Marketing agency or managed marketing: how to choose
The difference lies in who answers for the result at the end of the month.
In short
An agency fits when you need a specific piece: a campaign, a website, a launch. Managed marketing fits when you want a single team to run the whole function, month after month, and tell you what each channel brought in.
If marketing is the core of your business and you have the volume to keep several specialists busy all year, neither replaces an in-house team.
How they really differ
An agency works job by job. You ask for a campaign or a website, it delivers and the relationship continues if there is another job. Having several is common: one for ads, another for social media, someone for the website.
Managed marketing takes on the function: search, ads, measurement, social media, content and reporting, with a single owner. It is the closest thing to having a marketing department without setting one up.
When an agency is the right choice
You have a project with a beginning and an end: a launch, a rebrand, a seasonal campaign.
You need a very specific skill you will not use all year, such as a large video production.
You already have someone in-house who leads marketing, measures and coordinates suppliers.
When managed marketing is the right choice
Marketing is spread across several suppliers and nobody measures the same thing.
At the end of the month you do not know what brought in clients and what did not.
You do not have, and do not yet want to build, an in-house team with one profile per channel.
You want one meeting a month and one report, not four.
When an in-house team is the right choice
When marketing is your edge and there is continuous work for several specialists. The knowledge stays in-house and the reaction is immediate.
The cost is fixed and it is not just the salary. The average labour cost in Spain was 3,388.15 euros per worker per month in the second quarter of 2026, of which 2,512.68 is wage cost and 875.47 other costs, mostly social security contributions, according to the Quarterly Labour Cost Survey by INE, Spain's National Statistics Institute, published on 17 September 2026. That is the average across all sectors, not a specialist's salary, and it has to be multiplied by every profile you need: search, ads, analytics, content.
The real drawback of each option
Agency: each one measures its own work and defends its channel. If it charges a percentage of your ad spend, it earns more when you spend more, not when you sell more. And coordinating them is your job.
Managed marketing, which is what we offer: you depend on a single supplier, so make it clear from the start that the accounts and the data are yours. It requires someone at your company to approve, because nothing is published or spent without them. And the first month is audit and plan: if what you need is a campaign for next week, this is not it.
In-house team: it is the most expensive and the slowest to build, and when someone leaves, what they knew leaves with them.
Four questions before signing with anyone
They apply equally to an agency, to us or to a freelancer.
Who owns the ad accounts, the analytics and the creative work? They have to belong to your company, with the supplier as a guest.
What is measured and how often do you tell me? Leads and sales per channel and the cost of each, not impressions.
Who approves what? What is published and what is spent is approved by someone at your company.
How do we part ways? What is handed over at the end and by when.
Why measuring matters before choosing
Advertising spend in digital media in Spain was 6,211.2 million euros in 2025, 11.2% more than in 2024, according to the Digital Media Advertising Investment Study 2026 by IAB Spain, published on 25 February 2026.
More is spent every year, and the question management should be able to answer is the same: what did each euro bring in. That is why, whichever model you choose, the first thing is for measurement to match your sales. It is what we did with a holiday rental company before investing in ads.
Frequently asked questions
How is managed marketing different from an agency?
In scope and in who answers. An agency delivers jobs; managed marketing runs the whole function, with a monthly report on what each channel brought in.
Do I lose control if I outsource it?
You do not have to. The budget, the priorities and the approval of what is published and spent stay in your company, and the accounts are yours.
Can I outsource just one part?
Yes. Our service has parts with their own page: SEO, advertising, measurement, social media and content, video and reports. What we recommend is starting with measurement.
Other comparisons
AI agents vs RPA
It depends on how many exceptions the process has and what a mistake costs.
Hire or automate
The decision is made task by task, not job by job.
The cost of implementing AI
What the cost depends on and how to pin it down before committing a budget.