The question tends to arrive with an invoice.
Someone looks at the agency bill and asks whether the same money would pay for a hire. It is a fair question, and a hard one to answer for marketing as a whole. It becomes much easier when you ask it one task at a time.
Large companies are reconsidering agency spend too. Gartner's 2025 survey of 402 marketing leaders found 39% planned to cut agency budgets. 22% of all 402 said generative AI had reduced their need for outside creative and strategy help. Most of the leaders surveyed work at companies with more than $1bn in revenue, so treat the figures as a signal from large companies. The test below works task by task.
What each option gives you
An in-house team knows your product and customers in a way an outsider has to spend time learning. It works only on your business, and the skills it builds stay with you. The costs are salaries, management time and the difficulty of scaling up or down quickly.
An agency brings specialist skills, ideas from other clients and the ability to add people when you need them. The costs are fees, a learning curve on your business, and attention shared with other clients.
Own the plan and the numbers. Buy skill and capacity against them.
How to decide which work goes where
List every marketing task you do or want to do, then ask four questions of each one.
How often do you need it?
Work you need every week, such as content, social posts or reporting, tends to suit an in-house team. Someone close to the business can get faster each time. Work you need a few times a year, such as a rebrand or a large campaign, often suits an agency. It can bring a full team for a short burst.
How specialist is it?
Some channels take deep skill to run well, such as paid search or technical SEO. If you cannot keep a specialist busy full time, an agency or a freelancer may give you better skill for the money. They may also stay more current in that skill.
How close is it to your strategy?
Positioning, messaging and decisions about where to spend shape the whole business. Keep ownership of those inside, even when outside help contributes. An agency can advise on them. Someone inside should decide.
Does it build something you want to keep?
Customer knowledge, data and the way your team works build up the longer you keep them. Work that builds them is worth bringing in-house as you grow.
What to bring in-house first
If you are building an in-house team, start with work that is frequent and close to the customer:
- Ownership of the plan. One person who sets priorities and holds the numbers.
- Content and customer communication. The voice customers hear every week.
- Reporting. The weekly view of what is working.
AI tools can speed up first drafts and routine reporting, so some work that once needed extra hands may now fit your current team.
Making a mix work
We recommend that one person inside the company owns the plan and the numbers. Agencies then work to that plan, with a clear brief, a target they can affect and a regular review against it. Without that owner, each agency can end up setting its own direction.
Getting help with the decision
Deciding what to keep, what to buy and how to measure both is part of our go-to-market consulting. We can also help set up the in-house programs and the AI tools that support them, through our AI implementation consulting.
Common questions
Are marketing agencies worth it?
They are when the work is specialist, occasional or needs to scale quickly, and when you can brief them clearly and measure the result.
Is in-house marketing cheaper than an agency?
It depends on how much work there is. Steady work spreads a salary across many tasks. Occasional work can be cheaper to buy as a fixed project.
Can you use both in-house and agency marketing?
Yes. Keep the plan and the numbers in-house, and buy specialist help against it.
Source: Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey, reported by Marketing Dive, 12 May 2025. 402 marketing leaders in North America, the UK and Europe, surveyed February to March 2025; most respondents work at companies with annual revenue above $1bn. marketingdive.com
