An in-house marketer or an agency
Hire in-house when marketing is a daily operating function, you can carry the salary plus the third on top that nobody budgets, and you want context that compounds inside your company. Hire an agency when you need several skills at once, want volume you cannot staff, and would rather pay a fee you can stop. Most founders need the agency first and the hire later.
In detail
In-house and agency, the honest rows
| An in-house hire | An agency | |
|---|---|---|
| Shape of the cost | A salary plus roughly a third for tax, benefits, tools and recruitment, every month, whether or not it is working | A fee you can stop on notice |
| Skills | One person’s; a generalist by necessity | Several people’s, each doing the part they are good at |
| Context | Grows every month and stays in the building | Has to be briefed and documented, and leaves if it is not |
| Time to first output | A quarter to hire, a quarter to ramp | Week one, live in week three |
| When it fails | Months to notice, months to replace | Thirty days to end |
| Attention | All of it, yours | Shared with other accounts |
| Creative volume | What one person can make | What a studio can make |
| Who learns | Your company | The agency, unless the work is handed over in writing |
When does an in-house marketer pay off?
When the spend and the cadence are large enough that someone should be reading the account every morning and sitting in the room where pricing, stock and seasonality are decided. That context is the one thing no agency can match, and it is worth a great deal once there is enough happening for it to compound. It pays off later than most founders think, because a hire is a quarter to find and a quarter to ramp, is still one person with one person’s skills, and costs a third more than the salary line suggests. Hire when the agency reports have stopped surprising you.
When is an agency the better first move?
When you need ads, creative, copy and measurement in the same month and could not staff four people. When you do not yet know which of those skills the business needs most, and would rather find out on a fee than on a payroll. When speed matters more than ownership: work starts in week one, and a hire is still interviewing. And when the honest downside case is that it does not work, because an agency on thirty days’ notice is a month of fee, and a wrong hire is a quarter of salary and a conversation you did not want to have.
A way to decide
- 01
Write the number
The revenue, orders or enquiries the role or the fee has to produce. Everything below is priced against it.
- 02
List the skills it needs
Media, creative, copy, email, measurement. Count them honestly; one person rarely has more than two.
- 03
Price the hire fully
Salary, then a third on top, then a quarter of ramp, then the management hours. Compare that figure, not the salary.
- 04
Price the agency fully
The fee, the ad spend you would pay anyway, and your hours approving. Ours is published, so this step takes a minute.
- 05
Choose the one you can stop
Early on, the option with the cheaper exit is usually right, and it is usually the fee.
Signs it is time to hire in-house
- The agency’s monthly report has stopped surprising you; you could have written it.
- You brief faster than the agency asks, and the briefs are mostly context.
- The spend is large enough that a full-time reader of the account would pay for themselves.
- There is a person in the building who could own it and wants to.
- The accounts, the creative and the history are already in your name, so the handover is a conversation.
Both, in the same year
The pattern we see work is the agency first and the hire second, with the handover built in from the start. We run the loop, write everything down, keep every account in the client’s name and report against a number weekly, so when the day comes to bring it in-house the new person inherits an account they can read rather than a relationship they have to rebuild.
The Gallery is the shape of it. A tight set of creatives, a campaign pointed at the inbox where the sale closes, a weekly cut of what lost, and every campaign to July 2026 returning $5.20–$6 for every $1 of ads, reported against what was agreed. An account run that way can be handed to a hire in an afternoon. The long version of the arithmetic, with the hire’s full cost, is in our article on agency, freelancer or in-house.
The questions that follow.
Can we hire you and then bring it in-house?
Yes, and we think that is the right order. Everything is documented and in your name from week one, so the handover is a conversation, not a project.
Will you train our hire?
Yes, inside the consultation hours on the Standard tier or as a scoped handover. The documentation is written so the first morning is not a blank page.
Do you replace a marketing team?
We replace the parts a small company cannot staff: creative volume, media buying and measurement. We do not replace the person who decides what the business sells.
What does an agency cost compared with a hire?
Our fees are $2,000 a month for one discipline and $4,000 for the full loop, published rather than quoted. Price the hire with the third on top and the ramp before you compare.
Who owns the work if we leave?
You do. The accounts, pages and creative were never in our name, so leaving is thirty days’ notice and nothing to migrate.
The price is published.
Where this leads.
No deck. No discovery theatre. One metric, one date, in the contract.