In the past and recently, we have had clients and prospects say, why would I pay your agency these professional fees when I can hire people to come work for us and I can have them do so much more……Hmmm, here are many reasons why “hiring-in” is not the same:
- Do you really want to build an SEO (replace SEO with any of the following: paid search, word of mouth or analytics) practice internally? From our experience, having a strong team means, having the staff, sending them to conferences, having them interact with other professionals in the field, training them, sending them to speaking engagements (so they learn from others), etc.
- Hiring is not easy: finding the right person with the industry background, hands on experience is not easy
- One person can’t do it all: hiring someone internally to manage say paid search, search engine optimization or other marketing functions requires more than one person, it usually requires 1 account person (the equivalent of the internal marketing manager/director), 1 SEO strategist, 1 SEO technical person, 1 SEO content person, 1 Analytics/Reporting person
- Specialist compensation: to get the above mentioned folks, you need to invest quite a bit, you will need to hire professionals at between $60K (for an entry level person) to $125-175K for a strategist – so if you make the calculation from above. To perform SEO, you would need to hire 5 people costing you about $480K to $600K
- Why are there plumbers, contractors, freelancers and agencies: because they can do something your new hiree could do too– BUT a lot more efficiently, with a faster time to market, and yes, a lot cheaper.
