Choose in-house marketing when you have steady work that needs daily access to your business and someone who can manage the hire. Choose an agency when you need several specialist skills for a defined scope. If the work is a smaller recurring list, a freelancer or monthly marketing partner can fit before either option. Start with what must arrive each month and who will direct the work. An employee, agency and part-time provider buy different amounts of time and responsibility.
For one location that needs its website, Google profile and social posts kept useful, boomp.net's service plans offer a defined monthly scope with Kathleen directly. Local marketing is $900 a month; Marketing partner is $1,800. These are our prices, not a market average or a claim to replace a full-time team.
Compare the job before the fee
| Arrangement | What you buy, and what stays with you |
|---|---|
| In-house employee | Dedicated working capacity and close access to the business. You recruit, direct, support and manage the person. |
| Agency | An agreed mix of specialist work. You supply business facts, approve priorities and manage the relationship. |
| Freelancer | A person's defined skill or project. You connect that work to the rest of the marketing. |
| Virtual assistant | Execution of documented tasks. You define the source, process and decisions they can make. |
| Fractional marketing lead | Part-time direction. People and budget must still exist to carry out the plan. |
| Monthly marketing partner | A recurring list of work with one responsible person. You supply current facts and approve business decisions. |
The job title does not tell you whether a person writes, designs, publishes, answers customers or manages ads. Ask for each activity by name. The agency guide covers provider selection. The fractional CMO guide covers leadership when you already have people to direct. This page helps you decide where the working capacity should sit.
What in-house marketing gives you
An employee can hear the same customer questions as the rest of the team. They can collect a photo, check an offer with sales and follow up on a missing detail without a separate vendor handover. That access matters when the business changes frequently or marketing needs daily coordination.
It also creates obligations. Someone must set priorities, explain what good work looks like and give feedback. A junior hire needs direction. A senior hire needs authority and resources. Neither becomes a designer, developer, media buyer and copywriter simply because all four jobs sit on your list.
Before opening the role, write one ordinary week. Name the recurring work, meetings, expected output and skills needed. If most of the week is blank, buy a narrower scope first. If the week needs incompatible specialist skills, plan outside support as well.
What an agency gives you
An agency can supply several people without asking you to recruit each one. That is useful for a launch, paid campaigns across channels, a rebuild or a project that needs writing, design and development together. The contract should say which of those people you actually get. Access to a team is different from unlimited hours from that team.
You still need one internal decision maker. The agency needs current offers, accurate prices, approved claims and permission to use customer material. If every draft waits for three people who disagree, changing providers will not solve that delay.
Ask who performs the work, who checks it, what arrives each month and what happens when the scope changes. For search services, Google's hiring guidance recommends checking experience, methods and measurement. A promise of a guaranteed first-place ranking is a reason to stop the conversation.
Compare the total cost on the same basis
Do not compare an annual salary with one month's agency invoice. Use the same time window and the same work list.
For an employee, include salary, employer costs, recruitment, equipment, software, training and management time. For an agency, include the retainer, setup work, extra projects, subscriptions, ad spend and your review time. For a part-time provider, include work that someone else must still do.
As a scale reference, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a May 2025 median annual wage of $78,760 for market research analysts and marketing specialists. That is about $6,563 a month in wages alone. It is a broad national occupation, not a quote for your town, an entry-level coordinator or an all-purpose marketer. It excludes the other employment costs above. Source checked October 21, 2026.
Here is a budgeting method, not a vendor quote or savings study:
- Write the work you actually need for the next three months.
- Ask each provider to price that same list and name exclusions.
- Add the cost of excluded work and software you must supply.
- Estimate your own supervision and review time separately.
- Compare the completed scope and risk, not just the invoice.
A $900 local package covers a limited monthly list. It does not buy full-time availability. A higher retainer can be reasonable if it includes specialist work you need and can verify. The marketing-budget guide helps set the total amount before choosing a provider.
A worked example: one service page becomes a customer path
Consider a single-location repair business. This is an editorial example, not a customer result. The business has a service page, real project photos and questions from recent quote calls. The owner wants more suitable inquiries, but the page does not explain which repairs the team accepts.
The first assignment is to improve that page with the actual scope, exclusions, service area and quote step. Then check the form, update relevant profile information and turn the approved page into social posts. A question such as whether a small repair needs a site visit can become a useful page section and a short post pointing to it. The work starts from material the business already has.
An employee can collect and maintain those facts internally. An agency can allocate writing and web work to its team. A monthly partner can do a defined share of the path. A briefed assistant can load approved material but needs a named person to decide the content and check it. Choose the arrangement that can finish the assignment with the management you can provide.
Use a hybrid arrangement when the boundary is clear
You do not need one provider for every job. An internal person can coordinate customer facts and approvals while a specialist manages ads or development. An owner can handle inquiries while a partner maintains pages and posts.
Write the handover in one place:
- Who supplies facts and photos?
- Who decides the monthly priority?
- Who drafts and who approves?
- Who publishes and checks the result?
- Who answers the resulting inquiries?
- Who records confirmed customers and their source?
Give each output one responsible person. Two calendars and two reports do not help if neither person owns the customer path. If your main gap is tasks from an existing process, the virtual-assistant guide has a practical brief.
Keep the business in control
Keep the domain, website, Google profile, social accounts, analytics and email list under business control. Give providers their own access and agree how that access ends. The provider should hand over usable work and account records when the arrangement finishes.
Current prices, customer permissions, professional claims and customer replies still need a business owner. Do not hand these decisions to a new marketer without clear authority. For website work, separate marketing edits from backups, security updates and recovery support. The website-maintenance guide explains that boundary.
Choose the smallest scope that solves the real problem
If the website and inquiry path work and social writing is the only backlog, software may be enough. Packs is $9 a month for posts you publish. Core is $39 a month with connected publishing and your review in the app by default.
If you want a person to handle social review and scheduling, Social, handled is $275 a month. For broader work, Local marketing adds Google Business Profile updates, a review-request process, one new or improved search page, up to two small website updates, inquiry tracking and a monthly progress update. Marketing partner adds a second search page, one customer email, one offer page or promotion and a monthly planning and progress call. The broader plans start with a 15-minute call and work agreed before payment.
The service scope is one business at one location. It excludes ads and ad spend, customer or review replies, shoots, full website rebuilds, link building and technical audits. Compare the monthly plans and bring the work list you want removed.
If you first want to check the social output, enter your website and email for ten free posts. The link arrives by email, with no account or card.
