List the jobs before choosing the employment model
Start with commercial offer approval, project knowledge, media buying, creative production, landing experience, measurement, CRM routing and sales feedback. Mark who can decide, who performs the work and who accepts the result. The same person may hold more than one role, but an unnamed role is still a gap.
Separate day-to-day decisions that need close project context from specialist implementation or extra production capacity. Document what the current team already does well. Bringing in a supplier to duplicate an existing capability can increase coordination work without addressing the bottleneck.
On smaller screens, scroll the table horizontally to read all columns.
| Work | Decision to assign | Acceptance evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Offer and inventory | Who approves the advertised version? | Current approved brief |
| Media buying | Who can change budgets and within what bounds? | Recorded campaign changes and review rationale |
| Measurement and CRM | Who owns receipt, stage meaning and delivery failures? | End-to-end test and reconciliation |
| Creative and destination | Who produces, approves and maintains the assets? | Approved assets and working mobile journey |
| Sales feedback | Who records project fit and follow-up outcomes? | Same-cohort CRM results and unresolved cases |
Compare three operating choices against that map
An internal team can keep project knowledge and routine decisions close to the business, but it needs management, skills coverage and backup. An agency can add a defined capability or delivery capacity, but the business still needs someone able to approve the offer and accept the work.
A hybrid model splits responsibilities rather than eliminating them. Write the interfaces: for example, an internal commercial owner approves the brief while a specialist operates media and an implementation owner maintains tracking. This is an illustrative allocation, not a recommended headcount or evidence of lower acquisition cost.
Build the cost comparison from inputs you can verify
Use the same review period and list included work. Internal delivery cost may include actual employment cost, tools, production, hiring and allocated management time. External delivery cost may include the service fee, agreed production, tools, pass-through implementation and retained internal management. Include a cost once; do not count an agency-included tool again.
Compare delivery cost separately from advertising spend, or add the same stated media assumption to each option. Costs not yet quoted should remain unknown. Do not insert a universal salary loading, tenure statistic or expected savings figure to make the comparison complete.
On smaller screens, scroll the table horizontally to read all columns.
| Input | Internal option | Agency or hybrid option |
|---|---|---|
| People and oversight | Actual employment cost and allocated management | Service fee plus retained internal oversight |
| Creative and implementation | Included capacity plus any additional work | Included deliverables plus agreed extras |
| Tools and systems | Actual licenses and infrastructure | Included versus separately charged items |
| Transition and continuity | Hiring, training and backup where applicable | Handover and overlap where applicable |
| Excluded or unknown items | Record them explicitly | Record them explicitly |
A cheaper delivery model is not automatically a better campaign
Keep service cost, lead acquisition and business outcomes separate. Lower team cost does not establish lower CPQL; lower CPQL does not establish collected revenue or profitability. Evaluate actual cohorts with the same qualification criteria and follow-up window.
A before-and-after switch can coincide with a new project, seasonal demand, a revised offer or a sales-team change. Record those differences. If several factors change, do not present the entire difference as the effect of hiring an agency or bringing work in-house.
Plan continuity before a person or supplier leaves
Keep an asset inventory, responsible business contacts, configuration notes, approved briefs, change history and recovery procedures. Test that the receiving team can understand the reporting and verify lead delivery before ending the overlap. Use actual coverage and commitments rather than a universal staff-turnover benchmark or a fixed handover duration.
Access to Analytics is controlled by roles and data restrictions; an administrator and an analyst do not have the same capabilities. Check the required task and current platform roles before granting or removing access. The operating model does not by itself determine contractual ownership or permission to reuse customer data.
Primary reference: Google Analytics: access roles and data restrictions
Make a decision with explicit conditions
Record the capability gap, the chosen scope, included and excluded costs, named owners and the evidence needed to accept delivery. If a proposal leaves measurement ownership or follow-up unresolved, resolve that gap before treating the price as comparable.
Agree a review point tied to deliverables and sufficiently mature outcomes. The decision may be to keep the internal team and add a specialist, change an agency's scope or rebuild a missing internal capability. There is no need to declare one structure the winner for every developer or spend level.
Frequently asked questions
Choose the next step for your project review
- Compare CPQL and advertising spend per contract
- Review calculation definitions and limits
- Read the GPR Property experience in context
Share the project brief, target market and available budget. For existing campaigns, include aggregate spend, lead quality and follow-up outcomes for the same period to define the scope and deliverables.
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