Compare your options
Should you hire a marketer, hire an agency, buy ads, or go part-time in-house?
It depends on how much marketing work you have and who will own it. A full-time hire fits when there's a full-time job's worth of work and someone to manage it. An agency fits large campaigns and specialized media buying. Paid ads fit a proven offer that needs more reach, with someone tracking every lead. A part-time in-house marketer fits the businesses in between: enough work to need a person, not enough to justify a salary.
Free, no obligation. You'll talk to me directly, and I reply within one business day.
Side by side
How do the four options compare?
| Full-time hire | Agency | Paid ads | Part-time in-house (Socoz Design) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | About $131,000 a year in salary for a marketing manager in the Saginaw metro, plus benefits and software | Monthly retainer, often plus ad spend | Ongoing spend for as long as you want results | From $2,999 per month, tools included |
| Time to first real output | Months of hiring and ramp-up | Weeks, after onboarding | Days | Foundation fixed in 30 days, real work live by day 60 |
| Knows the business from inside | Yes, eventually | From the outside | No | Yes, learned from the owner, the team, and the work |
| Who does the work | The employee | Often staff behind an account manager | The platform's algorithm | Tim Bish, directly |
| How results are measured | Whatever you ask for | Reports, often on reach and impressions | Clicks and cost per click | Qualified inquiries and jobs, monthly, in plain English |
| Biggest risk | Hiring the wrong person, or turnover | A junior team and a slow approval chain | Spending without tracking what it produces | One person's capacity, which is why client count is capped |
| Best fit | Businesses with 40 hours a week of marketing work | Big campaigns, media buying, video production | A proven offer that needs more reach | Owner-led businesses that need a marketer and not a department |
Salary figure: median annual wage for marketing managers in the Saginaw metro area, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025.
The honest answer
When is Socoz Design the wrong choice?
When you need daily paid ad management, TV or radio buying, large-scale e-commerce, or a full-time marketer's worth of hours every week. In those cases a specialist agency or a full-time hire is the better call, and I'll say so on the discovery call.
Ads plus a marketer
Can ads and a part-time marketer work together?
Yes. Ads perform better when they point at a website built to convert and someone is tracking what they produce. Socoz Design doesn't manage ad spend, but it builds the website and tracking that make ad spend accountable.
Doing it yourself
What about doing it yourself?
DIY works when someone owns it every week. It usually stalls because the owner's real job wins every time the schedule fills up. The owners who come to Socoz Design have usually been posting and patching their own sites between jobs. Effort was never the problem. Ownership of the result was.
Comparison questions, answered
Is fractional marketing the same as hiring an agency?
No. A fractional marketer works as part of your business on part-time hours, usually as one person who owns the results. An agency is an outside firm that often splits your work across a team.
How many hours is part-time?
Socoz Design plans are scoped by deliverables (posts, content, site work, and reporting) rather than hours, so you know exactly what gets done each month.
What's the cheapest way to start?
A Socoz Design website from $999. If you want a plan before spending more, the $1,499 Growth Audit maps the next 90 days and credits toward a monthly plan.
Next step
Not sure which option fits?
Book a call and I'll tell you honestly, even if the answer is one of the other three.
Free, no obligation. You'll talk to me directly, and I reply within one business day.