What is the opportunity cost of doing it in-house?

Campaigns need daily attention: refreshing creative, steering budgets, following up leads. If a recruiter or office manager does that on the side, those hours are not going to intakes, candidate contact and clients. That is usually the largest cost, bigger than media budget.

When is in-house the logical choice?

When you have enough campaign volume to keep a specialist busy full time, that person has proven paid-media experience in staffing, and you can retain them. Then all the learning stays inside and compounds.

Can you combine both?

Yes, and it often happens. The agency builds and runs the acquisition campaigns, the internal team handles brand, content and follow-up. That keeps an agency's speed and an in-house marketer's proximity.

Recruitment marketing agency vs in-house team

The build-or-buy decision is rarely about the invoice. It is about speed, about how many campaign variants you can run per month, and about what your own people are not doing in the meantime.

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In-house marketingteam of Leadstars?

An in-house team is stronger once recruitment marketing is a continuous, brand-led job and you have enough volume to keep a specialist busy full time: the knowledge stays inside, the lines are short, and someone knows your job openings and clients from within. An agency is stronger on speed and on breadth of learning: it runs the same campaign types for several staffing firms at once, so it sees faster which angle, channel and creative works, and it does not have to hire, onboard and build ad accounts, tracking and follow-up from scratch first. The real difference is opportunity cost: a recruiter or office manager running campaigns on the side is not spending those hours on intakes, candidate contact and clients, and campaigns need daily attention. We work exclusively with staffing agencies, contract staffing firms, direct hire and executive search, and deliver both candidates (JAM) and new clients (CAS). If you already employ a marketer with proven paid-media experience in staffing, in-house is usually the logical choice.

Last updated: 22 September 2026

Honest comparison

Them versus us

Key takeaways

In-house wins on brand knowledge, short lines and knowledge that stays inside.
An agency wins on speed: no hiring and onboarding cycle, no building ad accounts and tracking from zero.
Running campaigns for several agencies at once produces learnings faster than one account in isolation.
The biggest cost of doing it yourself is usually not media budget, but the hours not spent on intakes and clients.

Where an in-house team is stronger

Nobody knows your firm better than your own people. An in-house marketer sits next to the recruiters, hears which roles are stalling, knows how your clients talk, and can change an ad the same morning without a middleman. For continuous brand building, content production and internal communication, that is an advantage no external agency can copy.

At sufficient volume a permanent specialist also pays back in learning time: everything they learn stays inside and compounds. If you have enough campaigns each year to keep someone busy full time, and you can retain that person, in-house is the strongest long-term structure.

Daily proximity: the marketer sits next to the recruiters and hears immediately what is going on.
Knowledge stays inside and compounds, instead of leaving with a contract.
Full control over brand, tone of voice and content calendar.
Logical once you have enough campaign volume to keep a specialist busy full time.

Where Leadstars is stronger

We win on one axis, and it is a narrow one: exclusive specialization in staffing agencies, contract staffing firms, direct hire firms and executive search, combined with a guaranteed lead volume on a retainer. We take on no corporates, no webshops and no employers recruiting for themselves. That makes every campaign we build a variant of a campaign we have already run in this market.

The second difference is that an agency has to win two markets at once. Candidates through the Job Acquisition Machine, clients through the Client Acquisition System. Most recruitment marketing agencies only serve the candidate side, because their clients are end employers.

Staffing and recruitment intermediaries only - no end employers, no other sectors.
Candidate acquisition (JAM) and client acquisition (CAS) from the same system.
Retainer with an implementation fee, and a guarantee on the agreed lead volume: if a campaign does not deliver, you do not pay for the shortfall.
7-day delivery guarantee: the first leads arrive within a week of going live.

Side by side

	Leadstars	In-house marketingteam
Time to first campaign	Delivery within 7 days of launch	Depends on hiring, onboarding and building ad accounts and tracking
Breadth of learning	Campaigns for several staffing firms at once, so faster insight into what works	One account, learning from your own data only
Brand and company knowledge	External, built during the engagement	From the inside, from day one
Client acquisition (new clients)	Yes - CAS, alongside candidate acquisition	Rarely: most in-house marketers focus on the candidate side
Continuity when someone leaves	A team, not a single person	Vulnerable with a single specialist
Cost	On request, depending on the agreed volume	Salary, tooling and media budget, plus the hours not spent on intakes

What we do not know

None of this is public. We deliberately leave it blank rather than fill it with estimates.

What an in-house marketer costs varies by region, experience level and contract type. We publish no estimate here.
How much campaign volume justifies a full-time specialist depends on your flow of job openings and your clients.

Honest comparison

When Leadstars is not the right fit

Four or five situations where another agency serves you better. That is not modesty, it is the shortest route to a useful conversation.

You already employ a marketer with proven paid-media experience in staffing. Then you buy at most some extra expertise.

You mainly want brand building, content and internal communication. That work belongs in-house, not with an acquisition agency.

You are a corporate with your own in-house recruitment team. Then you buy capacity or tooling, not an external acquisition system.

You want a one-off employer-branding project: brand research, EVP, visual identity, campaign concept. That is project work, and creative agencies are better at it.

You only want to buy creative production - video, photography, copy - and handle distribution yourself.

You have no commercial process to follow up leads. Guaranteed volume delivers nothing then, because the leads go stale.

You sit outside staffing, contract staffing, direct hire or executive search. We do not take those clients on.

Frequently asked questions

Not by default. An agency is stronger on speed and breadth of learning, because it runs the same campaign types for several staffing firms at once. An in-house team is stronger on brand knowledge, short lines and continuity. At low volume, or with a team running campaigns on the side, outsourcing usually wins; at continuously high volume with an experienced specialist, in-house wins.

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