# In-house, agency or embedded partner: Rethinking marketing resourcing

Canonical URL: https://lacewing.agency/insights/in-house-agency-or-embedded-partner-rethinking-marketing-resourcing/

Organization: Lacewing

Category: Content & Marketing

## Main content

Marketing expectations have changed. For firms serving the US alternative investments market, a website and occasional communications are no longer enough. Marketing increasingly supports positioning, reputation, pipeline and long-term growth. But while expectations have evolved, the way many firms resource marketing has not.

In-house and agency models both have trade-offs

Building an internal team provides proximity to the business and greater day-to-day control. But creating a team with senior strategic expertise alongside content, design, digital and technology capabilities require considerable investment. The alternative is often to bring in external specialists.

That gives firms access to expertise without building every capability internally, but it can introduce a different problem. PR, design, digital and content may be handled by different providers, each responsible for their own output. The client then becomes responsible for connecting everything together. Neither approach is inherently wrong. The challenge begins when the structure makes it harder for strategy and execution to remain aligned.

Integration changes the equation

There is another way to think about the problem. Rather than separating marketing into internal roles and external disciplines, an embedded model brings strategy, content, design and digital execution together as one connected function. Positioning informs content. Content informs campaigns. Design reinforces the same narrative. Digital activity supports the same commercial objectives. The value is not simply efficiency. It is consistency. For firms operating in complex markets, that consistency matters because every touchpoint contributes to how the organisation is understood.

Structure marketing around what you need it to achieve

There is no universal answer to whether marketing should sit in-house, with an agency or somewhere in between. The better question is whether the model supports what the business is trying to achieve. Does someone clearly own positioning? Can strategy translate consistently into execution? Do different disciplines work together? And does the structure have enough specialist knowledge to understand the market it is communicating to? Marketing investment alone does not create stronger outcomes. How that investment is structured matters too.

Lacewing works as an embedded marketing partner to organisations across the alternative investments industry, bringing strategy, content, design, digital marketing and technology together within one specialist team. If you're considering how your marketing function should evolve, we'd be delighted to start the conversation.

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### Last Updated
Date: 2026-07-16