In-house, agency, or freelance: the actual maths

We have an obvious interest in one answer here, so this is written to be useful rather than persuasive. Each of these models is correct in some situations and expensive nonsense in others.

In-house

Real cost: salary, plus roughly 25–40% again in employer costs, tooling, software seats and management time. A senior marketer is not their salary; they are their salary and a bit.

Works when the work is continuous, the category knowledge compounds, and the volume genuinely fills a week. Nothing beats someone who knows your product properly.

Breaks when you need a skill occasionally. Nobody needs a full-time film director, and hiring a generalist to do specialist work is the most expensive saving in marketing.

Agency

Real cost: the fee, plus markup on media and production, plus your own team’s time managing them, which is almost never counted and is substantial.

Works when you need many disciplines at once and genuine senior judgement, and when the account is big enough that senior people stay on it. Scale is the thing agencies actually sell.

Breaks when your account is small relative to their book. You get whoever is free, and the structure means the fee is a staffing plan rather than a price for output.

Freelance

Real cost: day rate, plus the coordination you now do yourself. Three freelancers is a team you are managing whether you meant to or not.

Works when the brief is clear, the scope is bounded, and you have someone internally who can direct. Best value per unit of senior skill available anywhere.

Breaks when the brief is fuzzy or nobody is integrating. Freelancers deliver what was asked for, which is a problem if the ask was wrong.

The comparison nobody makes

Every model is usually compared on price. The more useful comparison is on three other axes:

• Seniority per unit of spend. How much of your money reaches someone who has done this before?
• Integration. Who is responsible for the parts fitting together? If the answer is you, price your own time in.
• What you keep. At the end, do you own the assets, the accounts, the workflows and the knowledge, or does it leave with them?

A reasonable default

For most companies under a few hundred people: keep brand ownership, category knowledge and day-to-day channel management in-house. Buy specialist production and senior strategic thinking from outside, as projects, from people who have done it before. Keep every account, pixel and file in your own name.

That is roughly the model this network is built for, so weigh the recommendation accordingly. The three questions above work regardless of who you hire.

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