Every web3 project reaches the same crossroads: wen marketing?

Do you build an in-house team? Hire an agency? Or hope your founding team’s sporadic tweets and Discord announcements will somehow create brand awareness?

The real challenge in marketing isn’t execution, it’s knowing what to execute and when. Hire the wrong team at the wrong time, and you’ll burn through budget, slow down your project, and lose momentum before you even get traction.

Some teams assume they need a full in-house marketing department, but this can quickly become expensive, slow, and inefficient. Others throw money at an agency, only to realize they’ve hired a bunch of "growth strategists" who don’t actually know anything about their product.

So what’s the right move? It depends on your stage, your goals, and how much you’re willing to burn figuring it out.

But don’t worry, we’re here to help. This guide will break it down:

✔ When to build in-house vs. hire an agency
✔ The best team structure for early-stage projects
✔ How to scale marketing without bloating overhead

Building In-House vs. Hiring an Agency

Why In-House

Most early-stage projects assume they need a full in-house marketing team right away. Investors ask about marketing. Competitors seem to have teams in place. The pressure to ‘look professional’ kicks in. But too often, teams hire too soon and before they even know what works.

The result? Bloated teams, unnecessary salaries, and marketing efforts that don’t align with real growth levers. And once you're locked into payroll, scaling back is painful.

An internal marketing team is a long-term investment. It works best when:

• You need deep, product-specific knowledge that’s hard to outsource.

• You require tight alignment with BD, product, and engineering to shape messaging and strategy.

• You’ve already figured out what works in your growth strategy and need specialists to scale those efforts.

But hiring too soon can backfire.

In-house teams are expensive, you’re not just paying salaries but also benefits, onboarding time, and management overhead. They’re also harder to adjust when the market shifts. If you hire a content marketer but suddenly need an influencer strategy, what then?

The worst-case scenario? You hire the wrong people for the wrong roles, lock yourself into long-term costs, and realize too late that you don’t even know what works yet.

For most early-stage projects, the smarter play is a hybrid model—one strong generalist marketing lead in-house and an agency that can execute fast.

Why an Agency 

Agencies can be a secret weapon or a money pit. When chosen wisely, they give projects instant access to high-level talent, speed, and execution power without the cost of full-time hires.

A great agency lets you skip the hiring process, avoid training time, and get straight to results. Need a content strategist, a growth hacker, or someone to handle PR? With an agency, you don’t have to go hunting for the perfect hire, you just plug in experts when you need them.

But let’s be real—not all agencies are worth the spend. Web3 is full of overpriced agencies running Web2 playbooks, delivering polished strategy docs while failing to execute and drive real engagement.

So how do you separate the signal from the noise?

❌ The “Web2 Playbook” Agency: Tries to sell you SEO-optimized blog posts and “lead generation” instead of community-driven growth.

❌ The Overpriced PR Shop: Charges 5 figures for a generic press release that gets buried under 100 others.

❌ The Over-Promiser: Promises “growth” but delivers nothing except reports filled with meaningless engagement metrics.

Bad agencies waste time, money, and momentum. They overpromise, underdeliver, and bill you for meetings that could have been emails. They focus on vanity metrics instead of real user acquisition, community building, and network effects.

The best agencies, on the other hand, act as an extension of your team. They don’t just execute, they help you refine strategy, provide insights from other top projects, and move fast without breaking things.

A good agency will:

• Be crypto native and understand the culture. They’re in the trenches—shitposting on Crypto Twitter, tracking governance proposals, engaging with DeFi degens.

• Execute, not just strategize. The best agencies don’t stop at “advice”, they actually get shit done.

• Align with your team. They’re not an isolated marketing silo. They’re on the ground floor collaborating with your core team to ensure consistency and effectiveness.

The right agency should make your life easier, not harder. If you find yourself constantly rewriting their work, micromanaging their execution, or questioning their value, you’ve got the wrong one.

The Best Team Structure for Early-Stage Projects: Internal Lead + External Agency

For most early-stage projects, this is the optimal setup:

One strong internal marketing lead—the person who executes on the regular, owns the brand voice, ensures alignment, and has a strong sense of strategy.
One agency or external team—responsible for amplifying execution, content production, PR, and specialized marketing needs.

This structure works because it balances control with flexibility.

The internal hire keeps messaging tight, ensures the brand stays on course, and acts as the point of contact for the agency. The agency, in turn, provides specialized skills, quick execution, and the ability to scale up or down without long-term commitments.

This model prevents over-hiring, keeps marketing agile, and lets you move fast without getting bogged down in operational bloat.

Scaling Marketing Without Bloating Overhead 

Once you’ve identified which marketing channels actually drive results, it makes sense to start hiring specialists.

The key indicator? When execution becomes a bottleneck.

If your internal marketing lead is juggling content, partnerships, growth hacking, community management, and PR all at once, it’s time to lean on your agency more or start building out the team.

What roles should you hire first?

• Content & Community Manager → Owns brand voice, organic growth, and community engagement.

• Growth Marketer → Manages activations, influencer campaigns, and co-marketing initiatives.

• PR & Communications Lead → Handles media relations, thought leadership, and external storytelling.

• Brand & Visual Designer → Ensures consistency in brand identity, UI visuals, everyday creatives, and overall design direction. 

What should stay external for as long as possible?

• Media & PR → Keep it external. Getting your project into top-tier crypto media is about who you know. A great agency already has those relationships, and building them in-house takes years.

• Paid Growth & Performance Marketing → Running ads across X, Google, and crypto-native platforms is a highly specialized skill and needs an agency to help scale ad spend when things are working, pulling back when they aren’t.

• Brand Strategy & Campaign Creative → For high-level branding, major creative campaigns, and high-production assets (animations, motion graphics, large-scale rebrands), agencies are often the best choice.

• Special Projects → Token launches, product launches, and major activations are high-stakes events where missing key details can mean lost momentum, low participation, or outright failure. 

The goal isn’t to eliminate agencies, it’s to use them where they add the most value while building an internal team that can handle the rest.

Why Myosin? Because We’re Built Different.

If you’ve made it this far, you already know the answer—you need a marketing team that gets web3. Not one that wastes time on outdated playbooks. Not one that burns budget without delivering. One that’s fast, crypto-native, and built for real execution.

That’s where Myosin comes in.

Myosin is the marketing anti-agency—we’re a network of expert web3-native marketers, strategists, and creatives. We execute at the pace of crypto using AI-powered tools and human-first strategy, combining deep industry experience with the latest tactics to make sure your project actually gets seen.

Other agencies give you overpriced fluff. We give you results.

Why work with us?

• We move fast. No endless meetings, no waiting months for results. Just execution.

• We live and breathe web3. If you’re building in crypto, you need marketers who understand the culture.

• We’re modular and scalable. Need more firepower? We scale up. Need to streamline? We adjust.

When you work with us, you’re not hiring a typical agency—you’re tapping into an expert marketing network that knows exactly how to build hype, drive adoption, and grow your brand in web3.

Myosin is your Web3 Marketing Growth Partner

Marketing isn’t just about hype—it’s about execution, community, and long-term vision. The best projects don’t waste time on bloated teams or agencies that don’t understand web3. They partner with teams that can move fast and deliver results. 

That’s where Myosin comes in. We recommend:

• For early-stage projects → Start lean. 1 internal generalist + 1 execution-focused agency

• For scaling projects → Hire specialists once you know what works

• For long-term growth → Keep agencies for high-value, specialized tasks

The right mix of in-house talent and external firepower is how top projects scale without burning through budget. Get this balance right, and you won’t just raise awareness—you’ll build a community-driven movement that fuels real growth.

If you need a web3-native marketing team that delivers results, not just ideas, Myosin is built for you.

Ready to grow? Let’s talk.