The Hybrid Marketing Model: When to Keep It In-House and When to Call an Agency

Introduction & Meet Chad de Lisle

Tim (00:00): Welcome to Clutch Conversations, everyone, where we unpack real decisions business leaders face on a daily basis. I'm Tim Condon. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer of Clutch and today we're talking about something that is on the minds of marketing leaders everywhere. Do I build an in-house team? Do I outsource the work or do I do both? Do I do a hybrid model? And so joining me is a good friend, Chad de Lisle, VP of marketing at Disruptive Advertising. And Chad, before we jump in first, of course, tell us a little more about disruptive media. Second, I was told that you refer to yourself as a wizard and so I think I need a little more dish on that.

Chad (00:44): That's right. That's right. Well, I'm happy to be here. Yeah, like you said, I'm the head of marketing at Disruptive Advertising. Disruptive Advertising, I've been here for 11 years this year, which is crazy, but it's the fourth digital marketing agency that I've worked at. And I have done freelance work on the side. I have hired agencies. I've hired freelancers and contractors. I've done kind of everything under the sun when it comes to marketing, so I'm excited for this conversation. But disruptive advertising, I'll just say briefly, is where purpose meets performance. And so we care to be clear about the people we work with. We work with businesses and brands that we believe in. And so when you work with businesses and brands you believe in as a marketer, you have the best job on the planet. And when you work with brands and people you don't believe in, you feel like a fraud and you feel like marketing is the worst job on the planet.

(01:40): So we try to pair marketers with the people and brands that they actually believe in. In terms of being a wizard, I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons since I was 12 years old and believe it or not with the same group of friends. And we still get together about every other week to play, which is super fun. And so we have been doing that for a long time. We even record it now as a little podcast called Heroic Ground, which is really fun. So we do that on the side as well.

Tim (02:09): My oldest actually, he and his friends just graduated and they're attempting to build a Dungeons Dragons like game – tabletop game. Well, if they get it off the ground, I'll send it to you. You give me your value.

Chad (02:21): Connect me, man. Connect me. We've got a little platform. 

Tim (02:25): Is that right? Yeah. All right. All right. We'll definitely connect you.

How Chad Structures His Marketing Team at Disruptive

Tim (02:25): So talk about in-house agency versus marketing team. So you're VP of marketing at an advertising agency. So you were, I assume, pretty well equipped to talk about both sides of the issue. So let's start off by just talking about your team structure at Disruptive and how did you decide on how to structure your team?

Chad (02:49): Yeah. Well, I will say this. It's so funny. When you're coming up as a marketer, just because you're a great individual contributor or just a great marketer doesn't mean you'll be a great marketing leader. There's a real learning curve to being able to understand how to structure a team and how to get what you want out of your marketing department. And so I will say I have not always been good at this. It's been a learning experience to try to understand how to structure a team and get what you need. I will say as well, it is not fun sometimes being the head of marketing at a marketing agency. And it's because you are surrounded. It's kind of like cooking for chefs. You're surrounded by people who are brilliant marketers. They know what they're doing. They know their stuff. And so everybody has an opinion and are all like, "Why are you doing it that way?

(03:43): Why don't you do it this way? Why haven't you thought of this?" And it's helpful and also hurtful sometimes and you're just like, "Man." So I will say that has been a challenge. But at the end of the day, it comes down to dollars and cents. As the tip of the spear, marketing is an engine for the company. And if you are not delivering the momentum, the fuel that the company needs to be able to move forward, you're not going to win. And so when budget is given to me, I have to make sure that I'm deploying it in a way that leads to the outcomes that matter most for the business. And so really it's a values exchange that's happening.

When to Outsource: Justifying Budget Outside the Agency

Tim (04:23): And I mean, being at an agency, do you find yourself in situations where you outsource marketing tasks outside of your direct team or do you keep it mostly in-house and how do you make that decision?

Chad (04:34): Absolutely. There are tasks that I need to take outside of my team. And for the first reason just being that we don't do everything at Disruptive Advertising, that Disruptive Advertising's marketing needs. We do paid search, we do paid social, we do SEO, we do Amazon, and we do email at Disruptive Advertising, but there are needs outside of that that I have got to take care of to be able to generate demand. So that's one of the first reasons. Another reason is that as a customer, because I'm kind of like a customer of Disruptive, I'm not necessarily the right fit for some of the products, meaning my budget's not of the right size, my needs are not of the right kind of scope to be able to fit. And so that's also an interesting situation because you can do the thing of like, "Oh, well, just make an exception.

(05:19): This is for us." We're all on the same team, but at the end of the day, that team isn't being leveraged appropriately because you're doing scope of work that's unique and different. And then additionally, as the customer, you're not getting the best bang for your buck. For me, I wouldn't be getting the best bang for Buck as a customer because I'm just not a right fit for what the team can do. And so there's that element as well. And then the third element is based on just saying, "I need to go where the performance is too." And so I want to be careful here too, not saying that Disruptive Advertising is bad.

Tim (05:56): This is the hard-hitting question we have to ask. 

Chad (05:59): This is the stuff. I am saying that I am constantly challenging Disruptive to be able to deliver better results for a better price because I'm a customer too for products. And so that tension creates situations where it's like, okay, if I'm not getting the best outcome and the best price, I've got to take it elsewhere. I've got to find those solutions because at the end of the day, my job and even your job team member is on the line because I have to be able to drive results for the agency.

Tim (06:34): I hadn't really thought about that, but we were talking offline about how tough it is to be a head of marketing these days. And I got to imagine, I know here it's tough and most places tough to get budget approval, especially for stuff where they're sort of like, "Well, you could do this yourself, so why are you spending money somewhere outside?" You've got it times 10 because you've got a whole agency behind you and you got to justify spending money outside the agency. So for all those VPs of marketing that are trying to get budget approval, what is your process? How do you get approval to spend money outside the agency?

Chad (07:09): Absolutely. Well, I would say that all of the things that ... I want to simplify this a little bit. Everything that I want as a marketing leader comes back to clarity, meaning if I can get really clear on what the vision is from the executive team, from the CEO and others that are decision makers, get very clear on the strategy that we're trying to pursue, get very clear on the way that we're going to execute that strategy and then extremely clear on the team that I have in place, then I can achieve what I need to achieve without such a lift. Now, that's all easy to say. It's a different thing to do. But I would say for us at Disruptive, and this is just a hack, I don't know if there are executives listening, we attach the marketing budget to a percentage of revenue saying monthly, whatever our revenue number, there's a percentage of that that is always the marketing budget.

(08:09): That is super helpful to somebody like me as a marketing leader because that means I can throttle down when revenue is down. I can throttle up when revenue is growing and it helps you to stay at pace with the market and with the demand that you're creating as a business. It's awesome. It feels like when you're having a big month or a pop month, it feels like you're able to just pile on more and create even more momentum. And so in that situation, it's not a question of, "Oh, I need to go get a budget approval." It's like it's baked in. Now there are situations where you're not going to have that luxury. What I would suggest is going to the CFO, the CEO, whoever that's going to be the purse strings, the person who's holding the purse strings here and getting just really clear on the marketing math, meaning how much does it cost us to acquire a customer?

(09:01): What is each customer worth to us? How much are we willing to spend to get customers? Because then you can start to frame every conversation around the marketing math saying, "Oh, well, I want to go and do this channel. I'm already receiving, I'm generating demand at this level from these other channels at these costs. This channel has a potential to be even better." So here's my test budget I'm proposing, here's the KPIs I'm going to track, here's the leading activities I'm going to track, things that we're actually going to do that will result in the outcomes we're wanting, and we'll be able to tell all along the way if it's working or not.

Tim (09:36): CFOs love numbers. I can speak to that. But you're right, even if you can't get perfect, you got to try. You got to at least get close because otherwise you're totally flying blind.

Agency as Execution vs. Agency as Strategy Partner

Tim (09:36): All right, let's talk about the working relationship with an agency. So the relationship can be as far as agency is just execution and the whole plan is the marketing team, the marketing leadership all the way to the agency is sitting in the room with you helping devise the strategy. Now being at an agency, I think you're probably going to skew towards the agency you should be in the room help. But how about this? Talk to us about both scenarios. When does it make sense to be a little more like, "Hey, I'm just hiring this team for execution." When does it make more sense to say, "Hey, I want to hire this team for a little more strategy, a little more brainstorming, that sort of thing."

Chad (10:30): Well, I think that I've said it once already, but it does come down to clarity. If you aren't clear, if you're like, "Oh, I have my marketing math. I know what I need to be able to ... I know the cost that it's okay for me to acquire a customer," but we're way over the top of that right now and we're upside down and our hair's on fire. And that's when it can be more valuable to say, let me just get some marketing minds in the room and just be upfront about that. You could even say, "Hey, agency or hey contractor, can I just hire you for some consulting hours for the next month or two and just get in the same room with you and just talk through the strategy, the math. What should this look like? What channel media mix should we deploy in our marketplace right now with things being disrupted by AI or whatever, how much of this should we care about versus how much..." All of those questions, just pay for some expertise for a minute.

(11:27): You don't have to commit to the solution yet. If you're just upfront about, "Oh, we actually just need help with strategy to start with and then let's see where execution falls."

(11:37): And I think any marketer worth their salt I think will appreciate that because like I said earlier, being a marketer is either the best job in the world or the worst depending on if you believe in what you're marketing and feel good about the strategy.

AI’s Effects on Marketing Agencies

Tim (11:51): So you mentioned AI. That was my next question. So given the explosion of all the AI tools out there, and I mean, there are some amazing ones, does that eventually eliminate agencies as a tool? The tough questions here, right?

Chad (12:04): That is a tough question. That is a tough question. I think that it definitely will eliminate most agencies. That's what I will say. And what I mean by that, and I could just feel the pitchforks, I could feel pitchforks with people's hand and torches agencies have spent years becoming execution shops. We have done that. We did that for a long time where you are the shop that somebody needs to hire so they can get good execution. Execution is the thing that AI is taking over entirely. It's modifying it and compressing it and making it so much cheaper and faster and at a higher level than we ever could do it at an agency. So I think that there's an element of evolution that's needing to happen within the agency space and I think we're all trying to evolve in this direction, which is how do we become strategic marketers that deploy AI as a tool and use AI to elevate what we could do and create even faster execution and better volume and quality and all those things.

(13:18): That's where I think you're still going to have agencies, but I think it's going to be less about, can you just give me execution for as cheap as possible? It's going to be, can you give me a blended clear strategy that is delivering the metrics that I need for my business? That's what strikes me.

How AI’s Impact on Outsourcing vs. In-House teams

Tim (13:40): And do you find it's changing your decision matrix on what you outsource and what you hire an agency for versus what you do in-house?

Chad (13:49): Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Because of the fact that it's like there are some things that right now AI is just so good at. It's definitely happening already and that is scary. I think there's a human and emotional side of this that's uncomfortable, which is like, ooh, I feel for you if you're a marketer who has built all of your skills around execution and implementation when it's like that's the thing that's going away right now that's being taken from you. I think that the challenge I would issue to those marketers who are feeling at risk or maybe have already lost jobs to AI is like go become an AI expert. That's the thing. That's the play, which is at the end of the day we could say, "Oh yeah, AI is going to replace you, but it's really a worker using AI is going to replace you." That's what's really going to happen.

How Chad's Utilizes AI & Agencies Within His Hybrid Model

Tim (14:41): So let me ask you, let's go a little further. So you and your experience, what are the things that you and your team are now using AI primarily for? And then what are the things you're still using an agency for? And help us understand where you think that might be going.

Chad (14:58): Yeah, absolutely. Well, I will say number one, the brand integrity

(15:08): And voice and consistency is being managed now by AI on our team in a way that's much more effective than anything we did before. And what I mean by that is we have a shared project that is, think of an AI that you train like an employee where we've given it information that it needs, the tone, the brand vision, we call it our vision traction document, like all of those things, the colors, the fonts, you give it all of that. And then when the whole team works out of that project, everything that we create ends up on brand from a content perspective, an ad perspective, a newsletter, whatever, everything is consistent with the brand, which is what we're looking for. So I think there's an element of just leveling up all of us and staying brand aligned from an AI perspective that has been super fun and really interesting.

(16:04): The other thing I would say is we used to have to outsource a lot of email creation and email creation and automation, content creation, just writing the content. That's so much faster. Even certain landing page or webpage design things used to be so hard, but now with Claude, you can just visualize things pretty quick as just a head of marketing guy who hasn't ever been a designer. You can do that. All of that I'm saying is that it has made our team more lean and mean in the sense that rather than ... Man, I used to have between eight and 12 team members just two years ago. Now I'm down to three, four. And we're doing as much as eight to 12 team members used to be. Do I think my team will ever be bigger? Yes. I think we'll skill and grow and have bigger team member or bigger team count eventually as well, but it's also like, man, we're in a world where a lot of skills can be absorbed by one person because they have these assistants that can help with AI.

Tim (17:23): And so what are you still using agency work for?

Chad (17:26): So agency side, we've still got our paid search is kind of like one of our bread and butter at Disruptive. So I'd feel weird not having that, but paid search and paid social and SEO. Those are kind of the big three that I'm still utilizing the agency for and they're using AI to help with their account, which is great, which is phenomenal, right? Because of the fact that it just helps accelerate their skills and get things through for them. But I will say we used to have email contract we've pulled back from that because we can do it. My marketing coordinator and I can do email now and do it really well just with the assistance of some AI not having to do that. So there's like give and take.

Tim (18:11): And I assume an agency is going to be sort of front and center on the latest tools. When you're in a company as a marketer, you are focused very much on the product you're selling and maybe don't always see the leading edge of what's out there in terms of the tools. And that's probably a good reason why you want to have at least some connection to an agency. They can be using the latest tools, right?

Chad (18:37): Absolutely. And you took the words out of my mouth. I think specifically of our SEO, which we're calling it GEO now, there's so much happening there that I'm seeing and reading about, but I don't have the time to go deep on it and to get really clear on like, oh, well, how is this impacting every little thing? It's exciting to be able to have a team member from Disruptive that is owning it and helping us to show up well with LLMs. And then it's exciting when we have partners like Clutch where you guys are investing in AI and now I've got this cool report that will show me how I'm showing up. But that's super cool and very helpful. And those are the value adds that I'm looking for in the current climate to make sure that we just stay really clear on are we still discoverable because that's like what everyone's question is.

Chad's Most Memorable Career Moment

Tim (19:29): All right, we're going to close with some rapid fire questions.

Chad (19:32): Cool.

Tim (19:32): First one, what's your go-to podcast?

Chad (19:36): Man, I love the AI-ready CMO. It's awesome. Those guys, and they send out a newsletter too and they nail it. Every time I'm like, "Oh, they're right and I'm mad that they're right and I'm figuring this out."

Tim (19:50): Most memorable moment for you in your professional career so far.

Chad (19:56): Man, there have been so many, but I will say that one of them that I think is just a really quick defining moment for me 10 years ago, 11 years ago at Disruptive, it was one of my first big wins with a client. I had just crushed it with this client. They were trying to get leads for small business loans and whatever I created the landing page, the paid search, the whatever, it just aligned and they were printing money. They had this amazing outcome. Anyway, the main boss comes in and he says, "Hey, my boss wants to talk to you." And he comes in and talks to me. His name was Chad too, and he was in a custom suit. And I remember being like, "Man, this guy's incredible." He pulled me aside and he said, "Hey, could you do this again? If I started another company where my margin was better, could you do this again?" And I said, "I guarantee it."

Tim (20:51): Ooh, going out on a limb.

Chad (20:52): I gave him the guarantee. Anyway, fast forward two months, I did not do well. I'd deliver the same results and my guarantee fell flat and he was angry. He was yelling at me in the meeting. My boss, Jake, he's the CEO of Disruptive, was there and my other boss, John, who was more my direct report. Anyway, Chad's killing me in the meeting. You're awful. What do you have to say for yourself? And I remember saying, "Chad, you're right. I should have never promised results. I'm so sorry. I thought that I could deliver results and I didn't. And here's what I think we can do moving forward, but I can't promise that it'll do better. This is what I think is going to do." Anyway, he says, "I quit. I'm taking my business with me." And he looked at Jake and he's like, "And also that other big deal we were talking about, I'm taking it with me too.

(21:37): I don't want to work with you guys." He walks out and my boss goes and follows him and Jake is in there with me. So now I'm with the CEO, the founder of Disruptive. It's just me and him. I'll never forget thinking like, "I'm about to lose my job. I'm about to get fired. I'm feeling the lowest of the low." And Jake looked at me with this funny look on his face and he said, "Chad, I love that you didn't make excuses." He goes, "I could work with somebody like you forever." And then he got up and walked out and that was it. And I share that as one of the high points of my career because I realized just how critical it is in an industry where it can be easy to try to fudge your reports or to try to look better than they are or what I mean, try to position and things.

(22:26): It's like you kind of try to sell your impact. It's just such a good reminder to just own it, own what you've done and let the cards fall as they will and know that it'll be better because you were just honest and because anything else. And then it helped me too to be like, "Man, I want to work at a place like this where it's okay to fail and learn something."

Tim (22:49): The lesson I heard too was you really learn about somebody when the chips are down, right? That's when you will learn.

Chad (22:55): It's a great call. It's so true. So true when you're breathing, you're getting blazed with some fire.

Tim (23:02): When everything's well, everybody's happy. Yeah.

Chad (23:05): Yeah. You can see what somebody's made of. It's a good point. It's great.

Where to Find Chad

Tim (23:08): All right. Chad de Lisle, everyone, VP of marketing at Disruptive Advertising. Chad, tell everyone where they can find you.

Chad (23:16): Yeah. So come check me out at disruptiveadvertising.com or you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I would love to talk shop with you or we could just commiserate about being a marketer.

Tim (23:26): Great. And I'm Tim Condon, Chief Revenue Officer of Clutch, and this is Clutch Conversations. Thanks everyone.
 

About the Author

Tim Condon Chief Revenue Officer at Clutch

Tim Condon is the Chief Revenue Officer at Clutch, the leading global marketplace of B2B service providers. Prior to Clutch, Tim served as the Chief Revenue Officer at Homesnap, the top-rated real estate app built for agents, which CoStar Group acquired in 2020. During his tenure, Homesnap grew its paying user base from 0 to over 80,000 clients. In addition, he previously served as the Director of New Ventures at The Washington Post. In this role, he built several new businesses, including The Capitol Deal, which became the third largest deal site in the DC metro area and was known for giving away 100,000 pizzas

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