There's a good chance that you already know your business could be growing faster if you invested more in digital marketing. While you may have already designated a marketing budget to expand your campaigns, you still have the difficult decision of how to spend it and the best way to execute your new marketing plan. Do you build an in-house marketing team or hire an experienced outsourced team?
It's no secret that hiring an internal marketing team can be incredibly expensive. Adding a single marketing manager to your staff will cost roughly $86k in just salary and benefits. Unfortunately, your marketing dream team will require more than just this one person, and setting up a great team is critical for ensuring success. Between content writers, graphic designers, social media managers, and PPC managers, you can expect to spend at least another $200k in salary costs.
Exploring Marketing Costs at a Positional Level
To help better explain the actual cost of a marketing team, we thought it would be good to look at the associated salaries of individual positions. This is an important distinction because most business owners will be able to look at each position to determine what they would need and then see the associated costs. Once you understand the services you will need, you can then tally up how much you should expect to pay for a marketing team.
Chief Marketing Officer
Role: A Chief Marketing Officer, or CMO, is responsible for directing the marketing management team and developing business plans and marketing strategies that will accomplish corporate objectives. CMOs must be exceptional leaders and will be the voice of the customer across the company.
Median Salary: $170K
SEO Strategist
Role: An SEO strategist is responsible for implementing and coordinating search engine optimization strategies for an organization. A successful SEO strategist will have a working knowledge of keyword research, link-building campaigns, website analysis, analytics, and more. Since SEO is constantly evolving, strategists must also be eager to continue to learn.
Median Salary: $78K
Chief Marketing Officer
Role: A Chief Marketing Officer, or CMO, is responsible for directing the marketing management team and developing business plans and marketing strategies that will accomplish corporate objectives. CMOs must be exceptional leaders and will be the voice of the customer across the company.
Median Salary: $170K
SEO Strategist
Role: An SEO strategist is responsible for implementing and coordinating search engine optimization strategies for an organization. A successful SEO strategist will have a working knowledge of keyword research, link-building campaigns, website analysis, analytics, and more. Since SEO is constantly evolving, strategists must also be eager to continue to learn.
Median Salary: $78K
Web Developer
Role: A web developer is responsible for programming or coding the development of Internet applications using a client-server model. Web developers will use various coding types, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and more. Most developers will specialize in a typical coding type, meaning multiple developers may be needed for a single organization's goals.
Median Salary: $92K
Web Designer
Role: A web designer is responsible for styling and laying out pages with content. At the most basic level, a web designer is responsible for building, rebuilding, or maintaining websites for businesses. Many web designers will understand how to make a website functional and aesthetically pleasing.
Median Salary: $55k
Graphic Designer
Role: A graphic designer is a visual communicator who can create concepts by hand or with graphic design software. The primary function of a graphic designer is to inform, captivate, or inspire consumers while ensuring their design accurately reflects their organization's goals.
Median Salary: $54K
Content Writer
Role: A content writer specializes in developing relevant content for websites, including page content and articles. An excellent content writer will also have a working knowledge of keyword-based SEO to expand marketing efforts further. Content writers will also assist other teams in creating content for graphics, social media, press releases, and more.
Median Salary: $64k
Graphic Designer
Role: A graphic designer is a visual communicator who can create concepts by hand or with graphic design software. The primary function of a graphic designer is to inform, captivate, or inspire consumers while ensuring their design accurately reflects their organization's goals.
Median Salary: $54K
Content Writer
Role: A content writer specializes in developing relevant content for websites, including page content and articles. An excellent content writer will also have a working knowledge of keyword-based SEO to expand marketing efforts further. Content writers will also assist other teams in creating content for graphics, social media, press releases, and more.
Median Salary: $64k
Social Media Manager
Role: Social media managers are responsible for executing and maintaining an organization's social media strategy. In most cases, social media managers will be responsible for creating engaging content, communicating with target audiences, and developing growth strategies for an organization. Because this position will work directly with customers, strong customer service skills are recommended.
Median Salary: $49K
Database Administrator
Role: A Database Administrator, or DBA, oversees the security and maintenance of a company's databases. Often, this team member will be involved in developing, troubleshooting, and planning databases to meet the needs of an organization to keep information running smoothly company-wide.
Median Salary: $68k
Ouch. Those numbers hurt, right?
If you were to build an entire marketing team based solely on these positions, you would be responsible for an increase of $829K in salaries alone. That doesn't even factor in the costs of marketing materials, tools, and other fees that might be needed to execute a marketing plan successfully. Even broken down to a monthly charge, that is still $69K! This is simply not a fee that most businesses can afford to bear to improve their marketing efforts.
What Tools are Needed for a Successful Marketing Team?
Once you have the right team in place, you will need to ensure that you have the software and resources needed to empower them to make a positive impact. As you might have guessed, this leads to even more costs – and the list of what is required to do a proper job is longer than you think. As an example, let's break down some of the software costs that Maennche Marketing Agency utilizes for clients.
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Search Engine Position Tracking Software
Use: Position tracking, or SERP tracking, is crucial for determining what keywords a business is performing for in search engine results pages. Using software, these results are updated daily to give a clear picture of any positive or negative changes. Some of the most common software options that allow for this are SEMrush and Ahrefs.
Average Monthly Cost: $120*
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Social Media Management Software
Use: The popularity of social media has grown exponentially, and businesses should actively be investing in tools to streamline their posting process and track the results they are obtaining from these marketing channels. The most popular social media management software options available include Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Sendible.
Average Monthly Cost: $49*
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Social Media Tools
Use: In addition to a social media management system, businesses will also need to invest in graphic design software specifically for social media posts. This will help ensure a clean and engaging finish product when a post goes live. One of the best ways to achieve this is through Canva Premium.
Average Monthly Cost: $10*
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CRM and Project Management Software
Use: Once your team starts getting individual tasks and projects, your business will need a way to track them. A CRM, or customer relationship management software, will often be the best way to do this and ensure that projects remain on track. While we will always recommend a custom CRM, many commercial options are available, including Zoho, Salesforce, and Asana.
Average Monthly Cost: $49*
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Email Marketing Software
Use: Email marketing software is essential for any business that wants to harness the true power that this marketing strategy can provide. Without investing in email marketing software, companies won't be able to receive analytics for the emails they send and will likely not be as effective as possible. Some email marketing software options include Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or SendX.
Average Monthly Cost: $17*
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Competitor Tracking Software
Use: How do you know if your marketing plan is effective if you aren't actively tracking your competitors? While there are many great software options for competitor tracking, SpyFu is generally considered the most popular. No matter which provider you choose, competitor tracking is essential for a robust marketing plan.
Average Monthly Cost: $79*
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User Analytics Software
Use: User analytics software aims to determine how your website's visitors interact with your website. With this real-time information, you can then make adjustments to create funnels or increase the amount of time they spend on your website. Some of the options to consider include Lucky Orange, Microsoft Clarity, or Google Analytics.
Average Monthly Cost: $50*
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Reporting Software
Use: Reports and analytics are essential for maintaining a solid marketing plan. The most significant benefit of investing in reporting is that you can actively see what is working and what isn't and then adjust your budgets or approach to make the biggest impact. Some of the top reporting software options include GTMetrix, Reporting Ninja, and AgencyAnalytics.
Average Monthly Cost: $40*
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Testing Software
Use: In most cases, testing software will be used to perform in-depth SEO analysis on a website. While this software can be incredibly complex and technical, it is needed for any marketing team pursuing advanced marketing. Some of the testing software options that are most popular include Screaming Frog and Power Mapper.
Average Monthly Cost: $14*
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Planning/Meeting Software
Use: Many marketing teams will use planning and meeting software to brainstorm, collaborate, and take action on ideas. While various software options are available on the market, it is crucial to find the tools that make the most sense for your marketing teams' needs. Some options to consider include, SimpleMind and LucidChart.
Average Monthly Cost: $27*
If you are keeping score, that's a minimum of $472 extra each month just for software. The worst part is that * next to each price means that those are simply starting prices and then scale up based on the size of your team or organization. With the actual costs of a marketing team continuing to add up, there's a good chance you are looking for an affordable alternative.
The good news? There is one!
Why Does Retainer-Based Marketing Make Sense?
Maennche Marketing Agency has an affinity for helping small businesses grow and reach their true potential. As you might imagine, many of the clients we work with every month are also working with limited budgets that need to be used creatively for the most impact. We knew there had to be a better way to make marketing more accessible.
To make investing in an entire marketing team attainable for every business, Maennche Marketing Agency began offering services on a retainer basis. Through these retainers, businesses could pre-pay for a set number of hours that can be used in any way that makes sense for their overall goals or marketing strategy. For instance, if the business only wanted to invest in social media management and blog articles, they might choose a five-hour retainer. However, if they wanted the full scope of services, 15 hours might make more sense.
The beauty of retainer-based marketing is that clients can choose exactly how they want to use those hours to meet their current goals or objectives. Even better, the retainer allowance can be scaled up or back depending on the season, and what types of services are needed at any given time. This approach is particularly advantageous for service-based industries that rely on seasonal work to fulfill their annual compensation goals.
The annual cost of working with an experienced marketing team will average around $48K annually. That means that you can expect to spend about $4K monthly instead of the $45K you would expect to pay monthly if you hired an in-house marketing team. Think of what you could do with that extra $41K of capital each month – that alone should make you consider the benefits of working with a team like Maennche Marketing Agency instead of investing in an internal team.
One final benefit of working with a retainer-based system is that you are only obligated to sign an agreement on a month-to-month basis. This offers one key advantage over hiring an internal team. If you wanted to stop services with Maennche Marketing Agency, for instance, then you could easily submit a notice and leave the next month. However, if you hired an internal marketing team, you would be required to eliminate those positions and potentially pay severance.
Ready To Try Something New?
No matter what size your business is or your budget, Maennche Marketing Agency has a retainer-based marketing plan that will work for you. Take the first step today to learn if our approach is the right fit for your business! Schedule a meeting with us to see how your business could benefit from our knowledge and expertise.