When to bring marketing in house, and what to keep outside

Aug 22
4 min read

Updated: Aug 27

Introduction

At some point the monthly fee starts to look like a salary, and the question arrives: should we just hire someone?

It is a reasonable question with a bad default answer in both directions. The right one depends on a few specific things, and the arithmetic is more subtle than comparing a fee with a wage.

1. When to bring marketing in house depends on volume of recurring work

The test is not cost. It is whether there is enough continuous work to occupy someone.

Marketing that consists of a few campaigns a year, plus occasional advice, does not fill a role. Marketing that requires daily content, constant enquiry follow-up, weekly reporting and ongoing channel management probably does.

Count the recurring hours honestly. If the answer is fifteen hours a week, a full-time hire will spend the rest of their time on work of marginal value, and you will still buy in specialist help.

2. Compare total cost, not salary against fee

The comparison most businesses make is misleading in one direction.

Against a salary, add: recruitment cost, employment taxes and benefits, equipment, tooling and subscriptions, management time, and the three to six months before someone is fully productive. Then add the risk of the role sitting empty when they leave.

Against a supplier fee, note what is included — their tools, their cover during absence, their range of skills — and what is not, particularly media spend.

The honest comparison usually puts a hire at considerably more than the headline salary.

3. Recognise the readiness signals

Some indicators genuinely point toward hiring.

You have a documented understanding of what works, so there is a job to be done rather than discovered. The recurring work is well defined. Someone internally can supervise the role. And the same requests keep going to a supplier at premium rates for work that is not specialist.

The strongest signal is that you know what you want done. Hiring someone to work out the strategy from scratch is a much riskier appointment than hiring someone to run a system that already exists.

4. Recognise the signals against it

Equally, some situations reliably produce a failed hire.

Nobody internally understands marketing well enough to interview, brief or evaluate the person. The main motivation is cost saving. You need four different skills — paid media, content, design, analytics — which no single hire provides at a junior salary.

That last point catches many businesses. Job adverts asking for one person to run paid advertising, produce video, write copy, manage email and build reports are asking for four people.

5. Split by function rather than deciding wholesale

Almost always the right answer is partial.

Bring in the work that is frequent, context-dependent and customer-facing: responding to enquiries and reviews, publishing content, updating listings, running the reporting routine, day-to-day channel management.

Keep external the work that is occasional and specialist: technical setup, complex campaign structure, design at a high standard, and strategic review a couple of times a year.

That combination costs less than either extreme and performs better than both.

6. Buy the build, then run it internally

The pattern that works most reliably for owner-operated businesses.

Engage specialist help to construct the system — measurement, follow-up, channel setup, procedures — and to train whoever will operate it. Then run it internally.

This converts a recurring cost into a one-off one, leaves the capability inside the business, and means the internal hire is operating something documented rather than inventing it. It also makes the hire easier, because you are recruiting for a defined role.

7. Prepare before the person starts

Bringing marketing in house without preparation reproduces the dependency you were trying to escape.

Before day one: own every account from a business email address, have the numbers documented, have the recurring routines written down, and know what the first ninety days should produce.

Otherwise the knowledge simply moves from a supplier to an employee, and you have the same single point of failure with a longer notice period.

8. Keep an external relationship, even a small one

Whatever you decide, retaining some outside contact is worth the modest cost.

A single internal person has no one to check their thinking against, sees only your business, and cannot tell you what is normal. A periodic external review — twice a year — catches drift and brings comparison.

It also provides cover. A business whose entire marketing capability is one employee is exposed the moment that employee resigns, which is the situation the hire was supposed to resolve.

Conclusion

Decide on volume of recurring work rather than on cost, and compare total cost including recruitment, ramp, tooling and vacancy risk against a supplier fee including their tools and cover.

Hire when the work is defined and someone can supervise it; do not hire to discover strategy or to save money. Split by function, buy the build and operate it internally, own every account before day one, and keep a small external relationship for comparison and cover.