Hiring a PR or marketing agency isn’t always a sign that something isn’t working. In fact, many companies that partner with agencies already have experienced marketing professionals or even entire internal marketing teams. The decision often comes down to a different question: What does your business need right now, and what’s the smartest way to get it?
Sometimes that means hiring someone internally who can become deeply embedded in the business. Other times, it means bringing in an outside partner with expertise in a particular area. And increasingly, companies are finding that the right answer is a combination of both.
Marketing has become much broader and more specialized. Today’s marketing teams may be responsible for everything from brand strategy and public relations to content, SEO, paid advertising, social media, email, analytics, website performance, and lead generation. As companies ask marketing to play a larger role in business strategy, that expanded responsibility can put a lot of pressure on even a strong internal team. According to the 2026 CMO Survey, one of the biggest marketing capability gaps companies report isn’t simply a lack of expertise. It’s inadequate resources, including people, time, and budget. So, how do you know when it’s time to bring in outside help?
1. You Need Expertise You Don’t Have In-House
One of the clearest reasons to hire an agency is when your strategy requires a skill set your existing team doesn’t have. A strong marketing director may understand your audience, brand, and overall strategy extremely well without being an expert in Google Ads, technical SEO, media relations, web development, or marketing analytics. In fact, expecting one person to be highly skilled in every marketing discipline is becoming increasingly unrealistic. This is where an agency or specialized partner can fill an important gap. Rather than hiring a full-time employee for every capability your organization may need, you can bring in expertise for a particular initiative, channel, or stage of growth.
That doesn’t diminish the role of your internal team. It can make that team stronger by giving them access to specialized capabilities while allowing them to remain focused on the areas where their knowledge of the organization creates the most value. Research from The CMO Survey on marketing outsourcing has identified access to expertise, economies of scale, and fresh perspectives as reasons companies choose to outsource marketing activities.
2. You Know What Needs to Be Done, but You Don’t Have the Capacity to Do It
Sometimes expertise isn’t the problem at all. Your marketing team may know exactly what needs to happen, but their existing workload leaves little room to actually make it happen. Internal marketing departments are often responsible for far more than customers ever see. Beyond campaigns and social media, there may be sales support, internal communications, presentations, events, website updates, reporting, leadership requests, recruiting materials, and day-to-day needs from across the organization. Eventually, something has to move to the bottom of the list.
An outside agency can provide additional capacity without requiring the company to immediately add another full-time position. This can be particularly valuable when workloads fluctuate throughout the year or when the additional work crosses several specialties. If your team has good ideas and a clear strategy but continually lacks the time to execute them, the problem may not be your marketing plan. It may simply be bandwidth.
3. You’re Launching Something New
A product launch, new service, new location, rebrand, or major company initiative can create marketing needs that look very different from your normal day-to-day work. Even companies with established marketing teams may benefit from additional support during a launch. Introducing something new often requires a concentrated effort across multiple channels, along with expertise or capacity that the internal team may not need on a regular basis.
Our client Registry Partners, for example, hired Fletcher to help launch RegiHealth, a new service designed to help healthcare organizations evaluate and improve the health of their registry programs. The launch required more than announcing that the service was available. Fletcher helped develop thought-leadership articles around the challenges RegiHealth addresses and secured media opportunities that introduced those ideas to a wider industry audience. That content was then extended through social media and supported with targeted LinkedIn advertising to increase its reach among healthcare professionals.
This is where outside support can be especially valuable. A launch may begin with a newsworthy announcement, but building awareness around something new often requires much more. PR can establish credibility and introduce the story to the market. Content can help audiences understand the problem the new offering solves. Social media and paid advertising can extend the reach of those messages and keep the new offering visible beyond the initial announcement.
The question becomes less about whether the company “needs an agency” and more about what the launch needs to succeed.
Research from The CMO Survey has found an interesting relationship between growth and outsourcing. Companies investing in product development showed higher levels of marketing outsourcing, suggesting that outside support can be particularly useful when organizations expand beyond their established capabilities.
A new initiative may require a landing page, paid advertising, email campaigns, social content, SEO, media outreach, sales materials, or measurement, or some combination of them. Bringing in an outside partner allows an internal team to add those capabilities when they’re needed without necessarily building permanent roles around a temporary or specialized need. The right mix depends on what you’re launching, who you’re trying to reach, and what needs to happen for that audience to take the next step.
4. You’re Doing a Lot of Marketing, but You’re Not Sure What’s Actually Working
Another sign that outside help could be valuable is when your company is already investing in marketing but isn’t sure whether those efforts are driving the success it wants. You may be posting consistently on social media, running ads, publishing blogs, sending emails, and investing in PR. Each activity may even produce its own set of metrics. But are those efforts moving the business toward the same goal? More activity doesn’t necessarily solve a marketing problem.
An outside partner can help take a broader look at the marketing ecosystem and identify where the real gap exists. Maybe the company has plenty of visibility but isn’t reaching the right audience. Maybe awareness is strong, but credibility is holding prospects back. Or perhaps marketing is generating interest, but the website isn’t effectively converting that interest into inquiries or sales. The goal isn’t necessarily to add another tactic. It’s to identify which part of the strategy needs attention and invest there.
5. Your Business or Your Audience Has Changed
The marketing strategy that helped build your business isn’t necessarily the one that will take it into its next chapter. Established companies evolve. They add new products or services, expand into new markets, change their business model, or begin competing for different types of customers. When the business changes, the way it presents itself to the market often needs to change with it. Sometimes that means refining the company’s messaging so customers understand everything the organization offers today. Other times, it requires a larger brand or marketing update to better reflect where the company is headed.
Established businesses have to recognize when their audience may be changing. A company that has historically marketed to one generation, demographic, or type of buyer may find that future growth depends on reaching an entirely new audience. That doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning the customers who helped build the business. It means understanding what matters to a new group of customers, where they spend their time, and how they prefer to interact with brands.
We’re seeing this play out as companies work to reach younger consumers. Gen Z, for example, isn’t another demographic to target with the same creative and methods. Reaching younger audiences may require companies to rethink everything from the platforms they use and the content they create to the tone, format, and stories they choose to tell.
New platforms and changing consumer behaviors can create the same challenge. The rise of short-form video and platforms like TikTok has changed expectations around how brands communicate, even for companies that don’t consider TikTok an important marketing channel.
But evolving a brand comes with its own challenge: how do you become relevant to a new audience without losing what existing customers already value about you? That’s where an outside perspective can be particularly helpful. An agency can research the new audience, evaluate how the existing brand is perceived, identify which elements should evolve and which should remain consistent, and develop a strategy for introducing that evolution across messaging, creative, content, and marketing channels.
The goal isn’t to change simply because marketing trends have changed. It’s to make sure the way you’re presenting your business still reflects who you are, where you’re going, and the people you’re trying to reach.
6. You Need More Financial Flexibility
The decision between hiring in-house and working with an agency is also about how much flexibility your business needs. Adding an internal marketing position creates an ongoing fixed cost. Beyond salary, the true cost of an employee can include benefits, payroll taxes, equipment, software, training, and the management time required to support that role. Those expenses remain relatively consistent even when the amount of marketing support the company needs changes.
An agency relationship can offer more flexibility. A company may need additional support during a product launch, period of rapid growth or especially busy season, and then require a different level of support once that period ends. Depending on the agency relationship, the scope of work or retainer can often be adjusted as the company’s needs and budget change.
There is also the question of what you’re getting for that investment. Hiring one experienced marketing professional gives you the skills and expertise of one person. Working with an agency can provide access to a broader team of specialists in areas such as strategy, writing, public relations, social media, design, and digital marketing, often without the total cost of building those capabilities internally.
That flexibility can be especially valuable for growing companies that need experienced marketing strategy and execution but aren’t ready to build an entire internal department. It can also reduce financial risk during uncertain periods. If revenue declines, priorities shift, or marketing needs change, a company may be able to adjust its investment in an agency without facing the financial, operational, and human consequences of eliminating an internal position.
That doesn’t mean an agency is always the less expensive option. If a company has enough consistent work in a particular area to support a full-time position, hiring internally may ultimately make more financial sense. But when marketing needs fluctuate or require expertise across several disciplines, an agency can give businesses access to the resources they need without committing to the long-term overhead of building every capability in-house.
Start With What Your Business Actually Needs
Before deciding whether to hire internally or bring in an agency, start with the gap you’re trying to fill. Once you understand the gap, it’s much easier to decide what kind of support makes sense. At Fletcher, we don’t believe every business needs the same combination of marketing tactics or the same kind of marketing team. We look at your goals, your existing resources, and what’s standing between where you are now and where you want to go.
Need help figuring out what’s missing from your marketing strategy? Let’s talk.
