In-House vs. Agency for Editorial Content

Perhaps you run an in-house agency for a brand. You understand the value of high-quality editorial content—magazine-style interviews, executive ghostwriting, instructional e-books—for content marketing purposes. And you feel your in-house team can handle the work. It already does a stellar job of your social media and email campaigns.

But this type of content requires something a little different, almost journalistic. At what point does it make more sense to bring in an outside firm? When planning for editorial content and weighing in-house vs agency, how can you strike the right balance? 

The Role of your In-House Agency

Why wouldn’t you turn to your in-house team? Perhaps you plan to interview senior company VPs for their insights on hot industry topics. The material will drive feature articles and related video that will populate across channels. Your team is on hand, familiar with the subject matter and maybe even know some of the executives you have tapped for friendly interrogation.

Budget, of course, is perhaps the biggest factor. You’ve already made the investment in your in-house team, so why pay extra to bring in an outside crew? Indeed, cost is the main reason why organizations begin building in-house agencies in the first place, according to a 2023 study by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).

“Agencies still play an important role for marketers, witnessed by the fact that 92% of respondents still use them,” ANA CEO Bob Liodice said of the report’s keynote finding. However, the work is not shared equally, with 61% of agency-style work done in-house. “The growth of in-house capabilities has clearly changed the client/agency relationship over the past 15 years.”

Companies continue to lean on outside teams for workloads that can’t easily be absorbed in-house. They also turn to third-party agencies for specialized skill sets. That may mean the production of more advanced editorial content. Think of the type of work that would need to meet the sniff test of a high-end magazine editor, such a highly researched account of industry trends or an in-depth profile of your CEO.

Planning for Editorial Content

Editorial content often calls for a more journalistic mindset. Despite its many talents, your in-house team may find it more challenging to produce material that’s sufficiently independent to appeal to your target market. It’s not that you’re giving an outside team free rein to produce anything. But you’re entrusting it with an editorial license to unearth insights that someone with their face pressed too close to the glass might miss.

Nor does it mean that your in-house agency has no role to play in the content production. Aside from commissioning the work, they may adopt the role of editor-in-chief, or even managing editor. They may want to set the brief, or at least approve it. They may also want to oversee aspects of quality control. Consider each of the typical phases of editorial development:

• Topic ideation and article pitching

• Editorial and commercial research

• Development and planning

• Interviewing and outlining

• Writing and editing

• Proofing and optimization

• Fact checking and legal review

• Publication and distribution

With all this work to do, there’s no lack of opportunity for your in-house agency to stay involved.

Marketing Agency vs In-House: Pros and Cons

As with anything in life, there are pros and cons to whichever approach you take. If you decide to keep the production of your more advanced editorial content strictly in-house, you will likely experience certain advantages.

Pros of In-House Editorial

Some of the benefits you may derive from trusting your in-house team with your capstone editorial projects include:

• Greater control over the content creation process. With an in-house model, you have a creative marketing unit that you control and that delivers directly for you. Making course corrections to your project theoretically becomes easier when your team is under your own roof with a clear chain of command.

• Reduced cost. Depending on which team you hire and their rate card, working with an outside agency might feel expensive, particularly for more sophisticated briefs. Perhaps that shouldn’t be too surprising, though. You’re asking them to produce the kind of signature work that will be directly associated with your brand and stand as a marker of excellence. That said, you’ve already made a financial investment in building your in-house agency, which is an expense line of its own.

• Direct understanding of your product. Whatever you sell as an organization, your in-house agency will know your value propositions inside-out. They will be steeped in the finer points of your brand, from product positioning to brand voice. That not only drives a certain confidence that the team knows what you’re about, but it may generate operational efficiencies too.

Cons of In-House Editorial

Not everything is rosy in the garden. The factors that make your in-house team appealing may be the same that keep it from flourishing. Nobody wants to kill the bloom of creativity. Consider some of the potential downsides:

• Creeping groupthink. You might like to think that your team is immune from the prevailing orthodoxy, but it is not. It’s ultimately made up of inside players sitting on the same payroll as your customer service and IT teams. Despite their good-faith insistences, they have more directly at stake than an outside team. Rocking the boat is not that easy when you’re in the boat yourself.

• Restricted expertise. An outside content agency will have exposure to the kinds of best practices and domain knowledge that is more difficult for your team to gain. By dint of being an agency for hire, they will typically bring insights and experience working on different accounts to the table. That can be invaluable for your team’s own learning.

• Strategy and reporting. Without the input of an outside team, stress testing your content roadmap against external realities can be hard. Equally difficult for your insiders may be honestly assessing what worked well and less well, and then implementing the lessons next time.

Editorial Content: Owning the Balance

Of course, each of these points above may equally apply to a third-part content agency: quality standards and integrity of work can vary widely among providers. You may find patchiness in service within the same shop.

As the head of an inside agency, the trick is finding—and then owning—the balance between your internal capabilities and the outside world. Developing your inner base and then inviting in trusted agencies to help plug gaps and share expertise is typically a strong approach, and one widely adopted across organizations nowadays. Think of the hybrid agency model in its healthiest form as symbiotic, nourishing in both directions.

Not that good things will necessarily happen by themselves. A strong working relationship needs cultivating on both sides. Once you have found a reliable and skilled partner, it makes sense to keep them close.

In Closing

With content marketing spending still on a tear, the world will be producing even more commercial content, not less, in the years ahead. And therein lies the challenge. Getting your message in front of the right eyeballs at the right time is harder than ever despite all the targeted marketing tools available. Sure, you might get briefly noticed, but will you be read?

In striking the right balance between in-house vs. agency for your editorial content, you’re not only helping with the development of your in-house team. You’re bringing the best editorial skills to bear on critical projects. And you’re improving the chances that your most strategic content will succeed.