The Social Marketing Choice - Retainer Based Agency Vs In-House

I think we can all agree that adding Social to your Integrated Marketing Strategy is no longer a question of "If" but rather "How?" But unlike TV or Print ads, Social is a funny animal. It really doesn't fit in one department. In Comcast's world, it's all customer support. Dell uses it for Product Development. And Starbucks leverages it for pure Marketing.

For smaller companies, it's hard to justify a full headcount OR retainer based agency fees going to manage Facebook. Now if you are really lucky, like Ben Bridge Jewelers, you have someone uber-talented who just steps up and takes it over for you. What's more likely is that you have someone uber-talented that doesn't step up. So while your Marketing geniuses are struggling with the build vs buy decision, someone down in Purchasing has 24,000 Twitter followers and is known as a Seattle Restaurant guru.

So, since a "Social Media Marketing Coordinator" can be a tough position to define, many companies just punt the whole thing and go the retainer based agency route. So what's right for you?

Consideration 1: Budget

Yes, the world is dictated by money. Sad, but true. And if you are a big company and don't have $5-$10k a month to spend on an agency, this is probably not your route. Now, if you run a few coffee shops or a winery, there are folks who will execute your Facebook and Twitter feeds for $1-3k a month. This can be a good deal. But if you fall in the world where you are a big company with no social budget, the agency route is tough. You are going to pay an agency the same type of hourly rates you'd pay a copywriter or designer. It's simply a necessity of them having to cover the overhead and turn a profit on the role. And if it's taking away from a media spend, they need to make the same margin as they would have on the media. So it gets pretty spendy.

Consideration 2: Interaction

There are two ways to look at social. One way is to say that every Tweet, Facebook post or blog comment is simply a text version of an ad banner that is an announcement to some community, The more effective approach is to consider your copy a conversation starter or enhancer. If you were at dinner, you wouldn't start a good story, then sneak away for the bathroom and never come back. You'd start the story, get to the punchline, then continue to converse as others joined in. If you want the latter, unless you have a nice budget, you probably want to train your folks in-house. 10 hours a week of engagement from an agency will not get you very far.

Consideration 3: In-House Talent

You probably have employees who you've deemed to be accountants, laborers, tech staff, support, design, etc...Do any of these employees have the chops to run a cross-department social program? It's possible they do. One way to find out is to simply look across Twitter and Facebook and see if any of your folks have a strong presence. Or, do a google search and find out if anyone has a prominent blog. We worked with one company who did an influencer identification report, only to find 3 of the top 10 influencers in the blogosphere on that topic worked for the company, and were already writing in their spare time.

Consideration 4: Strength of Community / Expertise of Product

We put these together because they kind of come with the same qualifiers. Hiring an agency is great when you have a somewhat generic stream of consciousness that you can fit creative copywriters into. It's also fantastic if you have heavy turnover, as you don't want the face of your social media changing every 3 months (unless you make that your plan.) But if your community demands to speak to a Product Manager or executive, or is asking questions about how to make repairs to a flux capacitor, then about the best an agency can do is act as traffic cop and route the interactions to the right place. This is an excellent of resources if you have significant budget, but harder to do on a shoestring.

In the end, expect a robust presence to require 20-40 hours of dedicated time across multiple people. Figure an agency at between $75-$125 per hour for engagement, management, account teams and any kind of tracking. In-house, you'll be pulling 5-10 hours away from 2-8 people, so figure out what the opportunity cost of that time is. Finally, consider the cost of initial training vs the cost of keeping the expertise outside the walls over the long-term.