Hiring a B2B SaaS Digital Marketing Agency vs. Building an In-House Team

As a B2B SaaS startup, you have a big marketing decision to make.

To hire in-house or not to hire in-house?

Both options have benefits and disadvantages. Staying in-house allows you to have a deeper, closer understanding of your product, but agencies provide a wide range of specialized skills. This article examines both and determines which approach is best for your company.

Going In-House or Hiring a Marketing Agency for your B2B SaaS Company

Building an In-House Team

When you hire marketing professionals to work inside your company, you retain control over your branding, marketing strategy, and execution of that strategy. Since your in-house team can work closely with your product team, your marketing strategy can reflect your team’s product knowledge. Your marketing team will also work closely with stakeholders to align all marketing efforts with long-term business goals.

The first downside of hiring an in-house marketing team is the high upfront cost. Hiring, training, and equipping marketers is expensive. This expense may be worthwhile for a startup making a profit and growing, but it is an issue to consider at an early-stage start-up. Secondly, if you have a limited budget, you’ll need to focus on hiring more generalized marketing professionals, so your team may lack specialized expertise in certain areas. 

You also need to put in a lot of time and effort to build and manage a high-performing team, which takes a lot of time and effort. At an early-stage startup, this effort falls mainly on the founder to ensure that the marketing team is working towards their vision and standards. Finally, your team will inevitably have turnover. When you lose team members, you disrupt marketing efforts and lose critical knowledge. 

Hiring a B2B SaaS Marketing Agency

A digital marketing agency that focuses on B2B SaaS will have professionals on its team with specialized skills and a wide range of experience. For instance, at Kalungi, we have specialists in ABM, SEO, Paid, Content, Design, Automation, and other areas. Agencies can also quickly scale up or down based on your changing needs and budgets. You don’t have to worry about firing employees or hiring fast. Agencies will adjust their scope for you.

Marketing agencies are also more cost-effective for smaller and early-stage companies. You can invest in an outsourced marketing team for a similar amount that you would pay one senior marketing professional in-house. Finally, agencies give you the freedom for you to focus on your core business. For example, if you’re a cloud-based SaaS company, you could focus on your software development and innovation, knowing that you have experts doing your marketing.

There are three main downsides: Outsourcing can cause you to lose some control over your strategy and execution. However, this issue can be mitigated by working with a Fractional CMO, who are outsourced professionals who work as a CMO within your organization. They will work closely with the founder and stakeholders to create a marketing strategy linked to your business goals. 

You may also face communication challenges with your agency. While this can happen with an in-house team, working with agencies and meeting with them less than you would an in-house team means that misunderstandings and miscommunications can become more common. 

Lastly, you may become too dependent on your marketing agency. If you rely on the agency without learning about marketing and participating in the strategy, you can become overly reliant on them for everything, putting your future growth at risk.

Which Approach is Right for Your B2B SaaS Business?

Four essential aspects should be considered when deciding whether to hire a marketing team or work with an agency.

• Consider your budget: You need to evaluate the upfront costs that you would have and then the ongoing expenses of both options. 
• Assess your team's capabilities: If you currently have a marketing team, you should determine whether your in-house team has the necessary skills and bandwidth. A marketing agency can be hired to help with a specific project or product launch to support your current team.
• Evaluate your long-term goals: Consider how each approach aligns with your long-term vision. If you want in-house marketing specialists on your team in the medium term, consider whether an agency could work with a more junior or generalized marketing professional to help them grow.
• Risk tolerance: Assess your willingness to take on the risks associated with either approach. Working with a marketing agency represents less risk than working with an in-house team, but if the relationship frays, it can become difficult to manage or break the contract.

Hire The Right Marketing Agency for Your B2B SaaS Startup

Working with an in-house team provides you with experts who can support you within your company. However, an agency provides you with expertise, strategy, and execution done by specialized marketing professionals dedicated to your company’s growth. 

At Kalungi, we’ve worked with over 100 software companies and provided them with a full-service team to drive their growth. Schedule a discovery call here to learn more about how we can support you.