Should you build an in-house marketing team or hire an agency? 🤔

It depends on how many hats you like to wear. Book a 30-minute call with one of our experts today to find out what fits you best—no strings attached.

AB2B-Agency-vs-inhouse-V2

Bring in the experts first.
Find the unicorn later 🦄

Before you go hunting down that in-house marketing unicorn (or a team of them) who excels at everything, consider hiring an external partner instead. Here’s why:

It’s a lengthy and costly process to find that in-house marketer who fits the bill. It takes even longer to develop your marketing team into an expert team.  

Hiring a partner agency means gaining immediate access to a team of marketing professionals with more experience, fresh perspectives, and creativity to develop and execute an effective marketing strategy. 

Having an expert team from the get-go means:

🚀 You can focus on developing your marketing strategy instead of juggling too many balls in the air — from execution to recruitment and onboarding.

🚀 You get support during the first few years while you build your marketing foundation. Once you’ve gained solid ground, you’re ready to hire in-house. Even then, you can still continue buying external services such as advertising, content, etc to elevate your marketing efforts. 

So, should you build an In-house marketing team or hire an agency? 

It was never a debate, to begin with. The right answer to these options depends on which solution fits your company’s needs best at the moment. In fact, you can have both! It’s the best of both worlds to accelerate growth.⚡

Hear it from our customer who outsourced their entire marketing function to us👇

 

Money talk 💰: how much does it cost to hire in-house vs. an agency?

Let’s address the elephant in the room — money (it’s important, especially in times like this). 

There is a true cost for each in-house marketer you hire, which also impacts your customer acquisition cost (CAC). The most commonly used formula shows that the average total cost for each full-time employee is between 1,25 and 1,4 times the employee’s base salary, depending on different variables. 

Here's an example based on the average monthly salary for marketers in Finland. Assuming you have a marketing team of four people: 

⚓️ 1 CMO 
⚓️ 1 growth marketer 
⚓️ 1 content marketer 
⚓️ 1 digital advertiser 

Your average monthly cost for the above in-house team is between €25,000-€30,000.
 

When outsourcing is the cheaper option 

If you have limited resources with ambitious growth targets to achieve, consider outsourcing part of your marketing team. You'll gain immediate access to a team of marketing unicorns at a lower cost. 🦄 

For example, with €10,000-€15,000 per month, you can hire a team of at least 3 marketers to help you strengthen your marketing function. You could build a core team of:

🚀 1 growth marketer
🚀 1 content marketer
🚀 1
digital advertiser

You could also add a designer, a data analytics consultant, a web developer, or a marketing technology consultant whenever you need them. (Btw, if this sounds interesting, you can get familiar with our pricing here!)

Hiring an agency gives you the fluidity to add resources at any time without skyrocketing costs — especially when you're building the foundation to drive growth.

Hear it from our customers!

virta-markus
CUSTOMER STORY — EXTENSION TO THEIR IN-HOUSE TEAM

Virta

Virta is the fastest-growing electric vehicle charging platform in Europe and is operating in over 30 countries. They had a goal to increase inbound lead generation and needed to rope in external help to grow.

Virta teamed up with us to bring in the expertise that was lacking as well as a fresh pair of eyes and ideas from outside of their industry.

Learn more about our work with Virta

rudan
CUSTOMER STORY — STRATEGIC GROWTH PARTNER 

Shortcut

Shortcut is a project management tool sans all the management that makes project management for software teams easy as pie.

Our partnership started when they were just a two-person team. We supported them through their growth as they grew from two to a 10+ person marketing team. 

Read more about our work with Shortcut

arttu-mediamaisteri
CUSTOMER STORY — OUTSOURCED MARKETING TEAM

Mediamaisteri

Mediamaisteri is a Finnish company that sells e-learning products. They had no clear marketing goals in mind before our cooperation, and needed help from a strategic partner with setting them.

Mediamaisteri partnered with us to set up their marketing foundation and help grow their business. 

Learn more about our work with Mediamaisteri

Meet some of our marketing experts

veera-ab2b

I’ve worked both as an in-house marketer and in an agency. Being in an agency meant that I’m constantly diving into different businesses and their challenges, and I get to help my customers figure out how to accelerate growth. There are always different experiments to run and different tactics to try. Working with a team of marketing experts also means that there’s always someone who can help me out if I don’t know something, and therefore, help my customers too. My marketing toolbox is definitely much wider than when I was working in-house."

Veera Hevosmaa

Growth Marketing Strategist

pauliina

My expertise lies in planning and executing paid acquisition strategies for companies in both B2B and B2C sectors. I help my customers accelerate sustainable growth through strategic digital advertising. Want to achieve the same? Get in touch now!

Pauliina Saukkonen

Paid Acquisition Specialist

What is (and isn't) this call about?

✅ Getting acquainted

It'll be a casual chat and a chance for you to find out if we'd be a suitable partner for your B2B SaaS business. 

✅ Growth marketing

What is growth marketing in this context, really? Could you be interested in it? Let's find out!

❌ A sales call

This call is not a sales call — we'll be talking about growth marketing, not selling.