Choosing an agency · 5 min read
Split the work before you choose an agency or software
Agency or software? Software is cheap at watching and good at repeatable work; deciding, and answering for it, needs a person. Split the work first, then choose.
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This guide answers
- Is an agency just reselling software I could buy myself?
- How do I compare a licence with a retainer fairly?
- What if I buy software and nobody uses it?
- Is there a case for both?
The short answer
Divide the work into three kinds first
Marketing work is usually sold as one thing. It’s three. Watching: whether anything changed, a page broke, a competitor moved, or the numbers shifted. Doing: the repeatable production work, fixes, updates and drafts. Deciding: what is worth pursuing, what a page should promise, what to stop.
Software is very cheap at watching and good at doing when the task repeats. It can’t decide, and it can’t be accountable for a decision.
So the comparison isn’t agency against software. It’s which of the three kinds of work you’re short of.
The three kinds
Who is better at what
Written by an agency, which is worth knowing when you read the first row.
| Dimension | Software | A person you pay |
|---|---|---|
| Watching | Far better. Checks everything, every day, for a price that doesn’t rise with the number of pages. | Worse, later and more expensive. This is the part agencies charge for and do least well. |
| Doing | Good where the task repeats and the input is structured. Weak where every instance is different. | Slower per item, and the only option when the work needs context the tool doesn’t have. |
| Deciding | Can rank and suggest. Can’t weigh what matters to your business or defend the choice later. | The reason to pay one. Ask what they decided last month and why, not what they produced. |
| Being answerable | Produces a log. A log is evidence, not accountability. | A named person who has to explain it, and who can be replaced if they can’t. |
Deciding
Three questions that settle it
Answer these before looking at a single price.
Can you write down what you want changed?
Not the outcome, the work: "rewrite the twelve service pages", "fix the tracking so enquiries are attributed", "get the business profile accurate in four locations". If you can write the list, you’re buying execution, and software plus a few hours may cover it. If you can’t, the list is what you’re buying.
You get: A written list of work, or an admission that there isn’t one
Who opens it on a Monday?
Name the person, the day and what they do with what they find. Findings nobody triages become a subscription nobody cancels. If no one in the business has those hours, a licence won’t create them.
You get: A named operator with time in their week
Who explains it when it doesn’t work?
Six months in, something will have gone the wrong way. Decide now whether you want a dashboard to interpret yourself or a person who has to account for the decisions in front of you. Both are legitimate. Only one costs a retainer, and only one can be held to anything.
You get: An answer you’re comfortable with at month six
The call
Which way the decision usually goes
These are tendencies, not rules, and the exceptions are common enough to check.
Software is the better buy when
- The work is known, repeats, and somebody in the business has clear time to run it
- The main problem isn’t noticing things: broken pages, lost listings, numbers drifting
- You want to keep the capability in-house and are willing to learn the discipline
- The budget is small enough that a retainer would buy only a few hours a month
Pay a person when
- You don’t yet know what should be done, which is the most common situation
- The work needs judgement about your market, your pricing or your customers
- Something has gone wrong and the priority is diagnosis, not production
- You need somebody answerable for the outcome, by name, in a contract
Cost
The comparison almost nobody does properly
A licence has a price. Software has a cost: the licence plus the hours of whoever operates it. Those hours are real even though no invoice arrives, and for an owner they’re the most expensive hours in the business.
Run the arithmetic in full: licence, plus operating hours at what that person’s time is worth, plus the cost of work not done in the months nobody opens it. Then price the retainer the same way, including your time.
The result can go either way. Sometimes the tool is a tenth of the price. Sometimes the business was about to buy four hours a month of its own founder, the most expensive way to save money there is.
Questions
Common questions about buying one or the other
Is an agency just reselling software I could buy myself?
Partly, and a good one will say so. Most agencies run the same handful of tools, and part of any retainer is the licence cost spread across clients.
Beyond that you’re paying for the deciding: which of the four hundred issues matters, in what order, and what to do about the ones the tool can’t see. Ask a supplier for last month’s decisions, not last month’s exports.
How do I compare a licence with a retainer fairly?
Add the hours. Take the licence price, estimate how long somebody in your business will spend each month operating it, and cost those hours at what that person’s time is worth.
Do the same for the retainer, because a supplier still needs your time for approvals, access and answers. The comparison is usually much closer than the sticker prices suggest.
What if I buy software and nobody uses it?
That’s the most common outcome, so plan for it. Before buying, name the person who will open it, the day of the week they’ll open it, and what they’ll do with what they find.
If you can’t name all three, you aren’t buying software. You’re buying an intention.
Is there a case for both?
Frequently, and it’s usually the cheapest arrangement. Software watches continuously and prepares the work. A person decides what is worth doing and is accountable for the result.
The arrangement to avoid is paying twice for the same thing: a supplier billing hours for monitoring a tool already does for a fraction of the price.
When is the right answer neither?
When the problem isn’t marketing. If enquiries aren’t answered for two days, if the thing being sold is priced wrong, or if the same six customers produce most of the revenue and nobody has called them, no supplier and no licence will help.
Fix the thing that’s broken first. It’s usually cheaper and it’s always faster.
Bring us the list, or the fact that you don’t have one
If you can write down the work, we’ll tell you whether you need us for it. If you can’t, that’s the conversation worth having, and it takes about forty minutes.
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References
Sources
The official documents and research this page is based on. Platform rules change, so check the source before you act on a detail.
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