Hiring right now is hard, and hiring the right people is even harder. In the United States, 69% of corporations are struggling to hire top talent, a massive leap from 2010’s 14%, according to a Manpower survey.

For businesses looking to hire individuals for their internal marketing teams, the world of Indeed and LinkedIn can be demoralizing.

Building an internal marketing team is all about having the right people with the right skills in the seats. You need someone who can understand your business inside and out, who has a deep knowledge of communication styles and marketing best practices, and who is willing to wear many hats day in and day out.

Simply put, hiring the right people for a marketing team is hard. And expensive. And time-consuming. And all the other things that make the hiring process a frustratingly long and overwhelming experience.

So I’m here to offer another solution: Supplement the gaps in your marketing team with a marketing agency.

Think of it as a pinch runner. If you have someone on your team who is a solid hitter but can’t run the bases, you put in a pinch runner to handle the bases. It almost feels like cheating, right? 

But it’s not cheating — and might just be the innovative and savvy business decision that gives your team a competitive advantage!

A Hybrid Approach

There’s a lot of good that comes from having a marketing person on your team that lives and breathes your business’s mission and communicates that out to the right internal and external stakeholders.

But unless you have a deep bench of marketers on your team to do the work (and let’s be honest, most internal “marketing departments” are really just a one- or two-person show), an internal team can’t do it all. And a lot of times, the daily grind of an internal marketing team can make it nearly impossible to think outside the box to grow the business.

To maximize your existing team’s capabilities without maxing out your budget, it might be time to consider a hybrid approach to marketing.

A hybrid marketing team (a team made up of your internal professionals plus experts from a marketing agency) can allow you the flexibility and financial freedom to scale your business faster, more efficiently and more effectively than hiring professionals on your own time and own dime.

Building Your Marketing Roster

To figure out the best way to create your hybrid marketing approach, start with your internal roster. List the individuals on your team who have assigned roles (and do them well). Then consider where they might fall short, either due to time, budget or knowledge constraints.

Here’s an example of what we mean:

• Yogi Berra: Loves writing blog posts (but doesn’t know the right way to talk)
• Jose Conseco: Likes posting on social media (but is just doing it for fun)
• Alex Rodriquez: Is good at selling himself (but can’t back it up with unbiased stats)

You have a writer, a social media person and a sales guy. For an internal marketing department, that covers a lot of bases.

But where’s the strategy? In this example, the roster is missing a content strategist: Someone who can hit a double to bring the other two marketers home. A cleanup hitter you can rely on to make the work worth it.

It’s not always easy to spot the gaps in your roster. And unless you have a marketing director on your team, it can be nearly impossible. In that case, the first thing you should do is simply get a consultation. Talk to an expert. Figure out what an all-star lineup could look like specific to your organization with the help of a stacked team of professionals.

Next Stop: Home Plate

So next time you’re trying to figure out if you need one type of marketing or the other, consider a hybrid approach with an agency such as MAKE Digital.

Let your internal batters continue to swing for the fences, but put someone on base who knows how to hit the ground running at full speed. We call that a winning game plan.

Evan Kirsch is CEO of MAKE Digital Group, an innovative digital marketing agency that specializes in forward-thinking marketing strategies for small businesses. For 12 years, Evan has navigated clients from coast-to-coast along in their pursuit of marketing excellence. To schedule a free analysis of your marketing strategy, you can email Evan at evan@makedigitalgroup.com.