Is It Time to Bring in a Marketing Agency? Here's What You Need to Know.

Is your in-house marketing team doing it all (D-I-Y’ing it)? It’s a common scenario, employees juggling multiple roles, including marketing. But when is it time to bring in an agency? In today’s conversation, we’re diving into the signs that it’s time to outsource and how a plug n' play marketing team can save time and boost results. Ready to learn more? Let’s get into it.

James: Hey, welcome everyone. I'm James from Twin Creek Media, and joining us today are Teresa and Kristina. We are talking about the pros and cons of outsourcing marketing. Let's dive into some cool questions.

Kristina: They're cool because they're icebreakers.

James: That's right. So what's the first sign that a business has outgrown its DIY marketing approach?

Signs It’s Time to Outsource Your Marketing

Kristina: It's when they post a job and they're looking for a unicorn person who does design, social media, HR, event management, PR, answering phones, and cleaning the toilets. It might be time to think about hiring.

James: And IT, that’s usually in the list, too.

Kristina: Always, right? They don't say that, though.

Teresa: What about when they decide they really have some strong business goals and they want to grow?

James: Yep. And when they've outgrown their DIY approach, it does mean that someone inside their company is wearing the marketing hat. Sometimes it's the owner, but sometimes it’s just a marketing person who seems to be wearing all the hats, including all the things you just mentioned, and is wearing way too many hats. That’s part of the problem with doing it yourself—you don’t have enough people to do things.

Wearing Different Marketing Hats And Bringing Diverse Perspectives To The Table

James: That’s a big growth pain. I also wanted to say that we represent a bit of a spectrum of marketing people in this podcast.

I have the hat of an agency owner, running a marketing agency that can do lots of things. So that’ll be my role in this conversation. Maybe that would be a neat thing to mention. I think this isn't one of the questions, but it is very important: What is the perspective you're bringing to this conversation?

Give me a super quick rundown of your LinkedIn profile or resume. In the last 10 years, what have you been doing? That way, people have a good understanding of where you're coming from.

Teresa: So, I've obviously been with an agency here now, and at other places. I've also been in a business where I was the only marketing person.

I tried to do everything, and I didn’t outsource anything. And then I was also in a really large company with a big marketing team that had all the necessary resources. So, I can see it from three very distinct points of view and understand when the shift happens from one to the other and when it's not working anymore.

Kristina: My hat is witch-hat-shaped, and, mostly until I came here, I spent nine-plus years working for really small businesses that needed a marketing person. I was a graphic designer by trade, so although I always wanted to do graphic design, over those years, I had to take on a lot of other marketing skills.

I’m glad to be here in an agency where I get to focus on the few things I’m really good at, instead of filling all those roles that so many small businesses need.

James: So, awesome perspectives across the three of us.

Teresa: What stage do you think it makes sense for a company to outsource their marketing, instead of trying to keep it in-house? When should they take that leap or step? James—best advice?

When It Makes Sense to Bring in the Experts

James: When things are falling apart, probably, and they don’t have enough specialists in-house to run what they want to run. So, their goals are bigger than their capacity to actually fulfill them.

Typically, when we start working with a company, we ask one of our very first questions: “Where are you now, and where do you want to be? Paint the picture of a year from now, or three years from now. What does that look like?”

In terms of ‘where is your company’, do you have more people, have you expanded into different territories? What’s the revenue like? Have you added a million dollars in revenue to your company? So, what’s driving you, and what are your goals?

I think that’s probably a key question: paint your finish line, or describe your finish line, so the team can work backward from that and set some milestones.

Teresa: What about when the landscape itself changes? So, you think back 10 or 15 years when social media landed and became a new channel for reaching audiences, selling products, and selling services? And now, we’re kind of bridging into AI. So, you might be doing fine with what you've always done, but you're maybe not savvy enough, up to date, or even willing to learn some of the new techniques that are coming in.

James: Yep. Doesn’t always have to be that the train is derailing. It could just be that the train is too slow. You’re running this really high-performance steam engine, but it’s still a steam engine. This is just a metaphor for saying you have one person who's amazing at something, but they're not going to be a great boat or airplane. They're always going to be a train of some type. I don’t know, the metaphor is getting really weird, but you know what I’m saying?

Teresa: I get it.

James: Until a company is pretty big—like, we’re talking about the $20 million-plus range—they haven’t built out, in our experience, a comprehensive marketing department.

And until you're that size, you have no need for a 10-person marketing department that has all of the different roles filled. The companies we're working with are generally a little smaller than that. They're in that what we call mid-size company range.

We just made that definition up, but it’s between $2 million and $20 million. They have a decent team, they have 50 employees, and their employees are really good at what they do—they’re not doing marketing, they’re doing whatever the company does.

Teresa: And they shouldn’t be doing marketing because that’s not what they’re good at. Just like if we work for a plumbing company, I’m not going to do the plumbing. My job is marketing; their job is plumbing.

Plug-and-Play Marketing Teams: What Does That Look Like?

James: Exactly. So, what does a plugged-in outsourced marketing team look like in action? This is one of my little words that I throw into emails or phone conversations.

It’s from the '90s when plug-and-play was a thing. You just plug this into your USB, and the software will download. Take that picture and apply it to people.

We have 10 people on our team. We are a plug-and-play marketing department. So, bam, plug us in, and we’re ready to go. No training necessary. No three-month buildup of learning everything, figuring out all the software, the tools, and the knowledge. It’s like we hit the ground running from day one.

That’s what plug-and-play is, and there’s absolutely no way you can do that if you’re trying to build an internal team. It will take you years. Years and years and years. That’s even if you can find everybody, and even if it makes sense to have a $90,000-a-month payroll for your own company, which it doesn’t.

Why would you spend that much money—$1 million-plus—on people when your entire marketing budget is like $200,000 or $300,000?

James: But that’s what you get when you plug us in—a team like us. This would be true for any outsourced team, right? If the team already exists, they already know each other, get along, and are skilled. The software’s good, the systems are good, and the performance is based on a proven track record of doing things the right way. You plug in, and bam, it’s like magic.

Teresa: It is funny because you’ll often hear clients, when we first start working with them, say that the first month or two, they can’t believe how quickly the snowball gets rolling. They’re still in the mindset that when you hire a new person, you bring them on and train them, because that’s their experience.

And then all of a sudden, they’ve got this team behind them that just goes to work. There’s communication, questions, deliverables, and you’re already kind of reaping the rewards. They’re just like, “Wow, I never expected it to take off like this.” It’s great.

How an Agency Can Save Time and Boost Results

Kristina: I think a note is that the plugged-in marketing team idea—we’re well-managed. So, instead of the company that needs a marketing team trying to figure out how to manage one, they just hire us and have someone talk to us.

James: Yeah.

Kristina: It seems to save a lot of effort.

James: Yeah, and it’s not like you’re talking to 10 people, either. On the client side, you have an account manager who is your point of contact. Right? So, yeah, Teresa’s one. It just makes your life easier. You don’t have to manage all types of people; you just communicate what you need done, and then here’s your stuff. That communication is nice and efficient and doesn’t burn up all your time. Hopefully, it makes your life easier, and you have a lot less work to do.

Teresa: Yeah. And we’ve kind of started talking about the advantages of having a plug-and-play team or using an outsourced marketing team.

So, what do you think, Kristina, from your experience of being a graphic designer wearing way too many hats internally but now on the agency side, what do you think are the biggest advantages of outsourcing marketing to a team like ours?

Kristina: Well, all your jobs are actually going to get done properly. Although you could hire somebody who wears a lot of hats and is doing a great job because you found a unicorn, there’s still just one unicorn, and there’s only so much they can do.

Kristina: At least in my experience here, I see that we’ve got an elite, well-managed team. We’re able to plug in, and every job is getting done by someone who focuses on doing that the right way.

And you’re not going to find that by hiring just one person.

“Between Two Creeks” is Twin Creek Media’s weekly podcast series. You can find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify. If you enjoy listening to the latest and wonkiest in marketing every week, don’t forget to hit that subscribe button! If you want us to amp up your website or marketing strategy, contact us and let’s chat!

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