Thinking about working with a digital marketing agency but not sure if it’s the right move for you? It’s something a lot of businesses struggle with, particularly when you’re weighing up the cost of outsourcing against hiring internally or simply carrying on with the resources you already have.
With the right agency, there can be plenty of benefits. You can gain access to specialist skills, additional capacity, new technology and a fresh perspective on your marketing without having to build an entire team in-house. However, an agency isn’t automatically the right choice for every business, so the decision needs to come down to what you’re trying to achieve, the expertise you already have and the gaps you need to fill.
Been wondering, “should I hire a digital marketing agency”? Getting your digital marketing ducks in a row is certainly key if you want to succeed online. When done properly, digital marketing can help you attract potential customers, boost traffic to your site, increase conversions and ROI, and create happy customers and brand advocates. Not to mention tonnes more.
But how do you make sure your digital marketing efforts are as great as they can be? Well, one thing you can do is hire a digital marketing agency. A good agency with impressive credentials can help take your campaigns to the next level, but first it’s worth understanding exactly what they can bring to the table.
TL;DR: is hiring a digital marketing agency worth it?
Hiring a digital marketing agency can make sense when you need skills, capacity, technology or an outside perspective that you don’t currently have in-house. A good agency can help you develop your strategy, understand your audience, choose the right marketing channels, create stronger campaigns and make more informed decisions about where your budget is going.
However, an agency isn’t always the right choice. If you already have an experienced internal team with the skills and capacity you need, or you only require occasional support with one very specific task, an in-house hire, consultant or freelancer may make more sense.
Ultimately, the decision should come down to the expertise you already have, the gaps you’re trying to fill, your marketing objectives and the resources available internally.
What does a digital marketing agency do?
A digital marketing agency helps businesses plan, deliver, measure and improve their marketing activity across digital channels. Depending on the agency, that could include website design, SEO, content marketing, social media, paid advertising, lead generation, Account-Based Marketing (ABM), email marketing, strategy and analytics.
If you want a more detailed explanation of what an agency does and how working with one actually works, our Ultimate Guide to Working with a Digital Agency in the UK goes into the process in much more detail.
Digital marketing is complicated. From web design and SEO to content marketing and ABM, there’s a lot to understand if you want to get the best possible results. That’s why many businesses choose to hire a digital marketing agency. The agency takes on some of the heavy lifting while working with its client to understand what they are trying to achieve.
But is working with an agency really right for your business? Here are five reasons why hiring a digital marketing agency might make sense.
1. They’re experts in strategy development
If you’re wondering whether to hire a digital marketing agency, one of the first things to consider is the strategic expertise they can bring to your campaigns.
A good agency should be able to take your wider business objectives and translate them into a marketing strategy with clear SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. More importantly, they should be able to explain how each campaign, channel and piece of activity contributes towards those goals rather than simply suggesting tactics because they happen to be fashionable.
There’s another advantage to bringing somebody external into that conversation. When you work inside a business every day, it’s naturally easy to become very close to your products, services, terminology and assumptions. An agency should be able to bring a fresh perspective, challenge some of those assumptions and look at the campaign from the customer’s point of view.
That outside perspective can be particularly useful when your existing activity isn’t producing the results you expected. If that sounds familiar, we’ve also looked at some of the common reasons behind an underperforming marketing campaign, from weak targeting and channel strategy to messaging and budget allocation.
2. You’ll get top-notch audience insights and targeting
Digital marketing agencies often have access to tools, data and methodologies that can help identify and understand your target audiences. They can use those insights to refine buyer personas and make sure campaigns are tailored around the interests, needs and behaviours of the people you actually want to reach.
That matters because great creative means very little if it’s being shown to the wrong people.
An agency should be able to look at the information you already have, including existing customer data, campaign performance, website behaviour and sales insight, and use it to build a clearer picture of your audience. From there, your marketing can become much more focused.
This can range from fairly broad audience segmentation through to highly targeted B2B approaches such as Account-Based Marketing, where campaigns are developed around carefully selected accounts rather than a large general audience.
The important thing is that your audience strategy should be informed by evidence rather than assumptions. Who are you trying to reach? What matters to them? Where do they spend their time? What problem are they trying to solve? Those answers should shape the campaign that follows.
3. They’ll understand which channels are best
With some borderline nerdy, in-depth knowledge of various digital platforms, an agency can help determine the most suitable channels for your campaign.
That doesn’t mean your business needs to be everywhere. In fact, quite the opposite. The aim should be to concentrate your marketing efforts on the places where your target audience is most active and receptive rather than spreading time and budget across every available platform.
Understanding your audience and choosing your channels should therefore go hand in hand. If your prospective customers are searching Google for the problem you solve, SEO might need to play a significant role. If you’re trying to reach a small number of high-value B2B accounts, a highly targeted campaign may make much more sense. In other circumstances, email, social media, paid advertising, content or a combination of channels could be the better option.
A strong agency should also be prepared to change its mind. If the performance data shows that one channel is outperforming another, the strategy should be able to adapt rather than continuing to spend money simply because that was what the original plan said.
4. They have wizardry-level skills when it comes to enhanced content and messaging
Agencies typically house creative talent who can produce compelling and innovative content. They can help craft clear and impactful messages that stand out while testing different content formats and messaging approaches to discover what best attracts and engages your audience.
Like we said: wizardry.
There’s a practical benefit here too. A marketing campaign can quickly require far more than a single advert or blog post. You might need landing pages, emails, paid ads, organic social content, sales assets, graphics, video, website updates and campaign reporting, all while making sure the messaging remains consistent.
That is a lot to ask from one internal marketer.
Working with an agency can give you access to different specialists without expecting one person to suddenly become a copywriter, designer, developer, SEO strategist, campaign manager and analytics expert at the same time.
If content is a major part of your activity, you can also explore our guide to what a content marketing agency does, including strategy, creation, SEO, promotion and performance analysis.
5. They’re efficient budget management pros
A good digital marketing agency should help you make more informed decisions about where your marketing budget is going, what it is achieving and where investment should be increased, reduced or redirected.
Agencies can use campaign analytics and performance metrics to understand which channels, audiences and messages are delivering results, then adjust activity accordingly. Rather than simply spending a fixed amount everywhere, the aim is to make decisions based on what the data is actually telling you.
That also means being clear about what success looks like before a campaign starts. Depending on your objectives, that could mean traffic, engagement, enquiries, marketing-qualified leads, sales-qualified leads, conversions, pipeline or revenue. The right measurement will vary from campaign to campaign, but there should always be a clear connection between the activity being carried out and the commercial objective behind it.
Budget management isn’t simply about spending less. It’s about understanding where your money is having the greatest impact.
When should you hire a digital marketing agency?
There isn’t a single moment when every business suddenly “needs” an agency. However, there are a few common situations where outside support can make particularly good sense.
You may have an internal marketing team that understands the business brilliantly but simply doesn’t have enough hours in the day to deliver everything in the plan. You might have one or two generalists trying to cover several specialist areas, or you may be investing money into marketing without being particularly confident about which activities are generating results.
An agency can also be useful when growth requires you to increase your marketing activity faster than you can realistically recruit a complete internal team. In that situation, bringing in an existing group of specialists can provide capacity without waiting to hire for every discipline individually.
Sometimes, though, the problem isn’t capacity at all. You may simply have reached the point where the existing strategy has stopped producing the growth you want, in which case an outside perspective can help identify opportunities that have become difficult to see from inside the business.
When might a digital marketing agency not be right for you?
This is important, because hiring an agency isn’t automatically the best answer.
If you already have experienced specialists covering the marketing disciplines you need, enough internal capacity to execute your strategy and good evidence that your current approach is achieving its objectives, there may be little reason to outsource additional work.
Likewise, if you only need help with one clearly defined, occasional task, a specialist freelancer or consultant might be more appropriate than engaging a wider agency team.
An agency relationship also requires collaboration. Even the best marketers can’t understand your products, customers, sales process and commercial priorities without input from you. Businesses expecting to hand everything over and disappear completely may struggle to get the most out of the relationship.
The better question, therefore, isn’t simply “Should I hire an agency?” It’s “What expertise or capacity am I currently missing, and what is the best way to fill that gap?”
Digital marketing agency vs in-house team vs freelancer
There isn’t one model that works for every business, and plenty of companies actually use a combination of all three.
| Option | Often works well when… | Main advantage | Potential limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-house team | You need continuous day-to-day ownership of marketing | Deep knowledge of the business and close access to other teams | Building a team covering multiple specialisms can require significant recruitment and resource |
| Freelancer or consultant | You have one specific skills gap or defined project | Flexible access to specialist expertise | Usually provides narrower capacity than a full team |
| Digital marketing agency | You need several skills, strategic input or additional delivery capacity | Access to a broader range of specialists and services | Requires investment and strong collaboration between agency and client |
| Hybrid approach | You already have an internal team but need additional expertise or capacity | Combines internal knowledge with external specialist support | Roles and responsibilities need to be clearly defined |
For many businesses, the answer isn’t actually “agency or in-house”. An agency can act as an extension of an existing marketing team, taking responsibility for particular campaigns or specialist disciplines while the internal team retains overall ownership.
What should you expect from a good digital marketing agency?
Whatever your reason for hiring an agency, you should expect more than somebody who simply completes a list of marketing tasks.
A good agency should take time to understand your commercial goals, your customers and the challenges you’re trying to solve before recommending channels or tactics. It should agree meaningful measures of success, explain why particular activities are being recommended, be transparent about budget and performance, and provide reporting that tells you what the numbers actually mean.
You should also expect the strategy to evolve. Marketing campaigns generate information, and that information should be used to improve what happens next. An agency that never questions, tests or adapts the original plan isn’t making full use of the data available to it.
Most importantly, the relationship needs to work. Communication, trust, transparency and the ability to collaborate effectively are just as important as a long list of technical capabilities.
Is hiring a digital marketing agency worth it?
It can be, but the answer depends on what your business needs.
If an agency gives you access to expertise you don’t currently have, increases your team’s capacity, improves your strategy or helps you make better marketing decisions, the relationship can deliver significant value. If you’re paying an agency to duplicate skills and capacity you already have internally, the business case is obviously much weaker.
Rather than asking whether agencies are “worth it” in general, look at the specific gap you’re trying to fill and the outcome you need the agency to help you achieve.
Is it better to hire a marketing agency or an in-house marketer?
Neither option is automatically better.
An in-house marketer has the advantage of being immersed in your business every day and can develop a deep understanding of your products, customers and internal teams. An agency can provide access to several different areas of expertise without requiring you to recruit an individual specialist for each one.
A hybrid model can also work particularly well, with an internal marketer owning the strategy and relationship while an agency provides additional expertise and delivery capacity.
When should a small business hire a digital marketing agency?
A small business may benefit from hiring an agency when marketing has become too complicated or time-consuming to manage alongside everything else, or when growth requires skills that aren’t available internally.
The important thing is to make sure the investment is appropriate for the size and objectives of the business. A small company doesn’t necessarily need every marketing service available; it needs the right activities for the audience it wants to reach and the outcomes it wants to achieve.
How much does a digital marketing agency cost?
There isn’t one standard digital marketing agency price because the cost depends heavily on what you’re asking the agency to do.
A project involving one defined piece of work will be very different from an ongoing relationship covering strategy, content, paid advertising, SEO, campaign management and reporting. Audience size, campaign complexity, media spend, the number of channels involved and the level of specialist resource required can all influence the overall investment.
Rather than comparing agencies purely on the headline price, make sure you’re comparing the scope of work, expertise involved and expected outcomes as well.
What should I look for when hiring a digital marketing agency?
Look for an agency that understands what you’re trying to achieve and can clearly explain how its recommended approach relates to those objectives.
Relevant experience, strong communication, transparency, quality of work, evidence of previous results and a good cultural fit are all worth considering. You should feel comfortable asking questions and confident that you’ll understand what’s happening with your campaigns rather than being buried under jargon.
There’s plenty more to consider, which is why we’ve put together a separate guide on how to choose the right digital marketing agency.
So, should you hire a digital marketing agency?
Hiring a digital marketing agency can give you access to expertise, technology, strategic thinking and creative skills that may not already exist within your business. The right agency can also provide additional capacity and help you understand how different areas of your marketing fit together.
However, that doesn’t automatically make an agency the right answer. Before making the decision, look at what your business already does well and identify the gaps you actually need to fill. That gives you a much clearer idea of whether an agency, freelancer, internal hire or combination of the three makes the most sense.
And working with an agency doesn’t necessarily mean handing over your entire marketing function. For some businesses, the most effective approach is having experienced marketing support available when and where it’s needed, working alongside the people and expertise already in-house.
Want to see what that looks like in practice? Read about how this software and tech company achieved a ROI of 31% on a recent campaign with the help of KAYBE.
