Last Updated on 2020-12-28 by ppcguybklyn
Digital marketing positions are diverse, but roughly they can be divided into two types: In-House (promoting your own company’s products and services) and agency (promoting customers’ products and services), so if you want to develop in the field of digital marketing ,which type of job opening is better? In this article, I will analyze the differences between the two jobs and how to choose based on my experience and knowledge.
The biggest difference between In-House and agency positions
If they are both operating a PPC advertising account or a position in charge of digital marketing, what is the difference between the position of In-House and the position of the agency ? I think the biggest difference is the following two points:
In-House: Only need to manage one account and website, the optimizations need to be very detailed
Since the position is In-House, all working hours of course only need to be allocated to the company’s account and website. Although the work is much simpler than that of the agency, our analysis and optimization operations must be very detailed to meet the company's performance because all of the working hours are spent in only one account. This way we could meet the company’s requirements and expectations for this position.
Take the job of operating a PPC ad account for example. In the agency, because there are other client accounts to be processed, the corresponding optimization, such as adjusting the advertising campaign budget and bidding, etc. usually is based on general performance such as overall ROAS and conversion rate. But if it is a In-House position, our only responsibility is one account, then we must analyze and conduct a more detailed level of performance analysis in order to plan our optimizations, such as adjusting the content according to the click-through rate and search terms of different ad copies, or adjusting the best delivery time according to the performance of different ad campaigns at different points of the day, etc.
Of course, this is not to say that you don’t need to make these detailed adjustments when you work in an agency position, but when you work in In-House, because all your working hours are concentrated in the same account, you must be willing to spend the extra time on each details that can be used to maximize the effectiveness of advertising.
Agency: Serving multiple clients, multi-tasking and arranging work order is the key
As mentioned earlier, because working in an agency has to serve different clients at the same time, the most important thing is definitely how to balance the management of different accounts. Each client’s account content and budget levels are different, and each has different needs. Therefore, how to determine the priority of adjusting accounts according to account performance and budget is a necessary skill when working in an agency.
Another very important ability to work in an agency is to be able to multitask. There would be many times when a client temporarily asks for adjustments or sends emails to ask questions in the middle of work. At this time, you must be able to meet the needs of customers while not hindering the work at hand. If you are working in In-House, unless your business is very complicated, there would not be that many times you need to multitask like this.
Because we have to consider many aspects when choosing a job, after discussing the biggest differences between the two jobs, we must discuss in more detail the main jobs and responsibility that In-House positions and agency positions face.
Jobs and responsibilities that In House positions may face
- The distribution of work is relatively detailed. Need more communication and cooperation with other colleagues and departments
If you are working in a relatively large company, then the work distribution will be more detailed. The work in the marketing department, such as PPC advertising, SEO, email marketing, social marketing, etc., will be assigned to various specialists. If the specialists need to help each other (for example, SEO and PPC can provide each other with keyword research), it is necessary to communicate and coordinate with colleagues.
In addition to cooperation within the department, working as an In-House position in a larger company, you will often encounter when you need help from departments other than marketing. This kind of communication between colleagues and colleagues is relatively uncommon in the agency because the agency's work is more focused on communicating with clients instead of colleagues in other departments.
- If target performance declines, more in-depth analysis is needed
When working in an agency, as mentioned earlier, sometimes there is no way to spend too much time on performance analysis because we have to serve multiple clients . When faced with underwhelming results or even decline, most of the time we would find out the areas that need improvement the most and make general suggestions. Sometimes the client’s own changes to the website or other activities can also affect the digital marketing performance. So if we find that the target performance is different from the expected , we can usually ask clients whether they have changed the website or held events recently. The agency does not need to be fully responsible for the overall website performance.
But working at In-House is different, because the main decisions that affect overall performance are all in your own hands, when analyzing performance changes, you can’t just focus on high level and general areas. You must have a deeper understanding of the reasons for growth or decline and organize detailed improvement methods in an orderly manner to meet the company's expectations for In-House digital marketing positions.
- The tools used are relatively simple
When we only need to operate one account, the marketing tools we need to use are relatively simple. For example, if we have chosen Moz as the main SEO tool, we usually won’t use other tools with the same function. Because the tools used are relatively simple, the cost of spending time in learning and being proficient in these tools is relatively low. Even if you have not used the tools used by the company before, you can quickly pick that up on the job.
Jobs and responsibilities that agency positions may face
- Respond to customer needs and report performance
The most important thing for an agency’s work is to arrange different jobs according to different client needs. If the clients’ industries are very diverse, then it is necessary to explore the different management guidelines of different industries. This is where agency work is different from In-House’s work. The latter requires a thorough understanding of the company's own industry, while agency work requires understanding of different industries.
Serving multiple clients also means that when working in an agency, you need to memorize each client’s requirements for advertising performance and the current account status, so that you can know whether each client’s current performance is good or bad. Then adjust the accounts based on performances.
- Arrange work according to the importance of clients
Working in an agency is very realistic. Naturally, our working hours have to be allocated more to the clients that pay more money and have higher marketing budgets. Supervisors and colleagues usually don’t want to spend too much time on smaller clients. Therefore, it is very important to arrange working hours according to the importance of clients.
If the clients that the agency accepts are all of the same size and the service fees charged are also very similar, we must base on the account performance and client expectations when determining the importance of the client. The higher the expected growth rate of the client and the larger the room for improvement of the account, the more time we should spend on this client to ensure that the account’s performance meets the customer’s requirements.
- There is no room for mistakes
In an In-House position, if you make a mistake, usually if the working environment and the supervisor are not too bad, you can have the opportunity to make corrections. But if you are working in an agency, the room for making mistakes is relatively small. Especially representing clients on various platforms for publicity and advertising through digital marketing. If you make a mistake, it may affect the corporate image, which in turn will affect their willingness to renew the contract with our agency in the future.
Although the tolerance for making mistakes in the office is very low, how can anyone not make mistakes at all? The team’s contact with clients, such as supervisors or PMs, should have a different response method for each customer to calm the client's emotions. This kind of situation is not that often encountered in In-House work.
- Need to be familiar with various tools to respond to client needs
Compared with the requirements of In-House work for marketing tools, the threshold for using marketing tools for agency work will be higher because according to the different needs of each client, we will use different marketing tools. Sometimes we will use the tools that the client is already using while signing contracts with clients. So it is very important to have a certain degree of understanding of different tools or be able to get started quickly. When recruiting talents, the head of the agency also tends to find people who have experience or knowledge of various marketing tools.
Which one is better?
After enumerating so much information about In-House and agency work, which kind of work is better? I think this depends on our plan for career development in digital marketing:
Pursue stability and internal promotion and growth: choose In-House
In-House’s job environment is relatively stable, and the work is simple. If the company operates at a larger scale, there is a lot of room for promotion and growth in the future. If our job search goal is to be able to work steadily in the same company and reach mid- to high-level managerial roles, then we should give priority to applying In-House positions.
Pursue to quickly accumulate experience to enhance your resume: choose agency
The work of the agency is diversified, the pace is fast, and working at an agency can get in touch with various types of responsibilities in a short period of time. If our purpose of job hunting is to quickly accumulate digital marketing experience within 1-3 years to make our resume richer and stronger, we should give priority to applying to agency positions.
Of course, everyone’s job search situation is different. Some people plan to learn experience in an agency and then transfer to In-House as a manager. So when applying for digital marketing vacancies, the most important thing is to think about the impact of this position on future career development rather than just compare the job difficulty and salary levels. Carefully consider what kind of work you want to do in 3-5 year. I think that is the most important part of job hunting.
