Hire somebody, or hire a company?
At around $2,500 a month the agency question stops being about money and starts being about what one person can cover.
The comparison is usually run wrong. A $2,800 retainer against a $65,000 salary looks like the agency wins by a distance, and that is before payroll taxes, benefits, software, training and the cost of the role sitting empty for two months when they leave.
Loaded, a competent marketing coordinator costs a shop somewhere around $85,000 to $95,000 a year, which is roughly $7,500 a month. The honest comparison is that against three agencies at once, not against one.
What the hire gets you that an agency cannot
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Somebody in the building.
Photos of your trucks, your crew and real completed jobs. This is the single input agencies cannot produce remotely and the one that most reliably never happens when it is the client’s homework.
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Speed on anything local.
A competitor opens, a storm hits, a manufacturer changes a rebate. An in-house person reacts the same day.
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Institutional memory.
They learn which towns convert and which techs close, and that knowledge compounds where an agency account manager turns over.
What the agency gets you that a hire cannot
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A bench.
A writer, a developer, somebody who understands local search and somebody who has seen forty other HVAC accounts. One coordinator is one skill set on a good day.
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Pattern recognition across accounts.
An agency that runs thirty heating accounts knows what February looks like everywhere, so it can tell you whether your February is a problem or a season.
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Continuity through a resignation.
When your coordinator leaves in June, the work stops. When an agency loses somebody, it is their problem to solve.
What most operators actually do
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One coordinator plus one specialist agency.
The coordinator owns photography, reviews, social and anything needing somebody on site. The agency owns the site, the content programme and the local search work.
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The split works because it plays to both.
It also gives you somebody internal who can hold the agency to its statement of work, which is worth more than most owners expect.
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It costs more than either alone.
Roughly $10,000 a month all in for a multi-location shop. Whether that is right depends on whether marketing is currently the constraint on growth, and for a lot of $7M to $40M operators it is not. Capacity is.
The question underneath this one is whether you can tell good work from bad. An agency relationship where nobody on your side can read the report is an expensive subscription, and that is the strongest argument for the coordinator.
If you are hiring neither, read the twelve questions first. Knowing what to ask is most of what the coordinator would have given you.