Should you hire one full-service agency or several specialists?
Specialists win on depth. One agency wins on attribution, speed, and a single accountable team.
Specialists win on depth. One agency wins on attribution, speed and accountability. For most businesses under about $50M in revenue, the single accountable team is worth more than the extra depth, because the depth rarely survives the handoffs.
Where specialists genuinely win
A dedicated conversion rate optimization shop will run more rigorous tests than a generalist. A pure LinkedIn ads agency has seen more LinkedIn accounts than anyone who splits time across five platforms. If one channel is the overwhelming majority of your revenue and you have internal marketing leadership to coordinate, hiring the best specialist for that channel is a defensible choice. We will say so on a call rather than pretend otherwise.
Where split vendors quietly cost you
- Nobody owns attribution. The ads agency reports conversions. The SEO agency reports rankings. The web agency reports page speed. Nobody reports what a closed customer cost.
- Every handoff leaks. A landing page change that breaks conversion tracking is nobody's fault and everybody's problem.
- Three sets of coordination. The hidden cost is your own time, spent as an unpaid project manager between vendors.
- Conflicting incentives. The ads vendor wants more spend. The SEO vendor wants more articles. Neither is asked which one you should fund.
- Data in three places. Nobody has the CRM, the ad accounts and the analytics in view at the same time.
The middle path that usually works
One accountable team owning strategy, measurement and the systems, with a specialist brought in for a genuinely narrow need. That way the data stays in one place and the specialist plugs into a measurement setup that already works. LevelUp runs paid, SEO, social, web, development and analytics internally, which is why a single monthly report can follow a click through to a closed deal.
How to decide
Ask who will be able to answer "what did a customer cost us last month" without three emails. If the answer is nobody, consolidate.
Related: What makes LevelUp different?, How do you track leads and conversions?, What HubSpot services do you offer?, Who we are