Should I fork up the absurdly priced "ICO agency" fees (some of which start around $50k) and let them handle this?
Imo, this is a waste of money. I would try to contact investors directly. If you don't know anyone who could be interested in your project, maybe you shouldn't be working at it.
This is weighing heavily on me atm, because I know I have a great product. Without spoiling too much, I've solved a massive monetization issue in a multi trillion dollar industry by tying in a "tokenized" payment system. The industry standard monetization in this space is to put the burden on the consumer by flooding the page/content with ads. Or the predatory method of taking huge fees from sales/donations in the range of 20%-50% from "vendors".
Bitcoin already does that, and bitcoin was created without any ICO and without any funds. You have 50k that you plan to spend in marketing. I would do your project with those 50k.
However, bitcoin already do waht you plan to "tokenize"... Unless you can propose something new, I don't think you should work at it.