GuideHow marketing gets bought
In-housing
Definition
Moving marketing work from an agency into salaried roles of your own. The retainer comes off the P&L, and the work arrives on payroll with its full running cost attached.
How it’s calculated
Put the annual retainer next to the fully loaded cost of the roles that replace it: salary, pension, the tools the agency’s licences covered, the senior hours spent directing the work, and the hiring and ramp months during which output falls before it recovers. Retainer against salary alone flatters the move. What changes the answer is volume. A specialist needs enough of their specialism, week after week, to stay busy and stay sharp; steady always-on work supports a hire, while work that arrives in peaks supports a supplier. The hybrid is where I usually land: keep the strategy and the always-on work inside, and buy the peaks.
What to watch for
The job ad for the replacement bundles the specialisms of three different agency people into one role; whoever accepts will be junior in most of what you hired them for. The new hire reports to you, and your calendar holds no hours for directing marketing, so the direction the retainer used to include has quietly become your job. The agency has been given notice before the hire has signed, which prices the ramp months at zero. And nobody has re-run the volume check since the plan was written; if the always-on work has shrunk, the specialist idles between peaks you can no longer buy in.
The question you ask
“What does this cost fully loaded, and whose hours will direct the work?”