B2B Content Marketing In-house vs Agency, When Does Each One Make Sense?

There are blog posts to write, pdfs to develop, and social media is starved for interesting posts… but your marketing team is stretched thin. The CEO has profit concerns and the finance department wants ROI projections. Should you hire another full-timer or hire an agency?

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There are indeed companies that go fully in one direction or the other, but many of us will likely have a mix of the two. We’re here to try and help you think through when you should outsource your marketing or not via a series of key questions:

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What marketing gaps do I need to fill?

Firstly, we need to fully understand what problem or gap is being solved. Marketing often plays a critical role in a company’s go-to-market strategy, either having full ownership of generating sales pipeline or at the very least, playing a significant role in enabling it. 

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Whichever the case, B2B campaigns can cover a wide spectrum of initiatives, but would typically include creating and managing a combination of the following:

• Website
• Blog posts, downloadables, brochures, price lists and other written materials
• Video content to supplement inbound content, or for use at in-person events
• Social media
• Email marketing
• Well-designed offline assets for use by sales and in events
• Etc.

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Some of these, such as websites and basic written collateral are necessary across the board. The decision of which of the other content types to include in your marketing mix will depend on the nature of your offering and the audience you are targeting. 

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If you’re selling million dollar software, hardware or services, chances are the size of your serviceable market will be much smaller compared to lets say, $1,000 software subscriptions. In the first case, an expert sales team would be better suited to lead the charge, while marketing may play a more supportive role of enabling sales efforts and opening doors via targeted marketing efforts to each key client. 

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In the second case, lower priced software in the hundreds to thousands in ticket size would typically mean a much larger buyer base with shorter sales cycles if any. The more “DIY” the onboarding process, the larger the role of marketing in generating and closing leads. 

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Content creation and distribution can be an effective way of reaching untapped buyers across segments of big or small ticket buyers, regardless of whether it is via organic digital channels or by way of sales team dissemination. 

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If you are starting out, you might not need full B2B marketing capabilities, and might want to prioritise content production and search and engine optimisation, especially for MSMBs (Micro, small and medium businesses) and mid-market segments. For larger enterprise segments, PR-worthy content that demonstrates in-depth expertise may be what is needed.

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Putting aside the type of content you need to create, you will also need to account for how to manage the team if you choose to develop in-house capabilities 

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For instance, when you want to hire a marketing person who can be given a set of KPIs and then run with minimal supervision, you must be prepared to pay a premium to get experienced candidates, if you can find them.. 

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Alternatively, you will have to train a more junior person who may cost less in monetary cost but who would cost more in training and development.

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A similar logic applies to the quality of agencies you’re looking to hire as well. Should you hire an agency who serves as a single touchpoint and can do a little bit of everything? Are you looking for a few specialists who just need to be fed briefs and execute the work? Do you need someone who can help you strategize your content for you? Or perhaps a blend of all these?

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Correctly identifying these gaps will save you a lot of time that could be wasted course-correcting midway through either the shortlisting process or worse-still, after you’ve hired the team.

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We ultimately need to think in terms of ‘with my current priorities and campaign plans, how much value can I get out of each headcount or agency I bring in?’ 

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With that we can move onto how to evaluate between the two approaches:
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1. Initial Time-to-Market

How fast do I need to hire marketers or the agency? 

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In-house vs Agency: Agency Wins

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In-house Con: It will take at least a few months to scout, hire, onboard and train the new hires regardless of skill level

Agency Pro: Agencies provide faster access to expertise and capabilities while you build and onboard your in-house team.

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The time constraint will help you determine the level of expertise you need to bring in today.

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Regardless of skill level, building in-house teams will take some time, although the investment can pay off. The issue is having enough time to hire, train, and onboard the new hire. 

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Hiring could also take longer if you are looking for more experienced managers or specialists. Managers will also need time to do their ground work and plan their strategies after the onboarding is complete. 

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If you are strapped for time and need expertise now, agencies already have multiple experienced specialists available. They’ll be ready to begin your campaigns after the briefings and planning is completed. With this in mind, you can opt to work with agencies while you look to build your company’s in-house capabilities.

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2. Capabilities

What level of skill and marketing knowledge do my B2B content marketing team members or agencies need to have?

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In-house vs Agency: Agency Wins

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In-house Con: Capabilities limited to skill and knowledge of each individual hire. Will need to train them on new skills over time.

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Agency Pro: Agencies may have different teams that specialise in various types of content, giving you access to broader capabilities. Agencies usually expand their capabilities over time as well.

In-house teams will take time to gain new capabilities. Outside of hiring new in-house specialists, gaining new skills requires your team to gain experience over a few campaigns or take courses.

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Especially for small teams, any departure leaves a gaping hole in expertise that can’t seem to be filled in exactly the same way. In-house teams’ marketing capabilities are limited to the knowledge of each individual hire and are lost when they leave. 

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If you are planning on taking it slow for the new content type, such as experimenting with a few blog posts first, hiring a junior marketer who can try that type of marketing and pivot to something else if it doesn’t work is one suggestion. However, more complex campaigns would require greater levels of expertise and a similarly long expected hiring or training time.

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If you need high levels of expertise immediately, agencies are your best bet. Agencies also live and die by the quality of their team and the capabilities they have on hand, and usually expand their capabilities over time. The main difference is how quickly you can supplement your company’s capabilities gap with agency capabilities.

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How quickly you can plug the capabilities gap depends on how quickly you can vet and hire the right agencies. Further capabilities gaps can be quickly plugged by hiring a different specialised agency.
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3. Control and Management

How much control do I need?
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In-house vs Agency: In-house Wins
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In-house Pro: You’ll have more control over an in-house content marketing team that answers to you compared to the account managers of a content marketing agency.

Agency Con: Even with a retainer agreement, the agency staff assigned to you are still answerable to the agency first, limiting your control over them.

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One potential disadvantage of outsourcing marketing is that the team assigned to your account is still answerable to the agency’s management first and foremost. Unless you have a dedicated account team working with you they are answerable to their other clients as well. The result would be a lower level of communicativeness apart from pre-defined communication levels.

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When it comes to this issue, we recommend taking a bit more time to brief each of your shortlisted agencies and gauge their recommendations and working styles before diving in. 

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This becomes less of an issue with in-house teams who are answerable to your marketing manager. However, that means that you still need to take responsibility for how you control your team. 

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KPI tracking, standard operating procedures for communication and execution including the kind of software or spreadsheets, and right down to what kind of charts you use to track progress all need to be planned for. This takes bandwidth and focus from you running your business.

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This control dynamic changes when you manage to find agencies you can trust. Agencies have their own internal processes and ways of working, and in an ideal situation can help you deliver results with minimal supervision or effort required from your business.

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You can gauge the agency’s competence during the proposal stage and also their first campaign with you. The good ones will really get their jobs done with minimal supervision, which lets you focus on your own business and team while the agency gets the content work done. 

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In the end, the question of control depends on the level of control you are comfortable with as well as the quality of the agency that you are working with.

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4. Subject Knowledge:

Does your team require specialised knowledge of your industry?
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In-house vs Agency: In-house Wins
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In-house Pro: Over time, you will have marketers with much greater in-depth knowledge of your solutions and industry.

Agency Pro: Some agencies could have experience in your industry field and can function like strategic consultants. If your agency is like this, giving them more creative freedom over their process could yield potentially good results.

Agency Con: Most agencies will bring skill sets. but not domain expertise, resulting in the need for some level of training.

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In our experience, many industries have specialised knowledge such as practices that can only be properly understood by being in the industry. This is more so in B2B contexts.

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Hiring in-house marketers will have an edge when it comes to this consideration. You’ll be able to hire people with ‘X years of experience in your industry’ which will help them get onboard more easily with your team and match industry knowledge requirements. 

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This sort of in-depth knowledge is not easily acquired and most agencies are unlikely to know this. Unless the agency you’ve hired specialises in your field, you will have to bring them up to speed on industry knowledge for each project.

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On the other hand, some agencies could have experience in your field or perhaps have served clients similar to your business. When this happens, they can function like strategic consultants and already have solutions prepared that fit your business. 

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At times, the agency you’re working with would likely also have experienced the challenges and learnings of scaling up an early stage startup, like ours.

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At Nila Studios, our team has experience building a startup from 4 members to over 200 staff across Southeast Asia over half a decade. We have experience working with sales and product teams, analysing sales processes and planning for product launches. We know the potential ofB2B content when it comes to multiplying the effectiveness of various departments.

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5. Cost

Which one is cheaper?
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In-house vs Agency: Tie
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In-house Pro - Long-run can be cheaper if you maximise the work hours of your in-house team.

In-house Con - Factoring in indirect costs such as onboarding and training, in-house is more expensive in the short term or whenever team members leave and you rehire.

Agency Pro: Depends on your set up - if you pay only for what you need it could be cheaper in some cases than in-house teams.

Agency Con: Can be more expensive for equivalent output as an inhouse team over time.

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With all the constraints we’ve covered earlier, costs extend beyond just financial costs and also include time, training, and management resources. It’s better to factor in the different types of costs, your time horizon as well as the amount of work your team is expected to do during that time when it comes to answering this question. 

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If you’re confident in maximising the effort of your in-house team, this option can be cheaper in the long run. This is one of the considerations we’ve experienced when considering between hiring an in-house designer or continuing on with our original creative agency as well.

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On the other hand, hiring in-house could be expensive in terms of opportunity cost when you factor in onboarding time and time spent training the hires, especially when team members leave.

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As for agencies, you’ll need less time and resources to train them as they are already content specialists, outside of briefing them about your solutions and industry at the start of the engagement. 

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On the flipside, as the agency’s responsibilities grow, they could become more expensive for equivalent output versus an in-house team over time.

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In the end, which option costs more depends on your hiring luck and also the amount of work you’re expected the team to do over the planned time period and whether content production is core to your business needs over the long run.

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Which one gets me the results I want?

By this point, you likely have a clear idea of what you need to consider in your choice between agencies and hiring in-house marketers.

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We hope that these questions help you think more about your campaign and what you want out of it, while giving you an idea of the type of help you need to achieve your campaign goals.

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It’s also worth noting that there’s a few more levels to the agency and in-house argument: using a hybrid approach with an in-house team and outsourced agents, and the choice between hiring freelance agents or working with agencies. Each approach also has their pros and cons.

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Here are a few illustrations of how this blended approach could work:

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• Should I hire an in-house designer, engage a freelancer or work with a studio? OR Should I hire a creative headcount who then manages the design studio and the timelines?
  
  
• Should I hire a one-size-fits-all digital marketer OR a marketing manager who manages a small content team OR a digital marketer who manages content marketing agencies on your behalf OR just work straight away with a digital agency that can do everything?

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If you’re looking for someone who can help you navigate your B2B content strategy, advise on the capabilities you may need and offload content production for your firm you can arrange a  free consultation with us:

https://www.nilastudios.com/contact-us