Hiring contractors & agencies

When to hire externally vs. in-house?

• Before you start hiring contractors and agencies, you need to make sure you have certain systems and processes in place in-house.
• Build most of your marketing foundation in-house and provide enough context to agencies/contractors so they can be successful.
• If your ratio of external to internal marketers is off, it’s like a team with no coach or an orchestra with no conductor.
• Only hire “fuel” contractors to produce content when you have a growth and distribution “engine” built out.
• Only hire “engine” contractors when you have “fuel.”
• Hire contractors or agencies that fit your business and will give you the A-team.

For more on fuel and engine, read this article.

Here’s some general guidance for when you should keep things in-house vs hire an external agency or contractor:

Types of agencies

By business model

You have 5 options when hiring external help, and typically as an early-stage startup you’re best served by 1 and 2.

1. Contractors
2. Small niche agency
3. Small generalist agency
4. Large niche agency
5. Large generalist agency

By functional area

These are areas where it almost always makes sense to hire external help due to scale in the learnings from working with multiple clients and/or being able to help with the ebbs and flows of your business.

1. Creative, brand, and web agencies
2. Paid agencies
3. SEO agencies
4. PR agencies
5. Content agencies

Tips for hiring agencies and contractors

• Know the exact team of people working with you. Ask for their LinkedIn profiles.
• Check that they have previous clients at the same stage.
• Make sure they have previous clients with the same business model.
• Back-channel or check references from the startups they’ve worked with that are most similar to yours.
• Know what you’re getting: Make sure there’s a defined scope and a clear process defined for deliverables, check-ins, and communication tools.

Mistakes to avoid when hiring agencies and contractors

• No one internally to manage the contractors/agencies.
• Hiring contractors/agencies before you know what you need and/or have a basic marketing foundation in place
• Missing “fuel” or “engine.”
• Hiring “fuel” contractors without an “engine” for distribution and driving conversion.
• Hiring “engine” contractors without the right fuel to drive efficient performance and quality leads.
• Hiring an A-list agency and getting the C-Team.
• Picking an agency with the wrong experience for your startup's stage and business model.
• Wrong scope: Letting the agency do things they aren’t great at.
• Not following early-stage marketing hiring guidance: Hire marketing generalists in-house, hire agencies as specialists.
• Hiring agencies for the foundational or strategic stuff that’s better done in-house.
• Not hiring agencies for the specialized project stuff where there are advantages to using an agency that works with multiple clients.

Avoid these mistakes and you’ll get the balance of contractors, agencies, and in-house marketing help right, and you’ll increase efficiency and save money overall.

Contractor and agency recommendations

Need to hire a contractor or agency? Check out our list of 25+ recommended contractors and agencies.