Scenario 4: Should You Outsource Marketing? — Resource Allocation

1. The Situation

• Role: CEO.
• Status: Business is growing, and you need to expand to TikTok and Snapchat immediately.
• Pain Point: Your team only knows Facebook. The learning curve for short-video is too steep.
• Temptation: A 4A Agency pitches you: “We can launch all channels in a month, guaranteed ROI 3.0, and we have official rebates.”

2. Constraints

1. Time: Hiring and training takes 3 months. The agency starts next week.
2. Black Box Risk: Agencies often keep accounts in their own Business Manager. You don’t know what they are really doing.
3. Conflict of Interest: Their profit comes from fees or rebates. Their incentive is “Spend the Budget”; yours is “Make Profit.” These are mutually exclusive.

3. Strategy Design

The choice isn’t “Do or Don’t,” but “Control.”

Option A: Turnkey Solution (The Mistake)

• “Leave it to the pros.” Hand over budget and strategy.
• Prediction: Good for 2 months. Then they stop testing and only run “easy” traffic (like brand terms). You lose the sensory perception of your business.

The Correct Strategy: The Hybrid Model

1. Strategy Inside, Execution Outside: Core assets (Creative Direction, Audience Definition, Brand Tone) must be decided internally. The Agency is just “Hands” to execute your brain.
2. Account Ownership: Use YOUR OWN Ad Account. Grant them Partner Access. If you break up, the data assets (Pixel, Audiences) stay with you.
3. The Catfish Effect: Let the Agency run the new channel (TikTok) while your team runs the old one (FB). Tell your team: “If they figure out TikTok, you have to take it over. If they fail, it’s your turn.”

4. Simulation

Month 1: The Honeymoon

• Agency: Produces 20 TikTok videos fast. CPA is low. They look professional.
• Action: Don’t trust the report. Check the search terms. Alert: If they are buying your “Brand Keywords,” they are cheating.

Month 3: The Stagnation

• Phenomenon: Results dip. They stop testing new scripts and just recycle old ones.
• Reason: They signed new clients and pulled resources from you.
• Decision Point: Intervention. Don’t just yell. Send them your internal “New Customer Pain Point” analysis and force them to produce assets based on it.
• Subtext: “I’m paying for your hands, not for a brain that doesn’t care about my business.”

Month 6: The Handover

• Status: Your team has learned the TikTok logic by watching the Agency.
• Decision: Gradually reduce Agency budget. Transition to In-house. Or downgrade Agency to just a “Video Production Vendor.”

5. Debrief

1. Outsourcing isn’t the problem; losing “Cognitive Control” is: You can outsource hands, never the brain. If you don’t know what “Right” looks like, you can’t judge the Agency.
2. Beware the “Agency Incentive”: Never trust a “Guaranteed ROI.” Only Account Privatization and Data Transparency turn a black box into a white box.
3. Own Your Assets: Ad accounts, Pixel data, and Source files are company property. If an Agency threatens to “delete data upon termination,” never hire them.

The Cold Reality: The best Agency is always temporary. When you grow big enough, no external company will understand your users better than you. A breakup is the destined ending.