What does in-house cost?
A minimal in-house TikTok team — social lead, editor, junior producer — costs $300k+/year fully loaded in California. Output realistically caps around 60–80 videos/month with one account. Adding more people scales linearly with cost, not output.
What does outsourced cost?
A content operations retainer at the same output level typically lands at 30–50% of in-house cost, with output that's 5–10x higher because the agency is structured for volume. The economics flip past about 100 videos/month.
What about brand voice?
Common objection, weak in practice. A good outsourced team gets ramped on your voice in 2–4 weeks and delivers more on-brand content per dollar than your in-house team will. Voice is captured in style guides and reinforced by review cycles.
What about ownership?
You own the accounts, the content, the data. A reputable agency is a vendor — not an owner of your brand presence. We deliver assets, raw files, and dashboards monthly.
When is in-house actually better?
When your brand has unusually sensitive editorial requirements, regulatory burden, or a small enough output goal (under 50 videos/month) that volume isn't the bottleneck.