The short answer
If you need one or two skills now and then, a freelancer is usually the simplest choice. If marketing is a daily job with enough work to fill a full-time role, and you have time to manage it, hiring someone in-house makes sense. If you need several skills working together every month, such as design, social, ads, SEO and print, without managing a team yourself, an agency or a monthly marketing plan is often the better fit.
Most businesses move through more than one of these as they grow. The right choice is the one that suits where you are now.
Doing it yourself
Most small businesses start here, and there's nothing wrong with that.
The upside: nobody knows your business better, and it costs time rather than money.
The downside: time is the one thing you're short of. Marketing is usually the first job dropped when you get busy, which is exactly when you need the next wave of work lined up.
Where it breaks: skills gaps. Running Google Ads, writing a website page, designing a sign and photographing your work are four different trades.
Hiring someone in-house
A dedicated marketer knows your business, is there every day and can react quickly.
The costs go beyond the salary: super, leave, software, training and a computer, plus the ad budget they'll spend. The harder limit is skills. One person rarely covers design, copywriting, ads, SEO, photography and reporting equally well, so an in-house hire often still needs freelancers or an agency behind them. They also need managing, and when they move on, much of what they know leaves with them.
In-house makes the most sense when there's a full-time role's worth of work and someone in the business has the time to lead it.
Using freelancers
Freelancers give you specialist skills without a long-term commitment. A good freelance designer or ads specialist can do excellent work on a project basis.
The catch is coordination. With a designer, a web developer, an ads person and a photographer, you become the project manager, passing files between them and making sure everything still looks like the same business. Check who holds the logins, files and accounts when each project ends.
Using an agency or a monthly plan
An agency or a monthly plan gives you several skills working together, one point of contact and continuity when people change.
The things to watch are cost, long lock-in contracts, reports full of numbers that don't connect to sales, and not owning your own accounts. A good arrangement solves those up front.
Decision rule: count the skills you need each month, not the hours. One skill, hire a freelancer. Four or five, with no time to manage them, and you need a team, either on your payroll or on a plan.
Questions to ask any marketing provider
Whichever way you go, ask these before you commit:
Who owns the ad accounts, website, domain, social pages and design files?
Is ad spend paid directly to Google and Meta, or marked up and passed through?
What will you report each month, and does it show enquiries and sales, not just likes and clicks?
Who approves posts, emails and ads before they go out?
What's included, and what's charged separately?
What's the minimum term?
Can I see work you've done for businesses like mine?
Our guide to what a monthly marketing report should tell you goes deeper on that reporting question.
How our Marketing Plans work
We offer two monthly plans with published prices, so you can compare them with the options above.
Studio, $2,200 a month + GST. A design team on call with 25 design hours a month for posts, ads, print and pages, print and signage organised by the same team, a brand hub and Pulse, our client login. It suits businesses that run their own marketing and need design help they can count on.
Department, $4,900 a month + GST. Everything in Studio, including the same 25 design hours, plus social posts planned, designed and posted, your Google Business Profile, reviews and listings, Google Ads and Meta ads management, email campaigns, campaign landing pages, a content day each quarter and one monthly report across every channel. Extra locations are $450 a month each.
On both plans, ad spend is paid directly to Google and Meta so the accounts stay yours, print production is charged separately, and you approve posts, emails and ads in Pulse before anything goes out.
Worth knowing: a plan like Department covers work that would otherwise need a designer, a social media manager, an ads specialist and someone to pull the reporting together. Compare it with the combined cost and management time of those roles, not with any single one.
Common questions
When should a small business outsource its marketing?
When marketing keeps slipping because you're busy, when you need skills you don't have, or when you're paying several people and still coordinating them yourself.
Can I use an agency and keep some marketing in-house?
Yes, and many businesses do. A common split is an in-house person who knows the business and handles day-to-day posts, with an agency or plan covering design, ads and reporting.
What should I own if I outsource?
Everything with your name on it: the ad accounts, the website and domain, social pages, design files and photos. Whoever does the work should have access, not ownership.
Want to see what's included? Compare the Studio and Department plans side by side on our Marketing Plans page.
