When seeking great marketing talent, many times, hiring firms misinterpret the model of service used to hire marketers (agencies that hire marketers) with the model used by agencies that market to candidates (employer branding firms).
In order to effectively secure great talent, hiring firms must establish an accurate correlation between their current growth stage, the model used by the agency they are partnering with to hire talent (i.e., what types of candidates the agency specializes in providing), and the screening criteria used by the agency to vet candidates (i.e., background checks, reference checks, etc.).
The following analysis outlines some of the top marketing recruiting agencies and explains their pricing framework, candidate screening methods, and the types of hiring situations for which they are best suited.
Understanding How Marketing Recruiting Agencies Work
Most leaders, when starting out, are looking for assistance to hire marketing employees. Eventually, they find themselves engaging in conversations with employer branding firms to create marketing campaigns that attract potential candidates to their organizations (employer branding).
This confusion exists because both terms are frequently misinterpreted as being interchangeable but actually serve very different purposes.
Marketing recruiting firms help organizations identify, screen, and place candidates into their organization to fill marketing positions. Recruitment marketing agencies develop and implement marketing campaigns that promote organizations to attract potential job applicants.
When a company is hiring for the position of director of demand generation, the company should work with a marketing recruiting firm.
The Pricing Structures of Marketing Recruiting Agencies
In most cases, hiring decision-makers will lack the clarity of pricing information from national marketing recruiting agencies when evaluating potential partners to help with the hiring process.
The model that an organization chooses to use for hiring talent will determine what level of service an organization will receive, how quickly a talent search can be completed, and the ultimate cost.
Most hiring agencies charge their clients according to one of three specific pricing models.
Contingency Search Model
This option means that the hiring agency will only be compensated when a company hires a candidate that was referred to them by the hiring agency. The agency typically charges between 15% to 25% of the first-year salary of the candidate named in the referral.
Let's say you want to hire a mid-level SEO manager for a $90,000 base salary with an agency charging you 20% of the total as a fee; therefore, it costs you $18,000.
This model should be used for mid-level and specialist positions where speed is the most critical aspect.
Retained Search Model
A retained search is defined as a process in which a client pays a search agency an upfront fee as well as predetermined amounts at specific milestones within the process of recruiting a key position.
Retained search fees generally range from 20% to 35% of the anticipated first-year salary of the position you are hiring for.
For instance, if you were to hire a chief marketing officer at $250,000 and paid a 30% fee, your total costs would be $75,000.
Retained search is used by businesses for senior-level positions due to the guarantee of an intensive and focused screening procedure.
Contract and Freelance Markups
When hiring fractional leaders or short-term contractors, search agencies charge an additional fee on the hourly rate of those workers.
Typically, this markup will fall between 20% and 50% based on the contractor's base hourly wage.
If you hire a paid media freelancer at $60/hour and the search agency charges you a 40% markup, your total bill will be $84/hour.
This structure offers businesses the opportunity to hire employees according to need without incurring the risk of a long-term salary commitment.
Evaluating the Top Marketing Recruiting Agencies
1. GoGloby
GoGloby specializes in providing remote and nearshore marketing professionals.
They primarily work with Software as a Service (SaaS) and technology startups as well as organizations attempting to recruit talent outside their country to Latin America and Europe.
Pricing for GoGloby aligns with standard industry pricing within contingency, retained, and contract models.
They offer both self-service and full-service compliance and payroll for global teams.
Publicly available data indicates that GoGloby has typically produced quicker time-to-hire and higher return on investment due to the ability to scale and serve clients across borders. Partnering with specialized marketing recruiting agencies ensures teams can expand efficiently into new markets.
2. Robert Half
Robert Half is an established company that has been providing numerous marketing, creative, and advertising jobs for clients ranging from startup businesses to larger organizations.
Their commission structure closely follows what is typically seen in the staffing industry (15% to 25% contingency fee), and they use a proprietary database and artificial intelligence to match people with jobs at high speeds and in large numbers.
3. Korn Ferry
Korn Ferry is a top-tier executive recruiter in the marketing space. They primarily help place chief marketing officers and vice presidents of marketing within large companies.
They work on a retained fee basis (20% to 35% of the first year’s salary) with strict hiring milestones, and they provide deep leadership assessments and focus on diversity when hiring.
They are recognized globally for their thoroughness in executive placements; their emphasis is on fit and strategy rather than on speed.
4. MarketerHire
MarketerHire connects freelancers with companies looking for marketers. They primarily target startups and growth-phase companies that want to test a channel as quickly as possible.
Their fee structure is based on contracts and they charge a markup of 20% to 50%. Their focus is on flexible, sprint-based engagements rather than on creating permanent long-term positions.
Their primary marketing message is that they can staff projects quickly when there is a need to accelerate hiring.
5. Insight Global
Insight Global provides high-volume marketing staffing and managed services. Their model is tailored for large organizations that must grow their marketing department quickly and implement marketing programs in a short amount of time.
They charge for both contingency search and managed service agreements. Working with established marketing recruiting agencies allows enterprises to scale headcount without administrative drag.
6. Scion Staffing
Scion Staffing is a creative and nonprofit marketing agency and has been recognized as a boutique firm.
They are a mission-driven agency that works with nonprofit organizations, mission-driven brands, and highly creative teams to fill mid-level creative placements through their standard contingency fee structure.
Their personalized approach ensures that the candidates they recommend for a specific position meet the company's specific social or creative mission. The primary success metric for the agency is the high client satisfaction ratings that they frequently cite.
7. Kas Placement
Kas Placement specializes in placing both business-to-business sales professionals and B2B marketers. Their model caters specifically to small B2B startups and small companies that want to grow quickly.
The company's standard pricing model is contingency pricing, which allows small companies to find sales and marketing professionals and build their revenue teams quickly and with minimal disruption to the overall business.
They are able to provide viable candidates with a high degree of speed and precision.
8. DigitalMarketingRecruiters.com
DigitalMarketingRecruiters.com is an agency that focuses exclusively on sourcing candidates for digital and performance marketing roles. Their target clients are companies that have extensive needs for highly technical marketers, including those in the areas of SEO, paid search, social media marketing, and data analytics.
Like other agencies, they bill their services through standard contingency agreements. Unlike other agencies, DigitalMarketingRecruiters.com does not accept generalist candidate applications and therefore screens out generalist candidates.
In order to provide value to their clients, DigitalMarketingRecruiters.com utilizes a very technical screening process and employment vetting to determine that the candidates they recommend for a specific role possess the hard skills that are required.
9. 24 Seven Talent
24 Seven Talent is an agency that places creative, marketing, and hybrid professionals into diverse engagement models. The agency provides a mix of contract-to-hire, full-time, and project-based employment for brands requiring creative staff.
The agency's fees include both contract markup and permanent contingency fees. 24 Seven Talent utilizes a robust, deep industry insider network to identify passive creative professionals.
The agency's core value is versatility; this allows clients to pivot between freelance and permanent employees as business conditions change.
10. Near
Near is an agency that specializes in finding remote marketing professionals from Latin America for companies located in the United States. Near focuses on small to medium-sized businesses looking to build cost-efficient teams in the same time zones.
The agency follows a standard contract or staffing markup fee structure.
Near manages the complexity of cross-border compliance issues, allowing companies in the United States to safely hire nearshore employees without incurring legal liability.
11. Creative Circle
Creative Circle is an agency that recruits for visual design, content marketing, and creative director positions. Creative Circle targets companies with a high volume of storytelling, design, and visual marketing needs.
The agency typically charges a contingency fee arrangement or a contract markup fee structure.
The agency screens its candidates using a structured portfolio review approach; Creative Circle matches candidates based on aesthetic fit and past work performance versus simply relying on a standard resume.
12. NextPath
NextPath is a staffing agency focusing on technology, marketing, and human resource professionals with a presence in the southeastern United States.
The agency primarily serves local startups and mid-sized companies looking for a personal touch in their staffing solutions. NextPath typically operates under a contingency fee structure for mid-level positions.
13. Artisan Talent
While large corporate staffing firms provide a huge range of placements for professionals looking for work in various industries, their methodology tends to focus on speed over relationship-building. Conversely, Artisan Talent has developed an organization focused on creating an individualized approach to placements.
Artisan Talent places candidates with companies in the creative sector by forming close relationships with local hiring managers and ensuring a high level of compatibility between both parties' needs. Artisan Talent’s process is distinct from other staffing agencies because Artisan Talent focuses only on digital marketing professionals, branding professionals, user experience experts, and related specialists.
Artisan Talent takes an individualized approach to each placement. They first assess the complete experience of the candidates through extensive portfolio evaluation, ensuring that they have demonstrated their ability to execute successfully at a high level visually and strategically. The Artisan process then filters out candidates with no proven record of effective execution.
14. Mondo
While Artisan Talent is focused on building its business through its close personal relationships, Mondo is focused on assisting high-growth companies in building teams of digital marketing specialists that will meet their immediate needs.
Mondo provides contract and percentage-based services to meet all of Mondo’s clients’ digital marketing needs in an urgent timeframe. Mondo’s typical pricing structure is similar to the majority of similar companies in that it follows the standard contract markup model.
15. BrainWorks
BrainWorks is distinctly positioned as a company that provides services exclusively to the consumer goods, retail, and eCommerce sectors. BrainWorks’ primary audience is consumer goods/retail brands that are looking for data-based growth.
Unlike other agencies that focus on bulk staffing of a variety of positions, BrainWorks focuses specifically on creating high-level strategic leadership positions. The pricing structure of BrainWorks is dependent on whether the service is retained or based on contingency based on the level of the position filled.
As part of their strategic vision, BrainWorks looks at a candidate's ability to produce revenue for consumers through evaluations based on specific benchmarks established within the consumer goods/retail sector.
How to Choose the Best Marketing Recruiting Agency
Your decision on hiring partners will come after you've considered not just the speed with which they provide candidates but also their access to candidates who are not actively seeking employment.
To make an intelligent choice, you must fully understand the hiring process that each agency uses and how that process aligns with your unique hiring needs.
Evaluating the Rigor of the Vetting Process
There are many companies that state that they have already pre-vetted candidates for you, but you should always ask the agency how they have validated that the candidate is qualified.
You should look for an agency that uses a structured skills assessment platform (like Vervoe or TestGorilla) to evaluate candidates' skills.
If the job you'll be hiring for involves a creative component, be sure to request and evaluate their scoring metric for reviewing a candidate's portfolio.
Agencies should be able to clearly articulate how they assess candidates' hard skills prior to submitting a resume.
Evaluating the Agency's Guarantee and Risk Management Plan
If a candidate leaves after only two months in a position, it is irrelevant how quickly that person is hired.
Replacement guarantees are generally provided by most agencies, with an industry-standard range of 30–90 days.
It is essential to determine when the replacement guarantee is activated and the agency's response time to finding the replacement.
The top hiring partners take on the risk for bad cultural and/or technical fits.
Evaluating Time to Productive Hire
Many agencies advertise their average time to find candidates, which typically ranges from seven to 21 days.
However, this average time only represents the time it takes for a candidate to accept an offer, and you should also ask the agency about the median time a candidate takes prior to actually starting work and producing results.
The length of time it takes to fill executive positions will differ from that of contract roles, which will be filled quickly.
It is important to get realistic timeframes for filling each level of position. Executive roles will take longer to fill, while contract roles should fill quickly.
Be sure to ask for a detailed breakdown of the time frame for filling each level of position (based on the level of seniority) so you know how long it will take to fill a position.
Building a Successful Marketing Recruitment Partnership
Executive roles will take more time than contract positions to fill; therefore, you should focus on finding a recruitment partner to build your team around contractual hires.
For this reason, every organization should have a recruitment partner to provide recruitment assistance along with talent acquisition expertise.
In addition to assisting your organization with building a strong talent pool, the best recruitment partners will provide your organization with outstanding support and an overall positive recruitment experience.
To successfully identify the right recruitment partner for your organization's needs, ensure that your recruitment partner matches your organization's current growth stage with their specific expertise, experience, and skill set.
Frequently Asked Questions About Marketing Recruiting Agencies
How can we ensure that we do not receive an influx of non-aligned candidate submissions from recruitment partners?
The primary issue that agencies experience is that they do not fully receive a complete and comprehensive brief from their client.
To mitigate this, it is important that your organization provides more than a generic position description to the recruitment partner.
Additionally, your organization needs to provide a well-defined and very specific list of project examples that have failed to meet the expectations of your clients, as well as the current gaps in your organization's team, and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the first 90 days of employment.
Having this level of detail will enable the recruitment agency to better understand what type of candidate would not be a good fit and, therefore, improve their ability to provide you with qualified candidates.
When is the right time to use fractional leadership as an alternative to hiring a full-time executive?
If your organization requires a leader for a specific strategic initiative but cannot financially support a full-time leader, engaging a fractional executive is highly beneficial.
This typically occurs during the early stages of funding or testing a new market segment.
Engaging fractional labor enables the organization to develop the necessary systems to support a new initiative while paying a reduced fee for the service.
Once the new initiative is proven successful and the demand for additional resources increases, the organization may decide to transition to a full-time leadership team member.
What are the differences in cost between domestic and nearshore marketing teams?
Hiring nearshore from areas like Latin America generally provides savings on payroll by reducing salaries while providing the same time zone as your business.
As you determine your total costs for hiring a nearshore team, remember to include the recruitment agency's contract markup and any global compliance costs associated with the hiring process.
Even when including these costs for hiring a nearshore team, they will typically remain much more cost-effective than hiring for mid-level specialist roles.
When needing extreme local market knowledge or direct in-person leadership, the cost benefit will generally shift back towards hiring domestically.