The B2B SaaS Marketing Blog

Marketing Agency vs. Marketing Consultant: Common Misconceptions and Specific Use Cases for One or the Other

by 

Dev Basu

Last updated: November 22nd, 2024

“What’s the difference, in terms of deliverables, ROI, and expectations, between a marketing consultant and a marketing agency?”

This is a question we often receive from prospects considering third party help, as the definition between the two is often unclear.   

Many B2B SaaS marketers are currently facing layoffs and budget constraints. This makes consulting solutions much more attractive, as that service comes with a lower price point and requires less upfront commitment and risk than an agency service. 

For some prospects, a consulting agreement is a better option than hiring an agency.  

Neither service is definitively better than the other, and the best option for you really depends on your company’s available resources, team, and goals. 

To help you make a more informed decision, this post will:

• Debunk some of the myths about working with agencies and consultants
• Compare and contrast agencies and consultants to explain their key differences and expectations for both services.

Lay out specific use cases where it makes sense to hire either a marketing consultant or an agency

3 Misconceptions We’ve Seen in the Agency vs. Consultant Decision

The misconceptions we typically see around hiring outside marketing resources are typically related to the attention you’ll receive, who actually does the work you need done, and credentials.

1. “One Option Will Offer Us More Attention Than the Other”

There is often this idea that a consultant will be able to offer you more of their time because they have fewer clients. In some cases, it may be true, but while a consultant typically has fewer clients, they also are just one person. And one person with multiple clients won’t necessarily be able to offer you more of their attention. So in our minds, this is a wash. One option has a single person but handles fewer clients, the other has a team, but handles more.

The attention you’ll receive is really just a function of whether either is oversubscribed in clients relative to what they can handle and that’s hard to tell a priori. Talking to their previous clients is likely the best way to validate this.

2. “Who We Hire Will Be the Only One Doing the Work”

This misconception comes in two flavors. First, companies sometimes think that hiring a consultant means the expert you hire (the one that’s earned your trust) is the individual who will do all of the work that’s planned. That may be true in some cases, but from what we’ve seen consultants are not averse to working with other contractors on projects. Often the best consultants will work with other 3rd party contractors. So if you’re talking to a potential consultant, ask. Ask in detail who will be doing what work.

And companies make similar assumptions about agencies. They’ll think, because agencies have teams in-house, they also have the capacity to complete your entire project in-house. But the reality is that many agencies still outsource certain elements of client work. For example, if you hire an advertising agency to run your paid search and social ads, they might outsource the copywriting to a freelancer while they develop strategy, architect the actual campaigns, and execute on them.

There is nothing inherently wrong with your outside marketing resource working with contractors to get the work done, but it’s common for both agencies and consultants to do this and it’s worth bringing up in conversations with the options you consider hiring.

3. “Because They Worked at a Hot SaaS Company or They Reached Agency Level, They Must Be Capable of Delivering Results”

This is a more subtle but potentially dangerous misconception. SaaS companies sometimes assume that if a consultant has a track record of working for other high-profile companies, they’ll be highly capable of getting results for their company too.

But depending on what specifically you’re hiring them to do, their skill set may or may not be a match. To suss this out, it’s useful to ask them about what specifically they were doing at those companies while they worked there.

For example, if you’re hiring them for their overall demand generation results, what did they do? Did they produce the content? Did they run the ads? Who made the creative? Who did keyword research? Who optimized the social demographic targeting? These details matter when hiring a consultant for marketing services.

This same misconception applies to agencies. Here, you’re typically safer with knowing what they did because agencies are clearer on what they do versus what clients or others do. But be careful to ask the same questions about exactly who did what piece.

Dig into the details of campaigns, ask about every step. In addition to figuring out who did what, you’ll also be able to gauge their own ability to clearly articulate what they did and why. If you’re unhappy with that, it means you’ll likely be unhappy with their explanations behind their choices when you’re their client, too.

The Key Differences Between Agencies and Consultants

We see three core buckets of needs that SaaS business owners and CMO’s look to fill when they’re hiring an agency or consultant:

1. Strategy: What should we do?
2. Planning: Who does what and when?
3. Execution: Getting the actual work done.

The key high-level difference to understand between agencies and consultants is that typically an agency can facilitate all three needs while a consultant will specialize in one or two. Most good consultants would tell you that they do a few things really well but they don’t do everything.

If you do hire a consultant for all three needs, that’s when they have to begin acting like an agency without an agency’s resources — organizing a team (often one they’re not used to working with) to get the job done. Alternatively, if an agency is at full capacity or they have a knowledge gap, they’d organize a team of consultants or contractors.

Otherwise, the job will typically get done by in-house agency employees who are used to working with each other. Don’t discount the efficiency of the team having worked together before. This typically means fewer communication breakdowns and slowdowns.

Out of the 3 core needs, consultants and agencies probably overlap the most on strategy and planning. There are consultants out there whose services are execution rather than strategy, but sometimes we might think of these individuals more as implementers rather than strategists.

The bottom line is if you’re in a situation where you need one or two of the core needs, consultants can often be a great way to go. If you’re looking for everything from strategy through to execution, an agency will likely be best.

Let’s look at some specific scenarios to explain this further.

In What Specific Cases Should You Choose an Agency or a Consultant?

When You’re Early Stage Trying to Figure Out Product-Market Fit or Target Audiences

For early-stage companies, especially if you’re not funded and trying to figure out product-market fit, working with consultants is a fine choice because your needs aren’t about execution yet. 

You’re just trying to figure out the basis for your digital marketing strategy.

Consultants are great for helping you think through who your target audience is, how to get in front of them, and how to position yourself in the market.

People like April Dunford, Jason Quey, Joel Klettke, Kamil Rextin,  and Mike Sonders are friends of ours and are very good at what they do.

When You Have a Well Aligned Strategy and Plan, But Need Execution

If you have a CMO or marketing manager with strategic expertise that has developed your digital strategy and plan, but don’t yet have a team of individual contributor marketers to execute the work that needs doing, there are two directions you can go. 

• Option 1: You can hire a few execution-focused consultants who specialize in the various channels you’ve decided to market through. For example, if you’ve decided to focus on SEO and paid media, you could hire a couple of individuals to do the work for each of those channels. But remember, they’re each only one person and only have so much bandwidth. Both SEO and paid media at scale can take a team to execute well.
• Option 2: You can look to a single agency who offers services in both channels and has teams built for execution.

When You Have an In-House Marketing Team Ready to Do the Heavy Lifting, But Need Guidance on Strategy

Companies that have grown over the past several months and have a strong in-house marketing team, but are looking for some external help to identify growth opportunities and improve strategy efficiency could work with an agency or consultant.

A key part of your decision should be based simply on who you think has more strategic expertise. If the primary thing you are looking for is strategic expertise, do not compromise in finding it. 

Be 100% comfortable that the agency or consultant you are hiring is the one you felt could articulate strategy choices the best and had the best mastery of that marketing channel.

However, if the strategy developed involves the need for skills that aren’t a match with your initial marketing hires, a consultant combined with your team may only be able to do a portion of the execution. 

In that case, an agency could be a better option because you’ll need them for execution where your in-house team has knowledge or skill gaps.

Similarly, if you’re operating with a leaner team and the primary intention for hiring a third party is to drive marketing initiatives outside of your current team’s skill set, hiring an agency is a better option than stretching your team thin and paying (in both mistakes and time) for them to learn the skills.

When You Have a Smaller In-House Team But Still Need To Hit Goals

Many marketing teams are currently facing layoffs and still have to hit goals despite operating with a leaner marketing team.

In this case, you likely don’t have the execution resources in-house, meaning hiring an agency is a better option as they can execute the strategy for you.

You also may have to amend the strategy itself to ensure it’s effective with your leaner team.

The only case where a marketing consultant may be a more effective solution is if they can identify and remove inefficiencies in the strategy, allowing your leaner team to deliver the same ROI with fewer resources.

When You Know You’re Looking for Long Term Execution

The longer the time frame is when you’re looking specifically for execution, the more likely it is that an agency will be able to support you. Even if agency staff changes, the core systems, processes, and talent pipeline will be there to make sure that execution continues smoothly.

While there are plenty of consultants who work with clients for years, the nature of working with an individual is that there is a single point of failure. If they ever are unavailable, go on vacation, get sick, or experience anything that is completely unrelated to their capability, things can come to a dead stop. That’s the risk of relying on one person.

Fractional CMO vs Consultant vs Agency

We realize that not every B2B SaaS company needs to work with an agency, yet many marketers we speak with are dissatisfied with the results achieved from working with a marketing consultant.

Specifically, here are a few common challenges:

1. A single individual’s skills and experiences are limited: Even if the consultant you hire has years of experience, there are a limited number of unique situations they’ve encountered and solved in comparison to an entire team. Similarly, a single person can’t be a specialist across multiple marketing channels.
2. Advice without action: A marketing consultant’s job is to provide strategic guidance and it’s the team’s responsibility to execute. Yet most teams usually fall short on the execution stage, rendering the entire partnership with the consultant ineffective.

To solve these problems we created a third option – our fractional CMO service.

Our fractional CMO service still resembles a traditional marketing consulting partnership, by focusing on strategic guidance rather than providing a done for you solution. However, it differs from a consulting service in two key ways:

1. Experience from an entire team: Rather than hiring a single consultant, our fractional CMO offering delivers strategic guidance from each of our team members. For example, if SEO is part of the marketing plan, our SEO specialists can provide a detailed SEO strategy and tactical execution guidance.
2. Action-oriented strategy with accountability: Most marketing consultants provide goals, but there’s little structured follow-up or accountability. Instead, we operate in two-week springs that are guided by a scorecard with measurable, bi-weekly goals, and we get on biweekly calls to navigate challenges as they arise.

By leveraging the experiences of multiple specialists and holding team members accountable, we’ve found that the fractional CMO option can be a much more effective option for those that don’t need a full service agency, but could benefit from additional strategic guidance and accountability.

What’s The Next Step?

Now that you have a better idea of whether a marketing agency, consultant, or fractional CMO is the best choice for you, the next step is to evaluate various partners to find the best one for your needs.

If you’re considering the fractional CMO or agency route, you can reach out to us at Powered By Search, and we can:

1. Provide more personalized guidance to ensure you’re choosing the best option (agency vs. fractional CMO).
2. Create a marketing plan and identify opportunities.
3. Set expectations for what an engagement might look like and reasonable results to expect.

Even as many SaaS companies face budget constraints, it’s still possible to hit your goals with a leaner team and fewer resources by reducing inefficiencies with the help of a team of experts that have plenty of experience executing proven playbooks for similar SaaS companies.

Reach out to us today to get started.