Should I Hire An Agency Or New Employee?

Clients and potential clients ask us this question all the time. It would be easy for us to always push the agency route, but there are pros and cons to hiring your own full-time employee versus contracting with an agency. To figure out what will be the best fit for your organization we would recommend you start by asking yourself some key questions. For example, are you looking at implementing a new long-term effort or is this more of a project that will span a limited time frame? Does your company have the bandwidth and knowledge to bring in a new entry level employee and bring them up to speed? If not, do you have the dollars available to hire a full-time, higher-level individual? How hard is it to recruit high-performing individuals in your industry and geography? The answers to these questions can give you a great starting point to answering whether you should hire an employee or agency.There are obvious benefits to having someone join your team. This person will be totally focused on the task at hand and immersed in your business on a day-to-day basis. If you bring in a higher level, experienced employee they bring past knowledge to the table which may save you time and money. But if your company has the bandwidth to train and mentor, then you can throw a wider net and find a young person to come and join your team. Of course, on the downside, if your industry or location poses hurdles to hiring it can be particularly challenging to find the right employee. Additionally, a full-time employee means paying a salary and benefits and limits you to one person and their skillset and experience.When it comes to hiring an agency, there are many upsides. An agency brings a team to the table so you benefit from the experience of multiple individuals across different functions. For example, at our agency the team includes a Creative Director, a Graphic Designer and a Marketing Strategist plus experts in Digital Marketing and Social Media. Our partners have 15-20 years of experience in their field. Hiring any one of these individuals as a full-time employee would require a steep salary but by hiring the agency you benefit from a team of experts with extensive experience.Hiring an agency can also solve the geography and industry challenge as agency employees don’t have to re-locate. Some agencies specialize in an industry, while others embrace working across industries bringing different, fresh ideas to the table. There is no right or wrong and I would suggest evaluating each agency and your own industry to determine the best approach for your company.When you hire an agency one of the downsides can be the fact that the team is only focused on your product, service or brand for a limited number of hours a week. They don’t eat, breathe and sleep your business in the same way that a full-time employee might.Since there are pro’s and con’s to hiring a full-time employee versus hiring an agency another solution is to use a hybrid approach. Hire an agency and their expertise to come in and work at a strategic level solving your big challenges and helping to set a course. Hire an agency for their expertise in a specific area of need such as: Packaging design, digital marketing, social media or a branding campaign. After the experts have partnered with you to set the course or help solve your issue, then evaluate what is needed on a longer-term basis. At that point, you can make a decision as to whether to continue to partner with the agency going forward or whether it makes sense to have your agency help train internal resources. The right agency will be a partner in every sense of the word and more than willing to do this. We have many clients who look to us to help them set strategies, create the needed support items and then implement the initial tactics before we ultimately hand-off the day-to-day tasks to one of their internal folks. While we are always sad to see a client go, we are also proud to see them walk and then run on their own. Plus, we are always there to offer any other needed support as things come up down the road.