As marketers look to meet creative requests for new and evolving marketing channels, they’re faced with choosing between in-house or agency creative support teams. Here we break down the benefits of both and explore when each approach works best.
The debate between building an in-house team or using agencies for marketing, and specifically creative support, continues. Businesses face tighter budgets and greater expectations to prove value from marketing. This in turn means marketing departments ramp up the pressure on their agencies and partners for support.
In a 2018 survey from Gartner, more than 50% of marketers say they currently rely heavily on agencies and external marketing partners for strategy or execution. While at the same time, 2/3rds of those marketers say they would like to reduce their dependence on agencies and build more in-house capability. The will to produce more in-house is strong, but the dependence on agencies for creative support is still high.
To help you evaluate which is best for your business, lets look at some benefits of both support models.
Benefits of In-House Creative Support
Connections with Business
An intangible benefit from using in-house creative teams is that they already have a cultural connection to a businesses success. In-house creative employees took their job in part because they believed in the business mission, values, and purpose. Like all of us, they want to see their work positively impact the company they work for.
For in-house teams, the incentive to care about their work extends beyond feeling like they contribute to success. Putting extra effort into their work can have tangible benefits for them. These benefits can range from workplace recognition to performance incentives.
Knowledge of Business
Your creative team has deep knowledge of the industry, products, audiences, sales process, operations, and other business functions. No matter how dedicated your agency is to understanding your business, they’ll never be able to match the knowledge from your in-house team who experience it every day.
This business knowledge ensures that designs and content represent your product, messaging, and targeting details. In addition, in-house teams have the added benefit of access to the systems and employees needed to advance projects. Making requests, gathering input, gaining approvals, or asking a question is much faster for team members than it is for an agency.
Devoted Resource
When you use an in-house content and creative team, all their time goes to projects for your business. Your needs have their undivided attention, unlike at an agency where your account team likely has other clients to service each day.
A in-house team also gives you the ability to respond quickly to urgent requests. When you have an urgent request your in-house team will typically be faster and cheaper to respond to it. Additionally, their access to systems and other employee groups makes responding to urgent requests more efficient and practical.
Benefits of Agency Creative Support
Outside the Echo Chamber
The downside of an internal content and creative team is that their creativity can start to stagnate over time. This makes it harder to get fresh new ideas and perspectives. All their work happens within the company bubble, with no visibility into what others in the industry or world are doing.
Agencies bring a significant degree of fresh perspective, inspiration, and a willingness to think outside the box. They experience the content and creative needs of other businesses and industries every day. In addition, their ideas are often more welcome since they work outside of the echo chamber of a business. Their job is to help improve your content and creative, not to continue doing the same thing you’ve always done.
Depth of Experience
Another benefit of working with agencies is that you can take advantage of their depth of experience. When building in-house teams, it can be hard to attract top talent that has the extent of experience an agency can provide. In addition, if you have limited in-house roles to fill it can make more sense to spend that headcount on a production person who you can use every day rather than another strategy or ideas person.
When you use an agency for content and creative, you are buying access to their leadership for your in-house team on a part-time basis. You have access to deep experience and established experts, but don’t have to pay them as full-time employees.
Diverse Skillsets When Needed
Access to broader skillsets is also a major benefit to working with agencies. When you hire for in-house teams you’re likely looking for people who can execute common skillsets. But, they may lack experience with other things you need.
With an agency you get access to top level skills you may not have hired for, such as brand strategy and positioning, writing, video and animation, SEO and SEM, web development, and many others.
A Blended Approach Works Best
We recommend a blended approach to resourcing content and creative that includes both in-house and agency teams. If you have the flexibility to have both, you’ll have access to every benefit discussed here. That being said, you need to be aware and selective for how you use them. We recommend:
- Using in-house teams for day-to-day content, common skills, and distribution execution
- Using in-house teams to make derivatives off agency feature work
- Trusting in-house teams to brief and collaborate with agencies on product/company details
- Relying on agencies for uncommon skillsets, project management, and depth of expertise
- Using an agency budget when you need extra support for larger initiatives
- Trying agencies for new ideas and fresh perspectives on challenges and opportunities
To find out more about how to build a better in-house team, register for our webinar where we discuss our 3 rules for building a better in-house team.
Top image via WHYFRAME.
Want to learn more about content marketing strategies? Check out these articles:
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- 12 Top Facebook Marketing Tips for Small Businesses
- Creating Mobile Digital Content to Make People Aware of Their Needs
- 4 Business Benefits of a Fully Stocked Content Library
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