Vancouver Companies: In-House or Agency? Where Should You Put Your Dollars in 2025

It’s always a toss-up — whether to hire an in-house specialist or agency to help you level up on your marketing and branding, media exposure, or investor relations. 

If you hire in-house, then you’ll have one person or team dedicated solely to your company, but if you hire an agency, you’ll have access to top-tier talent and resources that can transform your brand in exactly the way you envisioned without any hiccups.

Either way, this is an important step for any company, no matter its size. 

With the new year ahead, now is a good time to start thinking about your plans for next year, what type of support you may need, and whether you want to bring a team on internally or not. We answer three content-related questions we commonly see being asked below, which you should consider while you’re on the hunt for your new specialist or agency.

Can’t I Just Use Canva?

With access to so many great online tools, some companies are resorting to hiring a Canva specialist or an Ad specialist to focus solely on execution. Depending on your company’s needs and budget, this could be an option. If you’re looking for brand and marketing strategy support, however, or want the continuous creation of original content, then working with an agency may prove to be a better option. For Vancouver folks, Founders Media has helped highly ambitious business owners, professional individuals, and companies that want to elevate their visual content, branding, and digital marketing strategies across the most relevant platforms to grow fast. If you want content that screams authentic, check them out.

Going from Bland to Grand Is Just About Putting Out More Content, Right?

Have you ever heard the expression content is king? If so, this still remains true today, except it’s important to produce new, original content for your marketing efforts instead of repurposing the same royalty-free image that’s been used by a multitude of other companies over the last several years. We live in a visual world, and people want to see something new. Something different as content tires easily. 

What’s equally important is content credibility.

Thanks to social media, owned media has become even more important, and so has what’s known as earned media. For those of you unfamiliar with earned media, have you ever seen a story in the news about a company doing innovative work or making a change in your local neighborhood? That’s known as earned media. It’s when you get news coverage that you didn’t pay for (this is known as paid media). 

Earned media offers companies credibility because you can’t pay a journalist to write an earned media story. They have to choose to write it. It’s hard to get it, but it’s super rewarding, and this is what people want to see. Vancouver-based firms like Venture Strategies PR, led by Sarah Mawji, have helped companies across the private and public sectors over the last few years with their earned media strategy. And while they have been a silent champion and partner to many, they are choosing to be silent no more. The firm is “industry-agnostic” and helps North American companies get the visibility they want as well as the media visibility they need. 

What Should the Content Do for Our Company?

All companies have different goals. You may want your content to encourage consumer spending on your latest product. Or maybe you want the content to educate your audience on why they should donate to a particular cause or invest in a particular company.

Some stocks climbed to new highs in Q3 2024. New companies have formed and are looking for investors. And investors who favor the stock market are keen to find new companies to invest in. In 2024 and beyond, one of the best ways to inform new investors about investment opportunities is through shareholder communications. 

Over the last few years, a number of new platforms have appeared on the horizon, yet there are many not taking advantage of them, and it’s because they don’t know how to. It is paramount to stay up to date with the new platforms surfacing and what the latest trends are. If your company has someone dedicated to this role, a part of their responsibilities should be to educate the firm, whether through a weekly or monthly newsletter, on trends that are important to your industry. 

One firm that’s chosen to take advantage of these new platforms is Apollo Shareholder Relations. Apollo is a boutique investor relations agency focused on tangible results and recurring ROI. In today’s investment environment, companies need the support of agencies who understand what can set them apart. Communicating with investors in the modern age requires the use of modern channels, which include Reddit, Discord, TikTok & YouTube. Apollo believes “they understand the modern investor because [they] are the modern investor,” and with their track record, we don’t disagree. 

No matter which route you take, there will be pros and cons. It’s important to decide what matters most to you and to get clear on your goals before hiring a specialist or agency.