Taking your paid media operations in-house is a major milestone. It signals a shift from simply “running ads” to building a sustainable growth engine.
When done correctly, the benefits are transformative. Modern paid media allows you to achieve the “Holy Grail” of marketing: building brand awareness and capturing conversions simultaneously. Plus, today’s algorithms are smarter than ever; when fed the right data, they become less invasive, delivering helpful solutions rather than annoying interruptions.
But after working with numerous charities and startups, I’ve learned that success doesn’t come from a massive department. It comes from a specific set of skills.
You don’t necessarily need seven different people. In fact, I’ve seen that smaller, tighter teams are often better. They are agile. They can respond instantly when things are underperforming, optimize on the fly, and scale aggressively when they find a winner.
However, while one person can wear multiple hats, these are the distinct “hats” that need to be worn to avoid burning through your budget.
1. Creative Strategy
This is the ability to be obsessed with the “Who” and the “Why.” You need the skill to research the industry, compile inspiration, and spot trends before they become clichés. It’s not just about making ads; it’s about finding different angles for different audiences, levels of awareness and personalities. A good strategist understands that a single product or donation appeal can be told in five different ways to five different people.
2. Technical Implementation (The “Hacking” Skill)
The algorithm needs fuel, and that fuel is data. This requires a technical mindset, specifically with Google Tag Manager and API integrations, to ensure the algorithm gets timely data. In my experience with charities, this is often the hardest part. Many non-profits use outdated donation platforms that don’t play nice with modern tech. You need someone with the technical grit to “hack” these integrations, ensuring that conversion modeling actually works.
3. Empathetic Storytelling
I call this “storytelling” because “copywriting” feels too transactional. This skill requires an immense amount of empathy and a fresh perspective. It’s the ability to craft layouts and copy that tell a complete story. It’s about information architecture, knowing exactly what information a human being needs to feel safe making a decision, and presenting it in a way that feels natural.
4. Agile Web Development
Great ads die on bad landing pages. You need the technical agility to refresh and update landing pages constantly. This isn’t about building a website from scratch every time; it’s about having the skills to tweak the UI, improve load speeds, and remove friction so that the momentum from the ad isn’t lost the moment they click.
5. Resourceful Content Creation (The Canva & CapCut Wizards)
In the current landscape, you need the skill to produce volume with limited resources. This is about being a wizard with tools like Canva and CapCut. It’s the ability to take limited assets, stock footage, user-generated content, or simple photos, and turn them into wonderful, engaging stories. You don’t need a film crew; you need resourcefulness.
6. Marketing Automation
The conversion is just the beginning. You need the skills to nurture the relationship immediately after the click. This involves setting up “Thank You” emails, welcome series, and customer journeys. It ensures that the hard work of capturing the lead doesn’t go to waste.
7. Data Analysis & Media Buying
Finally, you need the navigator. This is the skill that often requires the most “school of hard knocks” experience. I know from experience that this intuition is often built on wasted ad dollars. You need the ability to explore what’s working and what’s not, and communicate it to the rest of the team immediately. This skill involves catching insights quickly, managing budget through seasonality, and spotting “creative fatigue” or audience saturation before it drains your bank account.
The Power of the Agile Team
When you have these skills in-house, whether spread across two people or five, you unlock true agility. You aren’t waiting weeks for an agency to update a banner; you are reading the data in the morning, updating the creative by lunch, and scaling the budget by dinner. That is how you win at paid media.
