Should I Hire a Marketing Agency, a Marketer, or Do It Myself?

You're trying to decide: hire a marketing agency, hire a marketer, or keep doing it yourself. Every article you read gives you a revenue number. Agencies say hire an agency. Recruiters say hire in-house.

They're both answering the wrong question.

The right hire depends on where your leads are leaking, and you can figure that out before you spend a dollar.

Why does every article give a different revenue cutoff?

Search this question and you'll find advice to hire in-house once you pass half a million in revenue. You'll also find advice not to hire in-house until $5 million. Same question, opposite answers.

Look at who wrote each one, and the answer usually matches what they sell.

Revenue isn't a bad thing to consider. But it doesn't tell you what's broken, and the whole point of hiring help is to fix what's broken.

So start with a different question: where are my leads stopping?

How do I know what kind of marketing help I need?

Measure the five numbers: answer rate, lead rate, booking rate, whether your team asks for the job, and cost per booked job. Those numbers put you in one of three situations, and each one needs a different kind of help.

Situation 1: What if the leak is after the lead?

Your phone rings, but calls go unanswered. Or people get through and don't book. Or nobody asks for the job.

If that's you, hiring a marketing agency or a marketer won't fix it. They'll bring in more leads, and those leads will hit the same problem. You'll pay more to fill the same leaky bucket.

What you need is help on the inside. That might be a person in the office whose job is to answer every call, call back fast, and ask to book. Or it might be a system: calls that roll to an answering service when nobody picks up, a text that goes out the moment a web form comes in, and follow-up that happens automatically so nothing depends on somebody remembering.

This is where I am in my own door company. Our leak was the selling. My installers were doing it, and they're great at doors, not at sales. So the help I'm looking at isn't a new ad agency. It's an outside closing company that handles sales calls. That's the kind of help that matches the leak.

For more on this situation, read why you're getting leads but not booking jobs.

Situation 2: What if the leak is before the lead?

You answer the phone. Your team asks for the job. People book at a normal rate. But there aren't enough real leads, or the calls you get are mostly junk.

Now you need help bringing in the right leads. That's where an agency or a marketer earns their keep.

Should I hire a marketing agency or an in-house marketer?

A marketing agency gives you several skills at once: ads, your Google Business Profile, your website, and SEO. You don't have to find one person who's good at all of that, and that person is hard to find. An agency can usually start in a few weeks.

The trade-off is that an agency doesn't live inside your business. You have to hold it to the numbers. Here's what a marketing agency should prove in the first 90 days.

An in-house marketer knows your business every day. They're there when the phone rings, they know your crews, and they can react fast.

The trade-off is cost and time. Depending on the source, a small business marketing manager earns roughly $80,000 to $120,000 a year in salary, before benefits. It takes months for a new hire to really learn your business, and one person is rarely an expert in every channel.

Here's a simple rule: hire a marketer to run and improve a process that already works. Don't hire a marketer to figure out your marketing from scratch. That's a lot to put on one person.

If you're comparing yourself to a competitor who seems to have better marketing, read why marketing works for your competitors but not for you before you hire anyone.

Situation 3: What if you don't know where the leak is?

You don't have a baseline. You don't know your answer rate, your booking rate, or what a booked job costs you.

If that's you, keep doing it yourself for about 30 days, and spend that time measuring instead of changing things:

1. Pull 30 days of call logs from your phone provider.
2. Listen to 20 recorded calls and mark each one: real lead or not, booked or not, did we ask or not.
3. Count the jobs that booked.
4. Call your own business a couple of times.

That's not because you don't need help. Once you know your numbers, you'll know which help to hire, and you'll know whether it's working.

The short version

If the leak is after the lead, get help on the inside: a person or a system that answers, follows up, and asks for the job.

If the leak is before the lead, get help bringing in the right leads: an agency if you need several skills fast, a marketer if you already have a process that works and need someone to run it.

If you don't know where the leak is, measure first.

Find out where it's leaking before you hire

The Revenue Leak Calculator takes a few numbers from your business and shows you where the money is leaking and roughly what it's costing you.

Figure out where it's leaking first. Then hire for that.

FAQ

Should I hire a marketing agency, a marketer, or do it myself?

It depends on where your leads are leaking. If calls go unanswered or leads don't book, get help handling leads first. If you handle leads well but don't get enough good ones, hire an agency or a marketer. If you don't know, measure your numbers for 30 days before hiring.

At what revenue should a business hire an in-house marketer?

There's no reliable revenue cutoff. Advice ranges from $500,000 to $5 million, and it usually matches what the person giving it sells. A better test is whether you already have a marketing process that works and need someone to run it.

How much does an in-house marketing manager cost?

Depending on the source, a small business marketing manager earns roughly $80,000 to $120,000 a year in salary, before benefits, and usually takes months to fully learn the business.

Will a marketing agency fix a low booking rate?

No. If leads reach your business and don't book, an agency will bring in more leads that hit the same problem. Fix answering, follow-up, and asking for the job first, with a person or a system.

What's the difference between a marketing agency and an in-house marketer?

An agency brings several skills at once, like ads, Google Business Profile, website, and SEO, and can start in a few weeks, but works from outside your business. An in-house marketer knows your business daily but costs more, takes longer to ramp up, and is rarely expert in every channel.