We're an agency, so the bias is declared. But the dimensions below are the same ones we'd weigh if we were on the buying side. The right answer depends more on stage and channel-mix complexity than on which side wins the comparison table.
Senior in-house: €6–10K salary + €1–2K tooling + €1K overhead. Mid: €4–6K loaded. Junior: €2–3K but usable only for execution.
Senior retainer: €3–6K/month all-in. No salary multiplier, no holiday cover, no laptop, no tooling line item.
60–90 days for a senior hire even with a clean handover. Junior hires productive at 6+ months.
First audit deliverable in 5 working days. First campaign-level changes in week 2.
One person is rarely senior in Google Ads, Meta, Yandex, GA4, server-side, AND BI. You hire for the dominant channel and outsource the rest informally.
Multidisciplinary by construction. Same owner sees Google + Meta + GA4 + server-side as one system. Yandex on tap for CIS.
What your one person learns stays in your one account. No exposure to other accounts' anti-patterns.
We've seen the same failure modes across 24 accounts. New problems map to known patterns. Mistakes happen on other people's accounts first.
100% on your account. They wake up thinking about you.
Shared attention. Some weeks your account isn't the priority — by design (retainer averages workload).
Sits in your meetings. Hears the CEO's vision in the kitchen. Knows your customers' first names. Context compounds.
Briefed in calls and via dashboards. Business context comes through the proxy of metrics and product, not osmosis.
One person leaves and the account knowledge leaves with them. Replacement search takes 3–6 months.
Documented decision log per change. Handover-ready architecture. We can hand the account back at any time without loss.
Looker Studio Pro, ahrefs, SEMrush, call tracking, dashboard tools — €500–1,500/month line item.
Bundled into the retainer. We pay for shared tooling once and use it across accounts.
Performance issues become an HR conversation. Hard to fire, hard to underpay if good. Career-development obligations.
Contracted deliverables. If we don't deliver, you switch agencies. No HR overhead.
Employee on payroll, NDA-bound. Direct trust relationship.
Agency with multiple clients. NDA-bound but lower trust ceiling — by structure.
This is what we recommend for many mid-size companies. In-house marketing lead owning brand, strategy, and team coordination. Agency owning Google Ads, Meta, GA4, server-side execution. Hybrid works when boundaries are clear: agency stays out of brand, in-house stays out of execution.
Loosely: above €30K / month media spend across channels, when you have at least one senior leader who can hire and evaluate a marketing specialist. Below that, the loaded cost of a senior performance marketer rarely pays back. Above €100K / month spend, a hybrid (in-house lead + agency execution) is usually optimal.
Yes, that's the structural risk — and it's why we publish full diagnostic audits, document every change with hypothesis and outcome, and contract on dimensions the client can verify (response time, deliverables, attribution integrity). You should treat any agency that won't commit to verifiable deliverables as a red flag.
Cleanly. Architecture is documented, decision log preserved, tracking stack transferred with credentials. We've done this transition for multiple clients. No lock-in by design — if you outgrow the agency model, you should be able to walk with the work intact.
Common situation. We often pair with the junior — they run day-to-day operational work (creative briefs, GBP posts, weekly reports), we own architecture and senior decisions. Junior gets senior mentorship as a side effect; you avoid paying senior fees for junior tasks.
We'll give you an honest answer — including saying 'hire in-house, here's the JD' if that's actually the right call. The audit is free either way.
No long contracts · Free audit before any work