Agency vs hiring a marketing manager.
One person or one team?
A marketing manager is an employee who lives inside your business every day. An agency is a team of specialists you pay month to month. Each has real strengths. This page lays out the cost, the coverage, and the risk of each so you can choose with clear eyes.
At a glance
The short version.
SearchPod
An agency gives you a group of specialists without adding anyone to payroll. Someone runs your Google Ads, someone writes your SEO pages, and someone builds your site. SearchPod's rates are posted: Google Ads is managed for 10% of what you spend, never under $600 a month; each SEO page is $50; a site is priced once; nothing is charged to set up; and the first month is covered by a you-don't-pay promise.
In-house marketing manager
A marketing manager is a full-time hire. They know your products, sit beside your sales team, answer the phone, and can be pulled into anything from a trade show to a customer email. The cost is a salary plus employer payroll contributions, benefits, tool licences, and recruiting time. Their skills are whatever that one person has learned, and a posting on Indeed or LinkedIn will attract generalists far more often than ads or SEO specialists.
Comparison
Feature by feature.
| Feature | SearchPod | In-house marketing manager |
|---|---|---|
| Skills covered | Ads, SEO, web, copy, and tracking specialists | One person's skill set |
| Cost shape | Monthly fee tied to scope | Salary, payroll contributions, benefits, tools |
| Time to start | Days | Weeks to months to recruit and onboard |
| In the office every day | No | Yes |
| Deep product and sales knowledge | Learned through onboarding and calls | Yes |
| Coverage during vacation or sick leave | Team covers | Work pauses |
| Ends when you want | Month to month, no notice period | Termination rules and severance apply |
| Best fit | Businesses that need leads from search and web | Businesses with many internal marketing tasks |
Why it matters
The bottom line.
Four skills, one bill
Google Ads, SEO, web development, and conversion copy are separate trades. Finding one hire who is strong in all four is rare, and paying for four hires is out of reach for most small businesses. An agency puts a specialist on each and sends one invoice.
No recruiting cycle
Hiring means writing a posting, screening resumes, interviewing, waiting out a notice period, and then a probation period to see if it works. An agency can be running ads inside the first week. If it is not working, you stop next month instead of managing someone out.
Tools and training already paid for
A marketing manager needs licences for ad tools, SEO software, design apps, and call tracking, plus time to learn them. Agencies already own those tools and use them across many accounts. That cost never lands on your books.
Results, not hours
An employee is paid for time. An agency is judged on what the month produced. SearchPod reports leads and cost per lead, and if you are unhappy after the first 30 days, that month costs you nothing. No employer can offer you that.
Common questions, answered.
Hire in-house when marketing is woven through your daily operations. Companies with frequent events, a sales team that needs decks and email sequences, product launches that need deep technical knowledge, or many internal stakeholders to manage need a person in the room. At that size, an agency often works best as the specialist layer under that manager.
More than the salary. In Canada, the employer pays CPP and EI contributions on top of wages; in the US, it is the employer share of Social Security and Medicare taxes. Then add benefits, software, a laptop, training, and recruiting time. Add the cost of the contractors or agencies the manager will still need for ads, SEO, and development. Compare that full number with an agency fee, not the salary alone.
Not on day one. A good agency closes the gap with a proper onboarding, a monthly call, and access to your sales team's feedback. For search and web marketing, what matters most is knowing what your customers type into Google and how to convert them, and that is what the agency does every day.
Yes, and this is common once a business passes a certain size. The manager owns the brand, internal coordination, and the calendar. The agency runs the technical channels and reports to the manager. SearchPod works with in-house marketers in exactly this way, and the manager gets full access to the ad account and the reports.
SearchPod bills month to month and never charges a setup fee, so you can stop whenever you like, and you keep the website, the ad account, and the data. In the first 30 days, if you are not happy, you do not pay. Ending an employee relationship involves notice, severance rules in your province or state, and a new hiring cycle.
Comparisons are based on publicly available information and our honest read of it, last reviewed July 2026. Competitors change — if something here is out of date, tell us and we'll fix it fast.