Whether you have a full-fledged marketing team, one person juggling all the marketing disciplines, or no dedicated marketing staff at all, you might be wondering: Which setup does TwoTone prefer?
Answer: All of them.
At TwoTone, we work with organizations that have established internal marketing departments, solo marketers, and no marketing staff at all. We don’t need your team to look a certain way before we can work well together. The only thing that changes is the role we play.
If you already have a strong marketing team, we can add specialized expertise, strategic perspective, and additional hands to actually get the work done. If you don’t have a marketing team, or you have a one-man or woman marketing show, we can take greater ownership of strategy, planning, execution, and coordination. The important part is making sure everyone knows who owns what, no matter how big or small your marketing department is.
Key Takeaways:
- You don’t need an internal marketing team to work with TwoTone. We can provide the strategy, expertise, and execution you need.
- You don’t need to replace a good internal team, either. We can add capacity and fill gaps.
- There’s no universally “better” model. What matters is clear ownership based on your goals, team, and needs.
How Does TwoTone Work With or Without an Internal Marketing Team?
A good agency partnership should fill the gaps between what your organization needs from marketing and what your internal team can realistically provide. Sometimes that gap is capacity, other times, it’s expertise and strategy; sometimes, it’s simply figuring out who is supposed to be doing what. All are valid starting points.
What If We Have an Internal Marketing Team?
Great! We kind of like marketers over here.
Seriously, having an internal marketing team can make for an incredibly strong agency partnership. Your team already understands your organization and the million little details that would take an outside person time to learn. We’re not looking to replace that knowledge. We want to add to it.
We can provide specialists across all marketing disciplines, including:
Sometimes what your internal team needs most is more capacity, not another in-house specialist. There are only so many hours in the week, and if your marketing team is constantly choosing between updating the website, sending the email or creating social content, adding an agency can help good ideas stop dying on the “we’ll get to that eventually” list.
Your internal team keeps doing what they do best. We just help them do more of it.
We’re an extension of your team, not another team to manage.
Adding an agency shouldn’t mean your marketing director suddenly becomes responsible for managing a whole new team of people. When you need a specific specialty from TwoTone, you don’t have to figure out who should do it, explain the project five separate times, and coordinate every handoff. We manage our team, so your internal marketer can stay focused on the organizational knowledge and decisions where they’re most valuable.
How Do We Divide Responsibilities?
This is where a hybrid marketing agency model either works beautifully or becomes a giant game of “Wait… I thought you were doing that.” We prefer the first option.
When you have an internal marketing team, we establish responsibilities early. We want to know:
→ What does your team own?
→ What does TwoTone own?
→ What do we need to collaborate on?
→ Who makes the final call?
There isn’t one right way to divide the work, and responsibilities shift based on the season. Whatever the situation brings, TwoTone builds the working relationship around what actually makes sense for your organization.
What we don’t want is duplicated work, unclear ownership, or two teams independently making decisions without talking to each other. Clear roles make everyone better.
What If We Don’t Have a Marketing Team?
You don’t need to go hire a marketing director before you’re “ready” to work with TwoTone. When there isn’t an internal marketing team, our role simply changes. Instead of primarily augmenting an existing strategy or team, we can take greater ownership of figuring out what your marketing actually needs to do. That can include:
- Developing the strategy
- Identifying priorities
- Planning campaigns
- Coordinating channels
- Managing projects
- Executing the work
- Measuring what happens next
We don’t expect (or want) you to become the marketing director. We still need your involvement, of course; you know your organization better than we ever could, and we need that knowledge. However, we don’t need you to translate all of it into a marketing plan before bringing it to us. Instead, come to us saying:
- "We need more leads."
- "Our marketing feels all over the place."
- "We know our website isn't working, but we don't know why."
- "We have a lot happening and nobody has time to tell people about it."
Those are problems we can work with. You come in with the business knowledge, and we bring the marketing expertise to figure out what to do with it.
As we learn your organization and build context, the goal is to require less and less explanation from you. Eventually, the relationship should move from “Tell us what you need us to do” toward “We see this coming. Here’s what we recommend.”
What If We Have One Marketing Person?
Ah, yes. The “marketing department.” Population: one. This is extremely common. One person may technically be responsible for marketing, but their actual job description looks something like:
“Strategy. Social. Email. Website. Events. Ads. Design. Print. Internal requests. Sales materials. Photography. Video. And can you make this PDF editable before lunch?”
Having one marketing person doesn’t necessarily mean you need to replace them, and it doesn’t mean you need to immediately start building a 10-person department. However, it does mean that they may need support.
A marketing agency can give that person access to expertise and capacity they couldn’t realistically provide alone. Your internal marketer can spend more time on the work where their organizational knowledge matters most while TwoTone handles the areas where additional specialists or hours are needed.
A strong internal marketer plus a strong agency can be a very effective combination. We aren’t there to make your marketing person less important; we’re there to make them less alone.
Advantages of Each Model
→ Internal marketing team advantages:
- Immersed in your organization every day.
- Close to leadership and sales.
- Hears internal conversations agencies don’t.
- Develops deep institutional knowledge.
- Can spot changes happening inside the organization before an outside partner would.
→ Marketing agency advantages:
- Provides access to specialists across marketing disciplines.
- Offers outside perspective on what is and isn’t working.
- Adds capacity without additional full-time hires.
- Provides flexible support as priorities and needs change.
- Experience across multiple organizations and industries.
- Proven processes that keep projects moving.
- Expertise that scales with new opportunities.
Neither perspective is automatically better. While they are different, they can complement each other extremely well. That’s why the question often shouldn’t be: “Should we have an internal marketing team or hire an agency?” but instead, “What should our team own, and where would outside capacity or expertise make us stronger?”
The right model is the one that gives your organization the people, expertise, capacity, and leadership it needs without creating unnecessary complexity.
What Makes Either Model Work?
Whether you have a full marketing team or none at all, the basics of a good partnership are the same.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do we need an internal marketing director to work with TwoTone?
Nope. We work with full marketing teams, one-person departments, and organizations where the “marketing department” is more of a future goal. If you have marketing leadership, we’ll work alongside them. If you don’t, we can take more ownership of strategy, planning, and execution.
Will TwoTone replace our internal marketing team?
Only if that’s actually what you need. More often, we make your existing team stronger by adding capacity, specialized expertise, and extra hands to get the work done. No internal team? We can step into that role, too.
Can TwoTone only handle certain parts of our marketing?
Absolutely. You don’t have to hand us the keys to everything. We can own specific channels, campaigns, projects, or specialties while your team handles the rest. We just make sure everyone knows who’s doing what.
What if our internal marketing person is already overwhelmed?
Then please don’t give them an agency to manage, too. We manage our people, projects, and deadlines so your marketer can focus on the work where they’re most valuable, not chase us for status updates.
Who manages projects when our internal team and TwoTone work together?
We manage us. You’ll have a primary point of contact who keeps us connected to priorities, information, and approvals, but they shouldn’t have to project-manage our team. That’s our job.
Can our team stay involved in strategy and creative decisions?
Of course. Pull up a chair, bring us the recommendations, give us the “do’s” and “don’t” of your organization’s content. We’ll establish the right level of involvement upfront so you’re included where it matters, not copied on every tiny decision.
What if we don’t know what kind of marketing support we need?
Good news: you don’t need to diagnose your own marketing problems before calling a marketing agency. Tell us what’s working, what’s not, and where you want to go. We’ll help determine whether you need a full-service partnership, support in a few key areas, or something in between.
So, Do We Work Better With an Internal Marketing Team or Without One?
Neither. We don’t need you to build an internal marketing department before calling us, but if you already have a great internal team, please don’t fire them on our account. That would make for a pretty awkward first meeting.
TwoTone can augment the team you already have, give a solo marketer more support, or function as your primary marketing team. What we care about is understanding:
→ Where are you trying to go?
→ What resources do you already have?
→ Where is your team strongest?
→ Where are the gaps?
→ What keeps not getting done?
Then we determine where TwoTone can provide the most value.
You shouldn’t have to restructure your organization before you talk to a marketing agency. Start with the team you have, and we’ll help you figure out what it needs.
