The Difference Between Working With an Agency and Hiring In-House

We appreciate that it’s not always easy to choose between the two and no, we’re not just going to tell you that agencies are always the better choice! Depending on your business size, the scope of work you need or want to do, your budget, and various other factors, often one choice is better than the other, but which one?

Working with an agency

One of the biggest advantages to working with an agency is the number of employees who will be on your ‘team’. Depending on what you want done, you’ll likely end up with several specialists working on your account and each of them is going to bring a vast range of past experiences with various brands and industries. This means a few things:

• It’s likely that someone on the team has experience with your industry which can be incredibly helpful if you’re particularly niche;

• They’ve likely got a wider range of industry contacts and partnerships which could bring value to the work you’re doing with them; and

• Each person will have their own speciality which means you get access to more in-depth knowledge of each service.

Depending on the type of contract you can get with an agency, you’re often able to scale up or down the work they do for you based on your high and low periods throughout the year. This means that instead of always paying an in-house person the same amount,- whether they’re busy or not – you can reduce the amount you spend in slow seasons.

On the other hand, working with an agency naturally has its own cons. They’re often more expensive per hour than what you’d pay for a single in-house employee. So, depending on how much work you want done, how many employees you’d need to hire, or how long you need the work to continue, going with an agency might not be the most cost-effective choice. It can also be more difficult to communicate with an agency since they’re not in the office with you. So, you may have less control or oversight over what they are doing. That being said, with the improvements we’re seeing in digital communication technologies and more people working remotely anyway, this is likely less of an issue than it was in the past.

Hiring in-house

Hiring someone in-house is often seen as the ideal choice. You’ve got someone in the office who you can see every day and only spends their time on your brand, not a portfolio of brands. Through the hiring process, you’re able to personally vet them, their experience with your particular industry, and, most importantly, their interest in your industry. They can learn the ins and outs of your brand and it’s easy to keep them up to date with changes.

Depending on the office (there are shockers everywhere), it’s typically also a lot easier to communicate with the people who work directly with you. In saying that though, there are always cases of multiple offices per company or people working remotely as we mentioned above, in which case this easy communication loses some hold.

One of the biggest downfalls of hiring in-house is that you can often only afford one or two people’s salary (including super, annual leave, etc.), which can mean you’re asking those couple of people to ‘specialise’ in a huge range of tasks. Just like the saying, “jack of all trades, master of none,” which is, unfortunately, not the best. Either their skills won’t be up to standard in the areas you need or their time will be stretched too thin.

When you’re deciding whether you want to work with an agency or hire an in-house team, there are (clearly) a lot of things to consider. While we’d love to tell you to choose an agency, and choose Agora, we know it’s not always the right decision for your brand. If you’re ever unsure, we’re happy to talk through your questions and thoughts and help you decide.