Honest comparison
In-house or agency? Run the real number.
The comparison people make is salary against retainer, and it's the wrong one. One marketer covers one or two disciplines. The honest comparison is a salary plus tools plus ramp time against a team that covers every channel from day one.
The short answer
An in-house marketer costs meaningfully more than their salary — add employer contributions, software, recruitment and three to six months of ramp before the role produces at full strength. In exchange you get someone whose whole attention is on your business, which is genuinely valuable. The break-even is about breadth: if you need one or two disciplines run deeply and continuously, hire. If you need six disciplines run competently, one hire cannot cover them and an agency is cheaper than the three or four people who could. Many businesses end up doing both — one in-house owner of the brand, an agency executing the channels.
Side by side
Where each one actually wins.
Eight criteria, marked honestly. We lose some of these, which is the only reason the rest are worth reading.
Real annual cost
An in-house hire
–Salary plus contributions, tools, recruitment.
An agency retainer
✓The retainer. Tools and software included.
Time to full output
An in-house hire
–Three to six months of hiring and ramp.
An agency retainer
✓Running inside the first month.
Disciplines covered
An in-house hire
–One deeply, maybe two adequately.
An agency retainer
✓Every channel, a specialist on each.
Attention on your business
An in-house hire
✓Total. It's the whole job.
An agency retainer
–Shared with other clients.
Institutional knowledge
An in-house hire
=Deep, and it walks out if they leave.
An agency retainer
=Documented, and survives staff changes.
Flexibility to change scope
An in-house hire
–Low. Changing scope means changing staff.
An agency retainer
✓High. Scope moves month to month.
Cost to stop
An in-house hire
–Notice period, severance, difficult.
An agency retainer
✓Notice on the contract.
Being in the room
An in-house hire
✓Present for every internal conversation.
An agency retainer
–Needs deliberate access to stay close.
Hire in-house when
- One or two channels carry the majority of your revenue.
- The work needs someone in daily internal conversations.
- You already have a senior marketer who can hire and manage them.
- Volume in that one discipline genuinely fills a full week.
Use an agency when
- You need several channels running at once, competently.
- You need output this quarter rather than after a hiring round.
- Nobody internally can judge or manage a marketing hire.
- Scope is likely to shift as you learn what works.
Before you decide
The questions worth asking.
Anything not covered here, ask on the call — we'd rather answer it before you spend money than after.
Book the callTake the salary and add employer contributions, software licences, recruitment fees and the productivity gap during ramp. The fully-loaded figure is typically well above the headline salary. None of that makes hiring wrong — it just means the honest comparison is that number, not the salary alone.
Almost never, and the ones who claim to are usually strong in one area and passable in the rest. Someone excellent at paid search is rarely also a video editor, a developer and a lifecycle email specialist. That's the whole argument for either an agency or several hires.
It's a fair concern and the honest answer is that it depends on the agency. What fixes it is access and reporting: knowing which named person runs each channel, and being able to see the work without waiting for a monthly call. Every Clickbrand client gets a portal with live reporting for exactly that reason.
That's the most common sensible path. An agency proves which channels actually work for you, and then you hire in-house against the one that matters most — with a real brief instead of a guess. Ask for your accounts, assets and documentation to stay in your ownership from the start, so the handover is possible.
Clickbrand
Want the number for your situation?
Bring your channel list to a free 30-minute call and we'll work through what a hire would have to cover versus what a retainer would.Bring your channel list to a free 30-minute call and we'll work through what a hire would have to cover versus what a retainer would. If hiring is the better answer, that's a useful thing to find out for free.
or email hello@click-brand.com
✓ Zero outsourcing, ever