01 · le choix structurel

Freelance, agence ou équipe interne ? Comment choisir où mettre ton marketing.

Trois modèles classiques. Un quatrième qu'on incarne. On démonte les promesses de chacun, sans pitch et sans cracher sur les autres.

Written by jérôme croche · published on May 3, 2026

02 · the silo that costs you

Acquisition on one side. Tracking on the other. Nobody to connect them.

An acquisition freelancer who has no idea what your tracking tells. An SEO agency that doesn't talk to your marketing automation. An internal team juggling four different vendors. Silos kill half the marketing budgets of European SMBs.

The issue isn't the quality of each contractor. The issue is that nobody re-reads the whole thing. Nobody arbitrates between channels. Nobody holds the system across 18 months.

Four models exist to run a SMB's marketing. Each one has its logic. Here's the honest table, the one we wish we had read before building HeySquad.

03 · the honest table

4 models, 4 logics. Here is what each covers, at what cost, for whom.

Each model has its case. If you're a solo founder in early stage, a freelancer is enough. If you're Coca-Cola Belgium, your in-house team already exists. Our place is in between.

Comparison table of 4 marketing organisation models for SMBs — Belgian ranges 2026
Criterion	Freelancer	Specialist agency	In-house team	HeySquad (integrated team)
Coverage	1 expertise (1 channel, 1 craft)	1 niche channel (Ads, SEO or social)	Depends on hire (one person can’t hold it all)	6 disciplines held by the same team
Hourly rate (excl. VAT)	€80 to 90/h depending on seniority	Packaged retainer (hourly rate hidden)	N/A — fully-loaded salary (~+35% social charges)	€90 to 100/h, decreasing on long-term commitment
Monthly cost (indicative)	€1 to 3k (part-time, 1 channel)	€3 to 15k (fixed-scope retainer)	€5 to 8k gross + ~35% charges = €7 to 11k per profile — almost always topped up with external help	€5 to 15k depending on scope, 1 invoice, 6 disciplines
Time to launch	A few days	2 to 4 weeks (kick-off, access, brief)	3 to 6 months (sourcing, interviews, notice)	2 to 4 weeks (audit + access + plan)
Cross-channel coherence	None (single-channel by design)	Limited to its sold scope	Low (one profile can’t hold the 6 crafts)	Native, 1 squad re-reads everything (Ads ↔ tracking ↔ CRO ↔ SEO)
Continuity	Depends on availability (holidays, other clients)	Account turnover, fixed contractual scope	Re-hiring if someone leaves (12-18 months market turnover)	Stable squad, multi-year contracts
Data tooling	None or basic (vanilla GA4)	Agency default stack	Depends on tooling budget (often under-invested)	Server-side GTM, Funnel.io, custom Data Studio dashboards
When it fits	One-off project, budget under €3k/month, 1 channel	Mature brand with niche need on 1 channel	Group > 50 people, marketing as core business	SMB 5 to 50 people, long-term ambitions, qualified B2B or B2C

05 · how it connects

Three real cases. Three disciplines that re-read each other.

01 · typical case

E-commerce stuck despite Ads budget

We audit the server-side tracking before touching any campaigns. We find that 38% of conversions are mis-attributed, fix it, apparent ROAS goes down but the real one goes up. Then we rebrief paid acquisition with proper signals. Six months later, +22% conversion value in the algorithms.

Tracking & measurement →Paid acquisition →

02 · typical case

B2B struggling to turn traffic into meetings

We start with conversion: UX audit, A/B testing on the form, integration into Odoo. We fix the leaks before investing in more traffic. Once the CRO foundation is in place, automation takes over: automatic nurturing workflow for leads not yet warm. +17% meetings in a year, without extra marketing budget.

Conversion →Marketing automation →

03 · typical case

SMB wanting to move on long-term SEO

We start from strategy: positioning, master persona, lead KW. Then pillar pages, technical SEO, AI-briefed writing. Content stitches the six fields together. At 6 months, first positions. At 12 months, authority settled. SEO does not deliver results before 6 months; what we install at 6 months holds the next 18.

Strategy →SEO & content →

06 · when we're not the right fit

Four cases where another model is smarter.

You need a one-off push on a single channel

A freelancer is more than enough. Less friction, cheaper, 0 long-term commitment.

You already have an in-house team covering everything

Strengthen it with a specialist agency on the channel that lags, not with a whole team that duplicates.

You want marketing without a business plan behind

We always start from unit economics. If you don't want to look at your CAC, LTV, gross margin, we're not the right partner.

You want an Instagram community manager

Not our craft. Look at a specialised social media agency, that is their ground.

07 · ce qui tient

Quatre chiffres consolidés sur 6 missions livrées.

6/6

marketing disciplines held

across the 6 HeySquad services

+22%

avg conversion value recovered on tracking missions

Ecostal Group, 6 months

+17%

B2B leads in one year, without extra marketing budget

Amecam, 12 months

80k

brand SEO impressions in 6 months on a new market

AVD Revival, 6 months

08 · ce que les dirigeants nous demandent

Combien ça coûte. Combien de temps. Comment on s’organise.

How much does an external marketing team cost for a SMB in Belgium?

Between €5 and 20k per month depending on the scope. An equivalent in-house team costs €6 to 15k per profile, plus social charges. A specialist agency on 1 channel costs €3 to 15k per month. Honest comparison: compare total cost with what is actually covered (1 expertise vs 6 disciplines). See details in the strategy page which sets unit economics before pricing.

When to switch from a marketing freelancer to an integrated team?

Three signals: 1) you juggle between 3 or 4 vendors that don't talk to each other, 2) your tracking does not return what you need to decide, 3) your acquisition campaigns spin in circles because nobody arbitrates cross-channel coherence. At that point, an extra freelancer adds complexity, not performance. See tracking & measurement for the data diagnostic.

Does fully externalising marketing mean losing control?

No, if the squad works like an internal team. We report every week, every month, every quarter. You decide, we execute. You see the Ads accounts, the dashboards, the SEO tables. No black box. If you want to take it back tomorrow, we deliver a documented handover. See marketing automation which formalises the workflows.

Why not directly hire an internal marketing team?

Because hiring 6 complementary marketing profiles (strategist + acquisition + tracking + CRO + automation + SEO) takes 12 to 18 months and costs €60 to 90k per month in fully-loaded charges. And SMB marketing turnover is 2-3 years on average. For a group of 50+ people with marketing as core business, in-house becomes relevant. Below, it's rarely cost-effective.

What is the difference between HeySquad and a classic marketing agency?

An agency sells hours and bills packages. HeySquad signs multi-year contracts with a defined scope, and bills time-and-materials on hours actually spent. Above all, we cover the 6 disciplines with the same team, where an agency sells you a channel and calls a subcontractor for the rest. No sales rep between you and us.

How long before seeing concrete results?

Depends on the discipline. Paid acquisition: 2-4 weeks for first signals, 2-3 months for stabilisation. Tracking: 4-6 weeks for clean measurement. CRO: 6-12 weeks for first conv. gains. SEO: 6-18 months for installed authority. No shortcuts, no 30-day promises. See SEO & content which sets the long horizons.

How many people are in the HeySquad team?

We're three at launch (2024-2026): Jérôme strategist, Camille the pen, Rémy the challenger. The squad grows as we take missions. Our threshold: never exceed 6-8 active missions in parallel to keep attention quality. That is our assumed commercial brake. See the squad page for the profiles.

Do you work with e-commerce only or also B2B?

Both. The method is the same, the disciplines vary in weight. E-commerce: heavy on acquisition + tracking + conversion. B2B with quote form: heavy on conversion + automation + SEO. Multi-page catalogue: heavy on SEO + strategy. Our common target: SMBs 5-50 people with long-term ambitions.

Do you guarantee results?

No. No serious agency or team should guarantee you an ROI or lead volume, because it depends on variables we don't control (seasonality, competition, Google's pricing policy, your product). What we guarantee: execution rigour, number transparency, respect of scope and timing commitments.

How does a HeySquad mission start?

Step 1: a first 30-minute call to mutually qualify. Step 2: a free 2-4h audit on your context (tracking, existing campaigns, business data). Step 3: we hand over a costed proposal with scope, duration, deliverables. Step 4: if green from both sides, we settle in within 2-4 weeks. No commitment before mutual validation.

Do you only work in the Liège region or all over Belgium?

Our HQ is in Thimister-Clermont, near Liège. But we work remote across French-speaking and Flemish Belgium, and we have missions in France and Luxembourg. Geographic proximity helps for first exchanges, after that everything goes through Slack, Notion, and short calls. See the squad page for our territorial anchor.

Which marketing tools do you master?

Acquisition side: Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, TikTok Ads. Data side: GA4, Tag Manager (client + server-side), Funnel.io, custom Data Studio. CRM side: HubSpot, Pipedrive, Odoo. Automation side: n8n, Zapier, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign. Content side: SEMrush, Ahrefs, Search Console, Claude (briefed AI). See paid acquisition for the full list of piloted platforms.

09 · who it fits

Four Belgian contexts where the integrated team makes the difference.

SMB 10 to 50 people growing

You make €2 to 20M revenue, marketing weighs increasingly on your growth, but you don't have the critical mass to build a full in-house team. You need structuring AND execution across the 6 disciplines.

e.g. industrial Liège €8M revenue · Verviers plastics €14M

B2B in Wallonia or Brussels with long sales cycle

You sell between €5 and 100k per contract, you need to generate 10 to 50 qualified leads per month, and your funnel goes through quote form + automated nurturing + CRM (Odoo, HubSpot or Pipedrive). Conversion + automation in priority.

e.g. B2B SaaS Brussels · consulting firm Wallonia · ESN agency Liège

Belgian e-commerce with 100 to 5000 SKUs catalogue

You make between €500k and €10M online revenue, your average basket is between €30 and €300, you pilot Google Ads + Meta Ads + local SEO. Server-side tracking + acquisition + conversion in priority.

e.g. Wallonia pure-player 1500 SKUs · DTC food Belgium 800 SKUs

Young brand on a premium niche segment

You launch or relaunch a brand, your positioning is differentiating but the market is small. You play on authority building (SEO + content + press) rather than Ads volume. Strategy + SEO + content in priority.

e.g. premium car brand · restomod · deeptech scale-up

10 · glossary & methodology

Terms used and where the numbers come from.

CAC: Customer Acquisition Cost. Everything spent to acquire a customer (Ads + tools + team time), divided by the number of customers won.
LTV: Lifetime Value. Total gross margin a customer generates over the relationship lifetime. Used to validate sustainable acquisition spend.
ROAS: Return on Ad Spend. Revenue generated per €1 spent in Ads. Surface metric (≠ profit); always read alongside attributed gross margin.
CRO: Conversion Rate Optimization. Discipline that lifts conversion rate on existing traffic via A/B tests, UX audit, funnel redesign.
Time-to-market: Time between business decision and live production. SMB marketing: 2-4 weeks for a freelancer; 2-6 months to hire internally.
Server-side tracking: Server-side measurement via a tag manager we host (vs client-side browser). Recovers 30-40% of conversion signals lost to blockers.

sources & methodology

Price ranges based on observation of 30+ HeySquad missions delivered in Belgium between 2023 and 2026, complemented by marketing salary benchmarks published by Indeed and Glassdoor for the BE area in 2025. Cross-channel ratios (38% of conversion signals lost, +22% of recovered value) come from real measurements on Google Ads + Meta Ads accounts with server-side tracking active.

11 · written by

Jérôme Croche

the strategist

15 ans d'expérience marketing digital pour PME belges. Spécialiste de l'orchestration cross-canal et de la mesure server-side.

see profile · published on May 3, 2026

so? shall we check if it fits?

No pitch, no slides. We read your context, we say yes or no, we explain why.

Read our missions →