Today, the smartest brands are no longer asking “in-house or agency?”, they’re asking “how can our in-house team and agency complement each other?” At Incubeta, we believe that’s the right question, and one we’ve spent years helping clients answer.
Done right, the combined value of an in-house team working in close partnership with an agency can be exponentially greater than the sum of its parts. But making it work isn’t just about shared Slack channels or joint status meetings. It requires clarity of role, trust in expertise, and a joint commitment to driving business outcomes, not just marketing metrics.
Why "Both" Beats "Either/Or"
In-house teams are essential. They offer deep institutional knowledge, an insider’s view of customer behaviors, internal priorities, product roadmaps, and organizational nuances. No agency, no matter how embedded, can replicate that.
Agencies, on the other hand, bring something equally critical: perspective. At Incubeta, we work across a multitude of marketing priorities, advising businesses in different verticals with differing levels of maturity. We know what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next. Our teams have the space to experiment with emerging channels, test new technologies, and learn from a breadth of scenarios that an in-house team, focused on one business, rarely gets to experience.
That outside-in view can help spot opportunities and challenges an internal team may not be set up to see. It’s not about who’s better, it’s about recognizing what each side brings to the table and aligning those strengths.
Defining the Right Roles
Too often, when in-house teams and agencies collaborate, they risk stepping on each other’s toes. One side ends up replicating the other, or worse, defaulting into tactical execution with little strategic alignment.
At Incubeta, we believe the best results come from setting clear roles from the start.
- The in-house team should own the business context. They are the experts in the brand, the audience, the internal priorities, and the systems that need to work together. Their job is to refine and deploy solutions in a way that fits their unique environment.
- The agency should act as a strategic partner and innovation engine. We provide the macro-view, the cross-account insight, and the creative testing that helps clients stay ahead of the curve. Our value is in the “what’s possible”, whether that’s media efficiency, channel diversification, AI-powered measurement, or omnichannel customer strategy.
This isn’t about creating a hierarchy, it’s about designing a relationship where both sides are empowered to play to their strengths.
When This Works, Everyone Wins
We’ve seen firsthand how this hybrid approach accelerates results. In one recent engagement, a client’s in-house team managed day-to-day campaign deployment while we focused on restructuring their measurement framework, identifying wasted media spend, and designing a new upper-funnel strategy.
The result? Within six months, we collectively increased return on ad spend by 38% while reducing CPA by 22%, without increasing budget.
That’s what’s possible when you stop viewing agency and in-house as competing models and start seeing them as complementary capabilities.
Getting the Partnership Right
If you’re considering how to maximize the value of your agency while building in-house expertise, here are three principles to guide your approach:
- Define the lines early. Avoid duplication by agreeing upfront on who leads what. Strategy, planning, execution, reporting, be explicit, not assumed.
- Commit to transparency. The best partnerships are built on open access to data, performance, and plans. No black boxes, no silos. Everyone should be working from the same view of success.
Create space for challenge. An agency’s job isn’t to validate internal decisions—it’s to test assumptions and push the thinking. The best in-house leaders welcome this. Innovation depends on it.
Final Thought
The future of marketing isn’t in-house or agency. It’s in-house and agency, each side doing what it does best, aligned around shared goals and empowered to make each other better.
At Incubeta, this is how we work. As strategic advisors. As partners in performance. And as catalysts for growth.
If you’re ready to reframe the relationship, unlock the full potential of both teams, and outperform – we’re here to help you do just that.
