Once ads start working, most business owners ask the same question: should we bring this in-house? The answer depends less on salary and more on how many skills good paid advertising actually needs.
The skills behind one profitable campaign
- Strategy: choosing platforms, offers and budgets based on your margins.
- Media buying: campaign structure, bidding, targeting and weekly optimisation.
- Creative: static ads, carousels and short videos, refreshed regularly.
- Copywriting: headlines and hooks that make the right people stop scrolling.
- Tracking: pixels, conversion events and matching leads to sales.
- Landing pages: fast pages that turn clicks into enquiries.
It is rare to find one person who is strong in all six. That is the main reason in-house hires struggle: not effort, but range.
The true cost of an in-house hire
Salary is only the start. Add recruitment time, training, software (design tools, analytics, reporting), a designer or video editor for creatives, and the months it takes a new person to learn your business. There is also key-person risk: if they leave, the knowledge often leaves with them.
The true cost of an agency
You pay a management fee on top of ad spend. In return you get several specialists, tested processes and experience from many accounts. The risks are different: a poor agency may give you junior attention or generic campaigns. Our 10 questions to ask an agency help you avoid that.
Side-by-side
- Speed to launch: an agency is usually faster because processes already exist.
- Depth of product knowledge: in-house wins over time.
- Range of skills: an agency wins unless you hire several people.
- Cost at small budgets: an agency is usually cheaper than a full team.
- Cost at very large budgets: in-house can become cheaper.
- Continuity: agencies reduce key-person risk.
A hybrid model that works well
Many growing companies keep one marketing coordinator in-house who knows the product, handles approvals and manages sales feedback, while an agency runs campaigns, creative and tracking. The coordinator makes the agency better, and the agency makes the coordinator more effective.
What international companies should consider
For businesses in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, local marketing salaries are high. An offshore agency with senior people can deliver more skills for less than one local hire, as long as communication is structured. See how this works for US and UK companies.
A simple way to decide
- If your monthly ad spend is modest and you need results soon, start with an agency.
- If ads are central to your business and spend is large and stable, plan an in-house team over time.
- Either way, own your data: tracking, reports and results should be visible to you at all times.