agencies often require less time than managing someone full time. This is especially true when hiring junior marketers who can afford many small business budgets. As long as the agency model and team is right for your business, they should be able to operate with some degree of autonomy.
• Broad range of skills: Marketing agencies have resource teams, so you'll get a much broader and deeper set of skills than you would adopt on an individual basis.

Disadvantages of marketing agencies

• Too much focus on how to do it: Agencies are usually rooted in methodology and jargon, and may not be willing to break away from “their” methods and spend time building a custom approach that perfectly fits your business.
• I don't know who to talk to: When I work with a large team of agencies, I often feel like I'm stuck in a “whack-a-mole” game trying to find the right people to help.
• There isn't a single person who is responsible or committed to your business. Agencies might send you a project manager or account manager, but that person rarely takes the time to understand your business. Also, even if you manage an account, you're not responsible for the team's performance, which leaves a huge accountability gap.

Advantages of full-time employment

• Business specialties: These people work just for you, so all of their time and knowledge can be focused on learning your business.
• Accountability: This person reports directly to you or someone else in management.
• Depth of skill: Full-time talent is likely to have in-depth knowledge in one or several areas of marketing, such as advertising or content writing. This enables rapid growth in those areas.

Disadvantages of full-time employment

• High costs: When you factor in salary, benefits, taxes, hiring costs, paid time off, etc., it can be expensive even for a pretty entry-level employee. Also, many small businesses don't need to do more than 40 hours of marketing per week to meet their marketing goals.
• But it still requires a lot of time. New hires will be wasting the net worth of the business for 5 months or more before they fully get used to it. Also, in the case of small businesses, you may only be able to hire very entry-level human resources. Such personnel require a lot of management and support to carry out their work.
• Hiring and retaining talent is difficult. In the midst of major resignations, finding talent and preventing turnover has never been more difficult.
• Limited range of skills: Full-time employees can have deep skills, but one person can't expand their breadth across all fields. Maybe you're still stuck hiring freelancers or agencies to support skills they don't have.
• It's either strategic or operational, but not both. Strategic chops require years of experience, but the more strategic your strategic talent becomes, the further you move away from execution skills (needless to say, the higher the cost). Marketing directors have experience developing good strategies, but they need a team to execute them. Conversely, inexperienced marketers can execute things well, but they'll need someone else to provide a strategy and tell them how it fits together.

What is a fractional marketing department?

You're not alone in not liking the gap between the two choices above. Luckily, you have another option. It's about partnering with a partial marketing department. That means you can have a veteran marketing leader and your own marketing team without having to hire multiple people in-house.

In the fractional marketing department, a dedicated fractional CMO manages and directs a team of personally hired and vetted marketing specialists. In addition to strategic planning skills to ensure successful marketing, you'll also develop the ability to execute to ensure work is carried out at an expert level.

The best marketing strategy for your business

Deciding whether to go to a small business marketing agency or hire a full time marketing professional can be difficult. Agencies have many benefits in terms of cost, risk, and experience, but many agencies don't seek to build a truly customized approach for your company. A full-time employee can focus all of their energy on the customer's business, but it's expensive and overkill for a rapidly growing marketing function.

That's why fractional marketing features like fractional marketing departments are gaining popularity. This allows you to take full advantage of the enterprise-level marketing department benefits that even small businesses can take advantage of without sacrificing the quality of marketing or growth activities.

Simply put, in a division of labor marketing department, you can partner with a team composed of experienced CMOs and highly specialized experts to expand your marketing activities flexibly.

Want to learn more about how the fractional marketing department can help your business? Contact our team to find out how we can help grow your business.