The Ideal Marketing Agency Structure: Key Roles for Maximum Growth

It used to be that a chief marketing officer would engage multiple marketing agencies in any given year: an ad agency for traditional campaigns across print and TV, a digital agency for online engagement, a PR firm for reputation management, and a market research company to gauge customer sentiment.

But today’s environment has firms cutting costs and marketing partners. According to a 2024 report from the Agency Management Institute, 68% of clients choose to work with fewer agencies now than they did in the past. This is a mixed bag for agencies: It means there’s increased competition for clients and potentially less work for super-specialized firms that offer only one or two services. But it also opens the door for agencies to cross-sell and deepen their client relationships—and those with a diverse talent bench can take market share from their less nimble counterparts.

Before joining Toptal as the Growth and Digital Marketing Practice Lead, I worked for small and large agencies and on in-house marketing teams. I learned that to build flexibility and innovate their services, marketing firms must have a core team of versatile experts complemented by flexible networks of freelancers. Accessing the right marketing agency talent when needed—ideally through a strategic on-demand talent partner—is critical to consistently delivering winning work that builds trust and a strong balance sheet. Toptal analyzed data from Lightcast, a labor market analytics firm, to uncover the top roles and skill sets that marketing agencies are hiring for in early 2025. You can use the information we gathered to assess your core team and freelance bench and decide if you should cultivate more freelancers to meet your needs.

The Ideal Marketing Agency Structure

Before we get into the demand data, it’s important to talk about marketing agency structure. Managing an agency is a balancing act. Every marketing firm I’ve worked with has struggled with utilization—maximizing the number of full-time employee hours spent on billable client work. That’s because client priorities shift on a dime. New briefs get created and sold, and existing briefs change. Campaigns demand emerging skill sets. Team structures evolve. It’s unreasonable and not economically feasible to expect a single company to keep every marketing skill set on the payroll. This is why building a solid marketing agency structure is a true art. In my experience, this three-level structure leads to a higher-performing and more flexible team:

1. Core Team

It is absolutely essential to find, hire, and retain great executives, account teams, strategists, and campaign delivery people, as they are the core agency team that will rarely change. Imagine a giant bull’s-eye on a dartboard—that’s the core team. Although company leaders aren’t always doing billable work, pitching clients and reliably selling future work makes them a net asset to the organization, especially with the high hourly rates they fetch when they bill. Utilization is also typically not an issue with delivery roles that are needed for every client brief, such as account managers, strategists, creative directors, and designers.

2. Client Team Specialists

Depending on the agency’s strategy, the next circle around that core team bull’s-eye should be teams of individuals dedicated to existing clients, such as specialists in CRO, SEO, CRM, SEM, and paid media. The exact makeup of this group depends on what an agency has been successful selling and what it intends to sell in the future. Most of these individuals will be full-time hires, but a few could be freelancers who join when client demand peaks.

3. Freelance Marketing Experts

The biggest utilization challenge comes with some of the more niche—but also vitally important—roles. Think stop-motion animators, highly specialized analytics experts and developers, video editors, PR experts, technical SEO experts, logo designers, and influencer marketing experts with specific industry experience. These individuals could be fully utilized on one client project but completely unnecessary for another, leading to low utilization and profitability. Smart agencies want this kind of freelance talent on hand for the profitable work they occasionally sell clients, often upselling on existing briefs.

But building a bench of skilled freelance creatives and keeping them warm and ready to join on demand can be challenging, especially for smaller agencies. The best freelancers are highly sought after and have other clients competing for their time. Most online talent platforms don’t vet or test their members, so the quality of freelancers in these open marketplaces is uncertain.

Here’s where I believe the art of building an agency intersects with the science. By aligning your agency strategy with an advanced freelancer platform that thoroughly vets its members, you can prescreen specialized talent in line with the projects you plan to sell. You can then staff up for your current client briefs and expand your future offerings, knowing you have a whole team of on-demand professionals ready and waiting when you need them. Of course, there’s a balance between preparing for the future and focusing on today’s battles, but leading agencies spend more time preparing for the future—and they win more business because of it.

In my years working at agencies—and now with clients who are themselves marketing firms looking for skilled freelancers—I’ve learned that the following situations can almost always benefit from a strategic partnership with skilled freelance marketers:

Specialized marketing projects: Agencies often take on highly specific projects that require rare skills. For instance, if an agency secures a contract with Red Bull to produce drone footage of BMX biking in the desert, hiring a freelance videographer with high-action expertise is more efficient than keeping such a specialist on permanent staff.

Rapid scaling for high-growth campaigns: When a firm wins a significant contract with a tight deadline—like a Super Bowl campaign or a seasonal promotion—it may need to quickly scale its workforce to meet the demands of the high-impact project. Prevetted freelancers allow the agency to rapidly onboard talent and execute on time and at the desired scale.

New or emerging capabilities: Agencies are often on the leading edge of new technologies and trends like VR, frequently pitching cutting-edge ideas to clients. The ability to quickly engage specific experts from a prevetted freelance pool enables marketers to propose groundbreaking solutions and deliver them without disruption.

Agency business development: Competing for new business requires agencies to demonstrate a wide array of skills and expertise, often outside their core competencies. To stand out, firms may hire freelancers with specialized skills to support presentations or enhance proposals, effectively bolstering business development teams. This can impress clients and win contracts that would otherwise be difficult to secure.

The Top Marketing Roles and Skills Agencies Need Now

In today’s social media-driven landscape, brands must rapidly evolve to stay relevant. Trends can shift overnight, and staying ahead requires more than just adaptability; it demands proactive strategy and expert execution. Having the right on-demand talent in these scenarios can set your agency apart from the competition. As I noted earlier, Toptal parsed data from Lightcast to uncover the roles and skill sets that agencies are most interested in hiring for as of Q1 2025. Keep reading to find out how your bench of staffers and freelancers compares.

In-demand Technical and Software Skills

One trend that emerged as we analyzed the data was an increasing need for marketers with specific technical and software skills. The value of this data lies in understanding agency needs on an individual skill level: If agencies can separate the skill from the role, they can address demand in new ways without hiring more FTEs.

The 10 most in-demand software skills at marketing agencies in early 2025 are:

• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Google Analytics
• Looker Analytics
• TikTok
• Tableau
• Productivity software
• Power BI
• Salesforce
• HubSpot

Also of note are several other software and technology skills that are rapidly growing in demand relative to the rest of the market, pointing to an increasing need for professionals with these abilities going forward:

• Dashboard software (various)
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
• Google Tag Manager
• Jira
• Asana
• Google Sheets

With the marketing world’s focus on data, it’s not surprising to see demand for analytics and visualization tools like Looker, Google Analytics, Tableau, and Power BI as firms look to package their data into actionable insights through dashboards. Overall, there is increased emphasis on data and technology in marketing, given the rise of AI and ML and the incredible content, campaign, and e-commerce gains they enable. Agencies with a freelance bench that includes these in-demand skills can outpace less agile competitors.

Key Roles Marketing Agencies Are Seeking to Fill

We also looked at the top job titles for open roles at marketing firms. The data isn’t broken out by full-time versus freelance, but knowing how your fellow agencies are staffing up could help you anticipate trends and make smart workforce decisions.

The 10 most in-demand roles at marketing agencies in early 2025 are:

• Paid media managers
• Copywriters
• Content marketing managers
• Media buyers
• Paid media strategists
• Proposal writers
• Provider relations managers
• Programmatic managers
• Brand activation managers
• Social media managers

Organizations typically want to outsource their paid media placement to agencies, so it’s no surprise that paid media-related roles make up three of the top five. Content and copy expertise is also important, as are social media and brand activation leaders who can get messages out into the market.

Building a Flexible, Multi-speciality Agency

In today’s fast-evolving marketing landscape, an agency’s success hinges on its ability to adapt, innovate, and leverage talent effectively. The shift toward fewer agency partnerships and the increasing reliance on specialized skills reflect a broader industry transformation—one where flexibility, creativity, and strategic resource management take center stage.

Agencies that build strong core teams, embrace on-demand talent, and harness cutting-edge technologies are better equipped to meet current client needs and anticipate future trends. By striking the right balance between full-time expertise and freelance support, they can deliver exceptional results while maintaining profitability and adaptability.

As the war for talent continues to intensify, I believe on-demand access to in-demand skill sets offers the great unlock, helping the agency leaders of tomorrow stay nimble today.

Have a question for Jeff or his team? Get in touch.