Digital marketing has become a must in the B2B market. If you are looking for ways to integrate or optimise it within your company, you are undoubtedly on the right track. However, you have two choices about how to go about it: is it better to outsource it to a BtoB marketing agency or to recruit a team to manage it in-house? Let's review your options in this article. 

1. Is this the right time to be accompanied by a marketing agency?

You need a dedicated digital marketing team and we understand that: although business owners and executives tend to be multi-talented and versatile, specialist skills are needed in digital marketing, especially as it is a fast-moving field.

 If you want to develop your reputation on the internet, but also increase your sales, find new markets and prospects, and retain your customers, you need to find a way to start an action plan and a digital strategy. 

If you find the right person to create this strategy and implement it, go for it!  Internalising this service will ensure that your employee only works on your account full time (which is only worthwhile if they have enough to do). However, turning to a marketing agency is usually more beneficial when you have no digital marketing skills and want to build a strategy from scratch as you can start with a solid foundation and methods proven by marketing agencies on many clients before you.

2. Recruiting an in-house team: advantages and disadvantages

Marketing recruitement: the trust asset and the company's values

As mentioned above, the in-house resource is a trustworthy and reliable asset: it will be a person trained in the company's values, who may know the market and the products/services sold better than a digital agency. The employer can know at any time what the employee is working on and can follow their actions almost live.

Disadvantages of marketing recruitment

However, recruiting can sometimes seem dangerous: do we know what we are going to make the employee do? Will the recruitment be 100% useful? Will we get on well with this new person in the team? A permanent contract is a strong commitment for the company and remains a risk.

Moreover, a candidate capable of managing the digital marketing of an SME, with experience, will be paid around €65K gross per year for 35 hours per week according to Frenchweb in 2022. The cost is therefore a major obstacle to hiring when you have no idea of what it will bring, not to mention the costs associated with recruitment itself, which is often complicated in this very tight market. 

The most logical thing we can think of regarding cost is this: the day that the costs of a marketing agency exceed the cost of hiring one person, it is time to recruit to limit unnecessary costs from service providers and to create an in-house team capable of following the agency's work.
You can also ask the agency to train your staff. 

3. Choosing a marketing agency: advantages and disadvantages

Marketing agency : what are the fees ?

The fees of a marketing agency can vary from one to two depending on what you ask of them: digital marketing strategies involve many levers that may or may not be relevant to your targets. A good digital marketing agency will be able to guide you to the best solution for you, depending on your budget.

Note that these fees are in addition to the budget you will spend on marketing itself. That is to say, advertising costs if you decide to do paid search, or content creation costs if you opt for an inbound marketing strategy, for example. But it goes without saying that even if you are recruiting, you will need to allocate a marketing expenditure budget.

Marketing agency: the benefits of relying on experienced professionals

Depending on the needs of your business, the benefits of working with a marketing agency may be more or less numerous, but in most cases the following benefits are generally shared:

Access to a wide range of skills: working with a digital marketing agency generally means having access to a multidisciplinary marketing team made up of specialists in all the main levers (inbound marketing, paid or natural referencing (SEA or SEO), CRM, emailing, media, social networks, management of your website...). When your strategy changes or your needs evolve, you have access to all the levers within the same agency. Of course, there are agencies that specialise in this or that lever, but it's up to you to determine which ones will best meet your current and future needs.

Up-to-date practices and tools: the web agency usually has many shared resources for several clients, does continuous marketing monitoring, and has the best tools on the market to monitor your activity. These are advantages that you will automatically benefit from if you become one of their clients.

Speed of implementation and time saving: an agency will know exactly why and how to start implementing a marketing strategy. Their well-tested processes will leave no room for doubt and you will be up and running in no time. Regular (often weekly) follow-up with the web agency will allow you to calculate the return on investment of your campaigns.

Access to a vast network of marketing services: this is a benefit that is rarely thought of. In fact, an agency will have already built up a network of marketing service providers (videographers, copywriters, consultants, graphic artists, designers, and even potential marketing recruits...) that it can make available to you if you need them. This will certainly save you a few casting errors and you will save time in sourcing.

>>> TO LEARN MORE : Grow your B2B sales with digital marketing

4.  Increasing the skills of internal teams? A good compromise?

You could also finance a marketing training course for one of your employees: this is less expensive than the previous options and would allow you to start working on these subjects without committing yourself too much financially and would motivate your employee because he or she would learn new skills thanks to you.

But beware of the training courses available on the market: there are many of them and not all are equal. This will not guarantee you the same results as with the experience of an agency or a marketing manager.

So which option to choose?

This obviously depends on your needs and priorities, but we would advise you to use a marketing agency to get off to a good start before recruiting someone when you have enough material and projects to keep that person busy full-time.
To find out what criteria you should use to choose your marketing agency, see our dedicated article. Digital Marketing Agency: on what criteria should you choose a marketing partner ?

Contact us for any question, the Pack-2B   marketing experts will be delighted to guide you in your projects.