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Which industry?

Do you have any experience in PPC, as in have you tried your hand at it and know what objectives you want to meet?

If SaaS, can make an intro to few folks I know.

Can put you in touch with a freelancer - i liked his thought process and results

Is PPC your core marketing channel, driving majority of the business results? If yes, try to build this function in-house, even though it might be slow and not efficient in the beginning. An in-house team will end up caring more and working much faster with internal teams than an agency who is working with multiple clients at once. If PPC is a smaller contributor to your overall revenue (say 30% or less), then by all means outsource. You will get a team which has had experience working with multiple clients, so you will benefit from all that experience. This is the main benefit of an outsourced team especially in an area like PPC where every other week you'll see changes happening/new features in ad platforms and one needs to be very proactive to keep up with all these changes.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of a performance marketing agency(Spear Growth). I have also been part of in-house teams and personally think my answer is unbiased, but I still run an agency. There's a bunch of factors I can think of from the top fo my mind. Budget: Usually companies who step into PPC do it gradually. Gradually may mean different things for different companies. Some companies start with 3-4k USD, some with 10-20k USD. At least in India, this is the budget range I've seen. If you're starting with 3-4k USD, it's probably too small to work with an agency. Doing it in house and getting some insights is preferred. If you're starting at 10-25k USD, working with a good agency can save you a couple of experiments that makes it well worth the investment. Existing capacity & bandwidth: Do you have people in your team who can manage it? And.. do they have time to do it? Do you want to run a small pilot to at least test the channel first? Most companies I've worked with, don't do this. Setting up initial marketing channels is much more difficult that "gliding" them later on. It's just as difficult to rapidly scale them. So in those scenarios, it usually takes up more time that you initially think. But, I have seen some companies successfully run a small pilot > Outsource to an agency for a while > Build out internal team PMF & Message market fit: Do you have Product market fit? Do you know what messaging works? If you don't, don't run the channel. If you still want to, and have a good product marketer(can be the founder) who can dedicate time with the agency to run messaging experiments, then outsource. Otherwise, probably keep it in house. My advice: Don't use the channel in most cases. FYI: Some agencies can help with this. They can have an extensive research and strategy module or/and workshops to help you fast-track this process. Potential of current marketing mix: If you already have a couple of marketing channels that are working well, can they be scaled instead? Should you scale them first or really consider paid channels. Market state: Is there pre-existing demand and awareness for your product? If so, you can run simple demand capture style ads and generate some quick pipeline for a decent ROI. If not, even paid channels take time to stabilize and start working. A lot of companies think paid will start working as soon as you switch it on. It can, but it depends on a bunch of factors, the industry and your standing in it are two major external factors. Urgency: How fast do you need to activate the channel? If you need it to go live within 1-2 months, doing it internally will be difficult. Hiring, onboarding, setting up takes time. Good agencies have optimised processes to onboard into your messaging, business, team, etc within a week or so. Also, you need a lot of functions to run paid ads. Ad ops, copywriter, design, developer, list builder, tool procurement. Can one person + some tools do this? Definitely. But it's difficult (and costly) to find this person. --- Just had 15 mins to type this so the answer is a little scattered. I hope it's still helpful.

+1 on what Aniruddh said. If PPC is one of your major marketing channels, you're better off building this function in-house. You'll have much better visibility and control.

I'm biased but we are working with wide range of companies. From early stage to scale ups with more than 10 million performance budget. I would say you need a growth marketer in-house to closely work with an agency but all the operations work should be outsourced. For multiple reasons. Dm me or schedule a call here : Tripledart.com I can walk you through the details. For ex: companies have more budget are now moving to an agency model.

+1 to what Aniruddh had suggested. It totally makes sense to build an in-house team if PPC is one of your major marketing channels. However, building an in-house team is directly proportional to the time incurred! Let's say, PPC is your primary marketing channel, building a strong team, identifying the right approach, followed by developing a muscle memory around it would atleast cost you two quarters. That definitely sounds alarming, but an alternate approach to this could be, having a dedicated Performance marketer in-house and collaborating with an external agency. In this case, you have someone from your end who's communicating and monitoring the strategies and experiments tried and tested by the agency for your company. Once the PM metrics are set in a quarter or so, you can probably think of hiring an extended team since your sole PM resource is already well-acquainted with how the funnel works and which channel is ideal to reach your ICPs. This would result in a cost-efficient yet steady approach towards building a high-performing PPC strategy as well as developing an in-house team. I'm from tripledart.com as well and would love to connect in case you need additional insights or help at this. Thanks!

@rohit and @Divyank Jain Yep, please. B2B SaaS. We are a platform that helps manage in-field resources. Think sales, delivery, etc.