Agency vs In-house Digital Marketing

The PPC Question

Do we hire a new employee for our PPC management, or do we hire an agency? That is the question that many business owners have asked themselves. This is a tough question which requires careful consideration – So let’s get into it.

In-house PPC management

An obvious benefit to handling your PPC in house is your PPC manager knows your business. They know what you do and they know how you do it. For this reason alone, many companies see the merit in keeping their PPC management in house, but let’s look at another reason. Handling it in house means your company employs your PPC manager. That person has a personal stake in the sense that they want to live in a state of continued employment with your company, so the loyalty factor may boost actual quality of work.

Now let’s take a look at some of the drawbacks of handling PPC in house.  The most obvious concern is having another employee or multiple employees, which tends to cost a lot more than hiring an outside agency to handle it.  More often than not, these employees lack the depth of knowledge and experience required to meet the expectations of your business needs. When these employees don’t have anyone around with actual experience, it’s tough for them to learn and become PPC professionals.  Another drawback is the workload of the individual employee handling your PPC. Depending on the size of the account, this task alone can be monumental. Add in the fact that many PPC managers don’t just manage PPC accounts but also pull double duty handing all facets of your digital marketing. This can lead to the quality of work suffering, and as a result possibly costing you money.

Agency PPC Management

So, we’ve seen the benefits and the drawbacks into handling PPC in house, but now let’s take a look at how an agency differs.  The glaring pro for an agency is quite simply they know what they’re doing… most of them anyways. They are the experts on the ins and outs of PPC management. They know how to build accounts and they know how to prioritize and manage. They work with a variety of companies in most cases and have experience with learning what works best and what doesn’t work at all.  Another benefit ties in with a con of in house PPC management; costs. Hiring an outside agency will be more cost effective and if performance is found to be lacking, agencies are more easily terminated than an employee in most cases.  Another advantage for agencies is resources and relationships. They have the relationship with certain platforms. This is a huge asset for a business.

Now that we’ve seen the advantages of hiring an agency, let’s look at some of the disadvantages. One major concern of hiring an agency is competence. Agencies are a dime a dozen nowadays with the market saturated in low to mid quality shops. What happens if you pick the chop shop that came in with the lowest bid, but now you’ve realized why they were so low? Hiring a terrible agency can spell trouble for your business. PPC management in itself has way too many moving parts to leave up to chance in hopes of getting a top quality agency. The wrong agency can wreak absolute havoc on a finely tuned PPC account. On top of the burden of finding the right agency, there’s also a barrier in communication. Typically, the turnover on questions and concerns about an account can take a day or sometimes days. This is definitely a reason why having an in house person can be beneficial, easing the communication dilemma.

What Is The Solution?

We’ve seen that both in-house and agency has advantages and disadvantages, but what is the solution? Taking a step back, let’s think about a mix of the two. The best solution for your business may just be hiring someone in-house, while also employing the services of a knowledgeable PPC agency. This balanced approach negates a few glaring disadvantages of either one or the other while bringing in all of the advantages.

• • You have an employee with a sense of loyalty because they work for your business. They may not have the most knowledge of PPC, but working hand in hand with the agency will fix that.

 

• • Communication will be quicker. Having the employee right there in your office ensures you’re going to get an answer to the question you have or access to data that you need at that moment.

 

• Your business is understood. Your PPC manager knows your business because they are part of the business. They now have access to the agency resources that they might not otherwise have access to

The solution is simple: Mix it up. It works.