<div class="gn-article"><div class="gn-hero gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-hero__image"><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687a235da6861294eec73166/69089ab50c2859b502273021_65b13399901a0e1ac96d71d0_Leadership%2520Panel%2520-%2520Maximising%2520your%2520Marketing%2520%2520Budget%2520with%2520In-house%2520and%2520External%2520Support%2520(1).png" alt=""></div> <div class="gn-hero__head"> <span class="gn-kicker"><span class="dot"></span>Event · Expression</span> <h1 class="gn-title">Leadership Panel - Maximising your Marketing Budget with In-house and External Support</h1> <div class="gn-meta"> <strong>The GO Network</strong> <span class="pip"></span> <span>7 March 2024</span> <span class="pip"></span> <span>1 min read</span> </div> </div> </div> <div class="gn-event-meta gn-reveal"><div class="gn-event-meta__block"> <span class="gn-event-meta__label">When</span> <span class="gn-event-meta__value gn-date">Thu, 7 Mar 2024 · 09:00</span> </div><div class="gn-event-meta__block"> <span class="gn-event-meta__label">Where</span> <span class="gn-event-meta__value">Online</span> </div><div class="gn-event-meta__block"> <span class="gn-event-meta__label">Status</span> <span class="gn-event-status gn-event-status--recording">Past · Recording</span> </div></div> <div class="gn-body"> <p>Budget pressure is not new for marketing teams, but the question of <strong>how to structure support</strong>, balancing in-house capability against external agency resource, has become one of the most consequential decisions a senior marketer can make. Get it right and you create a flexible, high-performing marketing function that scales with the business. Get it wrong and you spend time managing inefficiency rather than driving growth.</p> <p>A leadership panel brought together four senior brand-side marketers to work through exactly this challenge: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathew-court/" target="_blank">Mathew Court</a>, Senior SEO Manager at <a href="https://www.autotrader.co.uk/" target="_blank">Auto Trader UK</a>; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/leegrunnell/" target="_blank">Lee Grunnell</a>, Chief Marketing Officer at <a href="https://www.womblebonddickinson.com/uk" target="_blank">Womble Bond Dickinson</a>; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/benrhodes1/" target="_blank">Ben Rhodes</a>, Brand Director at <a href="https://www.thephoenixgroup.com/" target="_blank">Phoenix Group</a>; and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/liz-bleakley-6a144063/" target="_blank">Liz Bleakley</a>, Head of PR and Comms at <a href="https://stpierregroupe.com/" target="_blank">St Pierre Groupe</a>. The conversation covered resource planning, team structure, performance measurement, and long-term sustainability. For agencies, the insights are directly applicable: understanding how your clients think about these decisions makes you a sharper, more credible partner.</p> <h2>Frame the Resource Before You Pitch the Work</h2> <p>One of the clearest themes from the panel was that brand-side marketing leaders want external partners who understand the internal context before proposing solutions. When a client is trying to maximise value from a constrained budget, an agency that leads with capability credentials alone misses the point. The more useful conversation starts with how the external resource fits into an existing structure, what gaps it genuinely fills, and how it connects to defined growth goals.</p> <p>For agency new-business leads, this is a practical prompt. Before a credentials meeting, consider what you already know about the prospect's likely in-house setup. Do they have a content or SEO function internally? Is PR managed in-house or outsourced? What stage of growth are they at? Arriving with a clear point of view on where you sit in their ecosystem, rather than positioning yourself as a full-service replacement, builds trust faster and shortens the path to a brief.</p> <p>The panel framed this as "getting started" correctly: defining resource, goals, and future planning before any structural decisions are made. Agencies that can speak this language in early conversations position themselves as strategic partners rather than suppliers.</p> <h2>Build for the Client's Business Needs, Not Your Service Lines</h2> <p>A recurring point across the discussion was that marketing structures should be built around business needs, not inherited assumptions about what a marketing team should look like. For in-house leaders, that means making deliberate choices about where specialist expertise lives and where it is brought in. For agencies, it means the same challenge in reverse: your service offer needs to be genuinely modular and genuinely flexible, not just described that way in a proposal.</p> <p>Brand-side leaders at organisations like Auto Trader UK and Womble Bond Dickinson are operating in very different contexts, one a high-volume digital marketplace, the other a professional services firm with a complex stakeholder environment. Yet both face the same structural question: which capabilities are core and need to sit internally, and which are best accessed externally on a project or retained basis?</p> <p>Agencies that help clients think through this question, rather than simply advocating for more external resource, earn a different kind of relationship. It requires a degree of commercial honesty, including being willing to say that a particular function might be better handled in-house. That honesty, consistently applied, is what creates long-term client retention.</p> <h2>Measure What Actually Drives Decisions</h2> <p>The panel addressed performance measurement directly, specifically how to assess and evaluate marketing support, and when to expand, reduce, or diversify the marketing structure. This is an area where agencies often underinvest in their own processes. Reporting against campaign metrics is standard. Reporting against the client's business outcomes, in the language their leadership team uses internally, is far less common and far more valued.</p> <p>Senior brand-side marketers are constantly making the case for budget internally. An agency that provides clear, business-linked evidence of performance gives its client contact better ammunition in those conversations. Consider what your reporting currently demonstrates and whether it maps to the commercial questions your client's CFO or CEO is actually asking.</p> <ul> <li>Tie outputs to revenue, pipeline, or retention metrics wherever the data allows.</li> <li>Make benchmarking explicit: show progress over time, not just performance in isolation.</li> <li>Flag when the data suggests a change in approach is warranted. Proactive recommendations protect the relationship more than polished reports on work that is no longer fit for purpose.</li> </ul> <h2>Future-Proof the Partnership, Not Just the Campaign</h2> <p>The final theme from the panel was mutual success: building a marketing ecosystem that is sustainable and ready for growth. For agencies, this is a direct prompt to think about client relationships in terms of lifecycle, not just contract renewal.</p> <p>What does your client's marketing function look like in two years if the business grows as planned? Where will the pressure points be? Which parts of your current engagement will scale naturally, and which will need to be restructured? Agencies that bring this thinking to quarterly reviews and strategy sessions become genuinely difficult to replace, not because of switching costs, but because of the strategic value they provide.</p> <p>The practical next step is straightforward: review your five most important client relationships and ask, for each one, whether you understand their internal resource structure well enough to have a confident conversation about where you fit in their growth plan. If the answer is no, that is the conversation to start next.</p> </div></div> <aside class="gn-related gn-reveal" data-auto="related-reading"> <div class="gn-related__label">Related reading</div> <ul class="gn-related__list"> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/round-up-in-house-agency-or-freelance---getting-the-best-from-your-marketing-budget" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Round-up: In-house, Agency, or Freelance – Getting the best from your marketing budget</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Senior brand leaders share when to review your marketing resource mix and how to extract maximum value from agency, freelance, and in-house </span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/finding-your-fit-managing-external-support-in-a-fast-growth-business-fe740" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Finding Your Fit - Managing External Support in a Fast-Growth Business</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Fast-growth agency leaders share how to assess, build and future-proof outsourced team structures, covering hiring strategy, performance mea</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/leadership-panel---budget-smart-sustaining-marketing-momentum-amid-financial-constraints" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Leadership Panel - Budget Smart: Sustaining Marketing Momentum Amid Financial Constraints</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Agency leaders reveal how to optimise resources, build lean teams, and prove ROI when financial constraints threaten your marketing strategy</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/outside-in-cultivating-an-internal-culture-with-an-external-team" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Outside-In - Cultivating an Internal Culture with an External Team</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Senior marketing leaders share tools, processes, and frameworks for onboarding agencies and freelancers so they genuinely extend your intern</span> </a> </li> </ul> </aside>