In-house marketing hire vs managed service: cost breakdown

When an owner tells me they’re thinking of “just hiring someone to do the marketing”, I always ask them to do one sum first: take the salary in your head, and add roughly 50%. That’s closer to what it actually costs. The gap between those two numbers is where most of these decisions get made badly.

Hiring a marketer in-house typically costs £35,000-£60,000+ a year once you add tax, pension, tools and management on top of the salary. A managed service charges a fixed monthly fee that gives you a whole team’s skills for a fraction of that. Both get the same jobs done; the difference is who carries the cost, the risk and the day-to-day managing. Here’s the like-for-like breakdown.

The true cost of a hire

The advertised salary is the smallest line on the bill. What one mid-level marketer really costs in the UK:

• Salary, £30,000-£40,000 for a capable generalist
• Employer NI + pension, roughly 15-20% on top
• Holiday and sick pay, paid time when no work gets done
• Equipment, laptop, phone, a desk
• Tools, design, SEO, email, analytics, often £100-£400 a month
• Recruitment, agency fees or your own hours finding and interviewing
• Management, your time spent briefing, reviewing, directing

Add it up and a £35,000 salary becomes a £45,000-£55,000 commitment. And it buys you exactly one person’s skill set.

One hire can’t be five specialists

Marketing isn’t a single job. A strong online presence needs all of these, and they’re genuinely different skills:

1. Website design and upkeep
2. SEO, and the newer GEO for AI search
3. Content and copywriting
4. Email setup and campaigns
5. Reviews, booking and live chat
6. Ads and reporting

Very few people are excellent at all six. Hire a generalist and some areas come out weak; hire a specialist and the rest goes uncovered. A managed service spreads the work across people who each do one thing well, which is the whole point of it.

Side by side

When each one wins

Neither is universally right. A rough rule:

For most small businesses under, say, 30 staff, the maths leans toward a managed service: more skills, fewer gaps, a number you can actually budget for.

The risk nobody prices in

Cost isn’t the only thing on the scale. With an in-house hire, the knowledge lives in one person’s head, so if they leave, your marketing can stall for months. With any external provider, the risk runs the other way: being locked in. Whichever you choose, protect yourself:

• Make sure you own your website, domain and accounts.
• Insist on clear reporting, so you can see what you’re paying for.
• Steer clear of long contracts with no exit.

That’s exactly the model we’re built around: one fixed monthly fee, a team handling your website, SEO, content, email and reviews, and you owning your assets throughout. See what each plan covers on the pricing page, or weigh up the build side in DIY vs done-for-you and the wider routes in freelancer vs agency vs in-house.

The honest test: add up the real cost of one hire, then ask whether one person could genuinely cover everything you need. If the answer’s no, a managed service is usually the cheaper way to get all of it done.