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In this article, let us focus on the pros and cons of having a digital marketing team either in-house or outsource it to an external team or a hybrid model combining both. Irrespective of the growth stage of your company, we are sure that you are aware of how crucial the investments in digital marketing activities are and how beneficial they are when they are your revenue drivers.

An in-house digital marketing team:

Pros:

• They have an intimate knowledge of the product, service offerings, brand value.
• They are trained and can truly understand your customer’s journey through various stages.
• The internal and outbound communications have more clarity and consistency matching your expectations.
• You can readily measure, monitor and improve on the performance of the in-house marketing team.

Cons:

• It quickly becomes a routine and creativity which is vital in marketing takes a back seat.
• The entire marketing team is, in fact, an overhead which costs the company if performance is subpar.
• Lack of resources and experience.
• Getting an alternative or different perspective is difficult.

An external digital marketing team:

Pros:

• An external team will usually consist of experts with proven records and best practices and policies in place for quick execution.
• The benefit of working with the latest technology and practices.
• Your investment in digital marketing can be optimised based on your budget and operational requirements.
• You are now free to focus on your core business activities.
• You can either scale up or down your team with ease, and also, the annual leaves and other staffing challenges are non-existent.

Cons:

• Reporting, measuring and monitoring the performance can be a challenge.
• Communication may lack clarity and consistency.
• Exclusivity to work only for your company may not be realised.

Hybrid Model:

This is a unique model of combining both in-house and an external digital marketing team. We can discuss two instances where we find the hybrid model preferable.

• You have an expert resource who can spend time designing the digital marketing activities, and the execution is outsourced to the external team who will then do most of the legwork with the guidance of your expert resource.
• You have the external expert design the digital marketing activities, and the execution is from your in-house digital marketing team who will then do most of the legwork under the guidance of the external expert resource.

After outlining all the pros and cons of various options that are followed in the industry today, we suggest the following to keep your costs in check, optimise the investments and hence to yield better returns. You have to opt for either completely outsourcing the digital marketing activities to an external marketing partner or go with the hybrid model which offers you visibility and control which are the pros of having an in-house team and gives you all the flexibility of using an external team.