Marketing Strategies, Web Design & Ecommerce - What are the Pros and Cons of Agency Versus In-house

Some larger companies have been shifting their creative, design, web and marketing campaigns in-house. While this works for the biggest names who can afford to have teams of developers and designers within the company, is it the best use of resources? What are the benefits of having your creatives and marketers inside the company instead of outsourcing them? And what are the potential drawbacks? Let’s have a look.

Creative Control

Companies who employ their creative team do benefit from having quicker turnaround on projects. They do have a greater degree of control as far as the final output, because the designers and developers are typically on premises. However, as you are paying an agency for their expertise, you may find that the creative team in an agency can offer more diverse services than what you can achieve in-house.

Cost

Is it more cost effective to have a team of developers, designers, and copywriters on staff? Depends on the company, their budget, and the amount of creative output required. For some multimillion pound companies, outsourcing your marketing and design work to agencies means you can maintain smaller offices and less staff. Keeping costs down in the office translates to lower rents, the savings can then go to multiple agencies.                                                                                                     
This strategy does work well for some companies, like ferry giant Stena Line. If you have small regional offices, it can make sense to go this route. Smaller companies simply won’t have the budget to hire creative teams, so agencies are really the most cost effective way to manage SEM, web design, and PR campaigns.

Results

This is what it’s all about, results, which may vary depending on your brief summary. If you are using in-house teams to do your design or marketing projects, chances are they know where the company stands. They may have a good idea where you need to be, and how you’d like to get there. They should ask questions if they are unsure. You should get measurable results from their efforts. This is no different with agencies.

The better the brief, the better your results should be. Your account executive at the agency should clarify anything they don’t understand.  Agencies should provide reports on campaign effectiveness, and quantify all data for the marketing department, who will no doubt be held accountable for their expenditures and ROI.

The verdict

The fact of the matter is, there is no clear cut answer on in-house or agencies. Obviously, for smaller
companies, or for those with small offices, outsourcing makes more sense. Even for larger companies, some aspects of your marketing and design may be outsourced to an agency who specialises in one particular area (like social media optimisation, for example) I do know of quite a few London businesses, however, who do insist on keeping control of design, development and marketing campaigns by keeping them in-house.

The best client/agency relationships are built on mutual respect and integrity. The perspective of the client and the agency need to work in synergy to produce the best results.  Objectives need to be clearly defined, without the often dreaded “moving of the goalposts”. It should be clear to the agency what problem is to be solved, what action you want the customer to take, what goals you want to measure for campaign success.

There is no clear cut answer to agency versus in-house. Basically, it is whatever works best for your own company. A mixture of both may be an option, or having a few specialist agencies handle certain aspects of your design or marketing workload. It never hurts to utilise the experts if you do not have the capabilities in your own department to do a certain project.