Digital Marketing Agency vs Inhouse Team - Which is better?

There’s no escape from Digital Marketing, especially in today’s competitive business environment. It has become necessary for businesses both established and new ones in India, and across the world to make best use of digital technology to reach out to a growing base of potential customers.  While digital marketing efforts mainly revolve around the internet, any digital medium can be creatively tapped to achieve intended marketing targets.

Is it better to outsource digital marketing campaigns to a reputed and reliable Digital marketing agency in India or entrust them to your dedicated Inhouse Team is “the” question that needs careful consideration.  It is of course for you as a business owner or marketing lead to make that decision, but with an understanding of what works best for you.  Let’s check out how both options fare when pitted against each other on three important factors.

Marketing Expertise

The scope of Digital Marketing is wide if not vast. Inhouse teams are more likely to specialize in select aspects of digital marketing like content creation or designing adverts, while managing others such as social media marketing to the best of their abilities. You usually don’t have a team of marketing experts as your disposal.

A Digital Marketing Agency on the other hand has a vast pool of marketing talent, specialized across all aspects of digital marketing  and well-versed in industry specific marketing standards and techniques that have proved successful over time.

Experience

The experience of Inhouse teams are more limited to marketing campaigns addressed at the product, brand or company level and may to some extent include industry specific experiences that come with lateral hires. Limited experience is likely to stifle creativity as the team members are mostly busy running behind marketing targets and hardly have time to catch up with the latest developments in digital marketing or their best practices in the industry.

On the other hand, the collective experience and knowledge of the resources at a Digital marketing agency prove far more valuable considering the number of digital marketing campaigns they’ve worked on, the industries they’ve covered as well as the digital channels/media used for these marketing initiatives. An unbiased, outsider approach to marketing strategies and techniques offered by the agency tend to be more disruptive.

Costs

Hiring and retaining digital marketing experts do prove a costly exercise, partly because there are various specializations that fall under this umbrella term – Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Pay Per Click marketing, Affiliate marketing, Email marketing, Bulk Messaging and much more. Business must have a clear marketing strategy before they recruit the right specialist for the job. Most often specialists are in demand and hardly remain on the job for a couple of years. It may take a while for them to follow the company’s offerings and culture before being able to make a significant contribution. In short retaining/maintaining a highly talented and successful Inhouse marketing team can prove expensive so does scaling up resources on demand.

However, availing the services of digital marketing experts from a professional marketing agency can prove cost-effective in many ways. Experimenting with new techniques and digital channels becomes fairly simple, while it is also possible for businesses to easily hire additional resources on a need basis. Costs incurred on infrastructure, recruitment and training of new employees and their salaries are reduced to a large extent.

Partnering with a Digital marketing agency in Delhi may earn you quicker support, intuitive insights and preferential access to new advertising options from large advertising platforms such as the Search Engines. It is a known fact that established digital marketing agencies contribute significantly towards the advertisement revenues of the search engines and hence enjoy certain perks, which they pass on to their clients!

The nature and scale of your business, its offerings, target customers, marketing goals and budget are key factors that will help you decide in favour of either an inhouse team or a digital marketing agency or best of both to handle your next marketing campaign effectively!