Key takeaways
- Landscaping marketing needs five or six distinct skills, most of them hardest at the same two times of year.
- Compare options on cost per signed recurring client, not cost per month, and count your own management hours.
- In-house makes sense for work close to the crews: job photos, review asks, social posts.
- A common hybrid: an in-house coordinator for crew-side work plus an outside team for the systems, with every account in your name.
Choosing a marketing employee vs. an agency for a landscaping company comes down to how many different skills the work needs and when it lands. The work spans Google, ads, the website, the CRM and content, and it peaks before spring signups and again before fall cleanups. One person rarely covers all of it, so many landscapers end up with a mix.
What the work actually requires
The work requires five or six distinct skills, and in landscaping most of them are needed hardest at the same two points in the year. List them before you write a job ad:
Google Business Profile and local SEO : Categories, service areas, weekly job photos, a review routine, and a page for each service line, from weekly mowing to hardscaping.
Paid ads : Google Ads and Meta campaigns, kept separate for maintenance and design-build, with budgets that rise in late winter and late summer and fall back when routes fill.
Website and landing pages : Estimate request forms that work on a phone, project galleries for design-build, and pages for seasonal offers.
CRM and automation : A marketing CRM such as HighLevel connected to Jobber or LMN, running estimate follow-up, renewals and seasonal reminders.
Content and photography : Before-and-after shots and short videos from job sites. This is the one role that benefits most from being close to the crews.
Reporting : Tracing each lead from its source to a signed agreement, with signed work sent back to the ad platforms (conversion tracking).
In-house, agency or hybrid
| Question | In-house | Agency | Hybrid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skills covered | What one or two hires know | A team of specialists | A lead in-house, specialists outside |
| Your management time | High: you manage people | Low: one partner | Some: one hire and a partner |
| Account ownership | Yours | Insist it stays yours | Yours |
| If someone leaves | Their knowledge goes too | The team covers it | Partly covered |
Cost comparison framework
Use this framework with your own local figures. Do not rely on anyone's salary averages, including ours.
- Pick the roles you need. From the list above, mark which skills your plan for the next year actually uses.
- Price each role locally. For every role, write down pay, benefits, payroll taxes, software and the training to get started.
- Count your own hours. Estimate the time each week you or your office manager would spend directing and checking the work, and put a value on it.
- Map the season. Ask what a full-time marketer does in July and December, when the campaign work is light, and what happens in February and August, when one person cannot keep up.
- Price the outside option for the same scope. Ask an agency to quote the same roles and outcomes, with dates.
- Compare cost per signed recurring client. Divide each option's yearly cost by the clients it should sign, using last season's close and renewal rates from your CRM. For the general groundwork on small-business marketing, see the SBA's guide (SBA).
| In-house hire | Agency | Hybrid | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Control | Highest day to day | Set by the scope and reporting you demand | You own the crew-side work, the agency owns the systems |
| Cost shape | Fixed salary, all twelve months | A set fee per project or month, scaled to the work | A part-time salary plus a smaller outside scope |
| Owner's management time | High: you direct and check one person | Lower, if reports are in clients, not clicks | Moderate: one person to direct, one report to read |
| Skills covered | Usually one or two | Several specialists | Crew content in-house, specialist skills outside |
| Fit with the season | Over-capacity in summer, short-handed in spring | Flexes with the work | Flexes where it matters most |
| Account risk | Low if the accounts are in your name | Low only if the accounts are in your name | Low if both work inside your accounts |
When in-house makes sense
In-house makes sense when you have steady work that sits close to the crews and someone with time to manage it. A design-build firm turning out a finished project every week has a constant flow of photos, videos and posts that someone on the payroll can capture best. A company with several crews or branches may need a coordinator to gather review requests and job photos from every foreman.
It rarely works when one hire is expected to run Google Ads, rebuild the website and set up the CRM as well. Those are separate trades, and the owner usually ends up managing the gaps.
Hybrid models
The hybrid that tends to suit a landscaping company is an in-house coordinator for the work close to the crews, and an outside team for the specialist systems. Split it cleanly:
- The coordinator, often part of the office manager's role: collects job photos, asks for reviews at final walkthroughs, posts to social media, and records lead outcomes in Jobber or LMN.
- The outside team: ads, local SEO, the website, CRM automation and the monthly report.
- The rules: every account in your company's name, one person responsible for each task, and one report that both sides read.
To vet the outside half, see what to look for in a marketing agency for landscaping companies. For the CRM work it should cover, see the CRM guide.
How VETS Growth Marketing helps
We work as the outside half of that hybrid, or the whole team: SEO, ads, the website, the CRM and reporting, for about the cost of one senior hire. Everything runs in accounts in your name, as dated projects with no long-term contract, and we report signed clients and cost per client so you can compare us with a hire on your own numbers. Book a growth consultation to fill in the framework above with us.
Sources
- Marketing and sales, U.S. Small Business Administration
- About conversion measurement, Google Ads Help