Should I hire one agency for everything, or specialists for each piece?

Short answer

One vendor if you want fewer meetings. Specialists if you want better work. The honest middle is one accountable person who coordinates the specialists.

A multi-location operator put it plainly on a call: one vendor, one everything — website, ads, SEO. They weren't wrong to want it. They were tired of three people blaming each other.

The pitch for consolidation is real: one invoice, one meeting, one throat to choke. The cost is that no agency is genuinely excellent at paid media, SEO, design and development at once. The ones that claim to be usually have a strong department and three weak ones, and you can't tell which from the outside.

The pitch for specialists is also real, and its cost is coordination. When your SEO wants a page restructured and your developer has a sprint and your paid team is sending traffic to the page being restructured, somebody has to own the order of operations. If nobody does, you pay three retainers for work that cancels out.

What actually works

One person who is accountable for the outcome, with named specialists underneath. That's how this works here: I do the search work, and design, data and paid media come from people I've worked with for years. You get one number to call and a specialist on each piece.

How to test an agency on this

Ask which of their services they'd hand to someone else if they were being honest. An agency that can name one is telling you the truth about the other four.

What we'd actually do

Everything, and who does itThe full service list, and the fact that specialists do the specialist parts.Open →The named partnersDesign, data and brand. Real people, named.Open →A second opinion$220 a platform to review what your current agencies are telling you.Open →Every price on one pagePriced separately, so you can buy one piece instead of a bundle.Open →

Follow-ups

Is it cheaper to use one agency?

Usually it looks cheaper and isn't, because bundles hide which line item is subsidising which. Priced separately you can see that the SEO is fine and the social is the problem.

What if my current agency is good at one thing?

Keep them. Genuinely. Replacing a vendor who performs in order to tidy up an org chart is the most common unforced error I see.

Want this done on your site?

Tell me what's going on. You'll get a straight answer, including if that answer is that you don't need me.