Rather Than Adding To Your Marketing Team

This post was written by Joe Koufman, the Founder & CEO of Setup.

Finding the best marketing talent right now is a huge challenge. 

At the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, many companies cut their marketing budgets and laid off members of their marketing team, and now as the economy heats up, it is hard to fill open roles.

We are hearing more about the “Great Resignation,” or as we have been calling it, the “Talent Wars,” to find the best marketers. Many of these open roles require special skills like analytics, digital design, marketing automation, or other specializations - or several years of experience. These are not the types of positions that can be filled with entry-level talent or easily poached from other companies or agencies. Also, to be effective, a marketing team needs a variation of skills - not just a few generalists.

As brands (and agencies) look to fill those ever wider gaps in marketing capacity or capability, they have been approaching Setup since we are marketing matchmakers. While we do some recruiting work, we are seeing a spike in demand for our support helping clients find agencies to fill the gaps left by stretched marketing teams. It is easier to hire a fantastic agency with a diverse team of experienced specialists than it is to hire each person onto an in-house marketing team.

Here are key advantages to hiring an agency rather than adding headcount to an in-house marketing team:

1. Price. Finding and hiring the diverse team you would need is a very expensive and lengthy process (account manager, project manager, creative director, art director, copywriter, photographer, social media expert, editor, post-production animator, etc.)

2. Expertise. Your in-house team members are experts in your industry, but not in every discipline or aspect of marketing.

3. Team Extension. The agency can serve as an extension of your team and can dedicate resources that enable you to quickly execute.

4. Testing. Starting with an agency is a great way to “prove a concept” to see what it would take to build up an internal team in the long term.

5. Cross-Industry Knowledge. Hiring an agency full of experts will bring new insights because they work across various industries and keep a finger on the pulse of changing trends.

6. Nimbleness. If you quickly want to pivot from an internal team, you are stuck with those hires. With an agency partner, you can be more nimble with directional changes.

7. Flexibility. While you may initially hire an agency for one thing (for example, content creation), you may be able to lean on the agency for other areas of expertise as new needs emerge.

8. Relationships. Agencies are paid to think through partner relationships which make them more successful and give you more "bang for your buck."

Any brand that has a few open marketing positions should consider the idea of hiring a marketing agency to fill gaps - in the short or long term.

If you need assistance finding a marketing agency that can fill gaps in capability or capacity, please contact us here.