Advice on setting up an online division

Hi Kerry,

As an agency digital director, I'd suggest you focus on in-house strategy, brand strategy and project management, rather than in-house design and production.

If you skill up on the initial creative, specification, documentation and project planning side of things, then you can out-source the commodity side of it: the design and build, and the real specialties: the specific marketing execution.

If your in-house team are experienced project managers and strategists, then you can cherry pick development from a range of suppliers, get competitive bids against a tight specification from suppliers, and look at out-sourcing and off-shoring for the build.

However, if you were a digital agency, you'd be looking at billing in the millions to justify a dedicated team on-staff with all the specialists you outlined. Trust me, people worth the title of 'SEO specialist', 'Analytics software specialist' and 'PPC specialist' don't come cheap, and the best seek agency work as there's usually greater reward, variety and opportunity.

If your expected return on investment isn't that high, then it's highly likely you'll need people on a project basis only, and that's when it makes sense to appoint an agency instead of hiring.

My advice would be to employ the ability to control the project in-house, and then draw in external resources for the specialities such as creative design, online direct marketing and advertising, media planning, media buying and design and build, where economies of scale can lead to more cost effective utilisation.

But being from an agency myself, I would say that, wouldn't I? ;-)

And naturally, if we can be of assistance, please feel free to get in touch via our website: www.bplmarketing.com

Good luck with it all,

Stephen Foxworthy
BPL Marketing