What’s the best way to market a business: hire a marketing company/freelancer or have an in-house team?

What’s the optimal way in terms of time, money and effort?

Spoiler alert: there is no “best way”. 

We’ve set down with Patrick Shaw, one of the world’s top dental marketing experts who runs one of the biggest 100% remote dental marketing companies. 

Throughout his career he had the privilege to talk with hundreds of dentists about promoting their dental practice and one of his surprising takeaways is that there are a lot of cases where an in-house team might be better suited. 

Pretty surprising to hear that from a marketing company owner, right?

The truth is, for each option there are advantages and disadvantages. 

In this article we’re going to lay down the pros and cons for each option so that you can make an informed decision about what fits best for your particular business context. 

Option #1 - Hiring a marketing company to promote your business for you

In theory, hiring a marketing agency seems like a good deal: you pay them 1 dollar and they bring you 2 bucks in return, isn’t it? 

Partially, yes, this is how it works. 

But there are some caveats you should carefully think about.  

Do you afford to hire a marketing agency?

Marketing is not something that happens overnight. 

A lot of times, you need to put in some effort before you see some results. 

The problem is, can you afford to pay the marketing company one, two, three months until you recoup that investment?

Here’s a concrete situation Patrick is faced all the time in the dental industry. 

A lot of time dentists reach out to him to help them promote their dental practice and attract new patients. 

The problem is that a lot of time the dental practice:

• Has no website

• Has no previews reviews

• Has no previous brand awareness

• Has no money to invest in ads

All they rely on is some organic marketing tactics. Which work. But they take time and the results are very poor compared to a targeted paid marketing campaign. 

Plus, most of the time, a dental practice wouldn’t get enough patients from these organic tactics so that it can have a positive return on investment. 

In fact, most of the time, the cost of hiring a dental marketing expert is so high that it’s better that they’d hire an in-house marketing person to handle all their organic social media strategy for example. 

So the first thing you should do is to assess how much work has to be performed on your business until you can actually start getting some customers?

And if you realize that you’re in the situation where you first have to lay down the foundation before starting to attract new clients, can you afford paying marketing company for some time until you see a positive return on investment?

Are you on the same page with the marketing agency that you want to hire?

There are so many ways to market a business. 

Some of them might not fit for your business or even for your style. You just might not like their way of doing things (even if it works). 

This is why it’s important for you to decide if your values are aligned with theirs. 

For instance, some marketers have a more aggressive way of communicating and getting clients. 

It doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, but you just might like a more permissive way of advertising. 

In Patrick’s case, his dental marketing company is more leaned to the inbound way of promoting a dental practice and attracting new patients. 

This means that they attract new patients into the practice not by chasing people around the internet with aggressive sales messages, but by putting out useful content. 

The useful content makes people lower their resistance to sales and the natural next step is to find out more about the practice and eventually become patients. 

Some dentists don’t like this approach because it involves quite a lot of effort. They prefer a more direct approach. 

“This type of client is not suitable for out dental marketing agency. I personally recommend them to find another expert because we just aren’t a fit”, says Patrick, the founder of the agency. 

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Everyone and their grandma is now a marketing consultant, right? 

How do you know which one to pick and which one is an actual expert? 

There are a few ways to do this.

The classical one are reviews, testimonials and case studies. 

Reviews, easiest to fake. In-depth, video testimonials, a bit harder. Case studies pretty hard, especially for multiple clients. 

So the next step would be to read their blog. 

Patrick, for instance, attracts almost all his customers by writing super-detailed articles on the company’s blog where they share their best dental marketing ideas and strategies that actually work to market a dental office. 

Ok, but information can easily be copy-pasted, right? 

So the last resort (which we strongly recommend) is to actually have a short meeting or a call with the potential marketing agency you want to hire. 

You’re probably thinking that this can be quite time-consuming and that you can have the bad luck of running into a sales person who tries a hard-sell on you. 

Yes, it could happen. But here’s an inside tip: usually, if the marketing agency has a blog where they share really useful information, they won’t push their services onto you because they are already attracting a lot of clients through non-pushy tactics like a useful blog. 

Option #2 - Have an in-house marketing team

This option gives you more control. 

You decide everything. But is this a good idea? Here are some essential questions you should ask yourself. 

Do you (or your team) have sufficient marketing knowledge? Do you have the time to learn?

You are a business owner, your schedule is probably already pretty much full. 

Your team members have their own roles, responsibilities and expertise. 

So in order to do marketing or learn marketing, you have to dedicate extra hours. 

And you also have to learn what works and what doesn’t. 

For instance, in order for a dental practice to have an in-house team, they have to have a person who is eager to learn marketing and to learn what marketing ideas actually work for the dental industry. 

The quick way is to buy some marketing courses. 

The slow way is for you or your team to read a lot and go through trial and error. 

Either way:

1. It “costs” time, which is money, righ?

2. And it takes time until you can apply everything fast. 

Do you afford to spend all this time until you actually see some positive results?

Do you enjoy marketing your business?

“It occured so many times that I trained dentists to promote their dental practice by themselves and they just ended realizing that they actually don’t enjoy doing it. They love fixing teeth. They don’t want to learn this new skill.”

It’s simple, if you don’t enjoy it, don’t force it. Otherwise this will have negative consequences in the long run. 

We’re humans, we only have 24 hours and we don’t have to do everything. 

Do you have the time to market your business?

A business shouldn’t suck up all your life. 

You have a life. Your family is important too, your health is important too. Having fun shouldn’t be “optional”. 

So the question is, do you have the time to also take care of the marketing side without jeopardizing other areas of your life?

For instance, if we continue our dental marketing example, dentists already have a busy schedule. 

If you’re a dentist and after 5 surgeries a day or a dozen patients you’re already exhausted and then you also have to take care of promoting your dental practice, it’s probably not worth it. 

You’d be better off, happier and even saving some money in the long run by hiring a dental marketing agency or a professional to employ already tested dental marketing ideas and quickly bring in new patients. 

Conclusion: should you promote business by yourself?

Here’s the fastest way to decide. 

Do you:

• Have the time to do it?

• Have the knowledge to do it or to learn?

• Love doing it?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then you probably should market your dental practice or any other business you have by yourself instead of hiring a marketing agency. 

If the answer is no, then it’s probably better to hire someone to handle this for you.