This decision is not about being annoyed with your agency. It is about whether your marketing has become too expensive, too fast-moving, and too multi-channel to manage reactively.
Use this step by step checklist to decide.
- Start with the reason: If your primary reason is frustration, pause. The best reasons are control, speed, and focus.
- Check your spend level: If your total marketing spend is around $8,000 per month, adding a salary usually leaves too little for leads.
- Look at complexity: If growth still comes from one simple move like spending more on LSAs, you do not need a hire yet.
- Audit your execution speed: If it takes days to make basic changes like offers, landing pages, budget shifts, or follow-ups, you have a speed problem.
- Measure owner involvement: If you or your partner are filling the board daily, managing agencies, writing SMS and email campaigns, and moving budgets around, marketing is consuming executive bandwidth.
- Run the percentage test: Estimate what you pay in agency fees as a percentage of spend. If you are paying 10% to 20%, the question becomes whether hiring can beat that efficiency without sacrificing results.
- Reality check the “one person” myth: If your plan is to hire one person to do SEO, PPC, social, content, video, emails, and everything else, that plan breaks. One person cannot replace multiple specialists.
Green lights that mean it is time
- You need faster iteration than an owner can provide.
- You want control over priorities and response time.
- You need focus because marketing is changing daily.
- You are running multiple channels and campaigns consistently.
- You have meaningful budget that requires real oversight.
Red flags that mean it is not time yet
- Your plan is “hire a marketing manager because the agency is annoying.”
- Your spend is low enough that a salary would crowd out lead spend.
- You are still mostly winning by buying more of one channel.
- You expect one hire to replace an entire agency stack.
What the role should own if you hire
- Budget control and performance shifts.
- Speed to execution on changes and campaigns.
- Agency accountability with clear targets.
- Lead flow visibility so you are not reacting when the board is already light.
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