Is it cheaper to hire a junior marketer?

Sometimes on paper, but a junior hire usually needs direction, tools and an ad budget too, and the owner ends up managing them. Add your own management hours to the cost before deciding.

When does hiring in-house make more sense?

When you have enough steady marketing work to fill a role, someone experienced to manage it, and a business large enough that marketing knowledge needs to live inside the company.

Yes. Some businesses keep a coordinator for photos, social posts and front-desk follow-up, and use an outside team for ads, tracking and technical work. The split must be written down so tasks do not fall between the two.

What costs do owners forget?

Usually employer payroll costs, software subscriptions, training, the owner's own management time, and the months of lower output while a new hire learns the business.

Hire In-House or Go Done-for-You? The Cost Maths

To decide between hiring a marketing person and handing marketing to a done-for-you team, compare total cost to total output. A hire's real cost is wage plus payroll costs, tools, training and your management time. A team's real cost is its fee plus anything it does not cover. Then ask which option actually gets the work done every week, including when someone is sick or leaves.

This guide gives you a worksheet. We use made-up round numbers in the example so you can see the method; replace them with your own before drawing any conclusion.

Step 1: cost out the hire properly

Most owners compare a salary with an agency fee and stop there. That understates the hire by a wide margin. Fill in each line for your business.

Line	What to include
Wage	The salary or hourly rate you would actually pay in Greater Victoria
Payroll costs	Employer contributions you pay on top of wages, such as CPP and EI, plus WorkSafeBC premiums
Benefits and time off	Health benefits if you offer them, vacation pay, statutory holidays
Tools	Design software, scheduling tools, call tracking, analytics, a laptop and phone
Training	Courses, conferences, or simply weeks of lower output while they learn
Management	Your hours each week directing, reviewing and unblocking them, at your hourly value
Gaps	Sick days, vacations and the months it takes to replace someone who leaves

Ad spend sits outside both options, because you pay it either way.

Ask your bookkeeper or accountant for the payroll-cost percentages that apply to you. We do not give payroll or tax advice; the point is simply that the wage is never the whole cost.

Step 2: cost out the team

A done-for-you team is simpler to cost, but read the scope carefully.

Line	What to include
Monthly fee	The plan price, plus 5% GST if you are a Canadian client
Website work	Included, discounted or extra, depending on the plan
Tools	Which subscriptions the team covers and which you pay for
Your time	Minutes per week for photos, capacity texts and the monthly call

Our own plans are published: Growth is $1,999 a month month to month or $1,499 on annual billing, Elite $3,999 or $2,999, and Enterprise $7,999 or $5,999, from the Trades.Agency price list. The pricing page explains what each covers.

Step 3: a worked example

Here is the method with illustrative numbers. They are not market rates; they are round figures to show the arithmetic.

Option A: hire a marketing coordinator

Wage: $4,500 a month
Payroll costs and benefits: say 15% of wage, so $675
Tools and software: $250
Owner management: 4 hours a week at $120 an hour, about $2,080 a month
Monthly total: about $7,505

Option B: done-for-you team on Growth, annual billing

Fee: $1,499 plus 5% GST, about $1,574
Tools the team does not cover: say $50
Owner time: 30 minutes a week at $120 an hour, about $260 a month
Monthly total: about $1,884

On these assumptions the team costs roughly a quarter of the hire. The gap narrows if your management time is small, if the coordinator also does non-marketing work you would otherwise pay for, or if you need a bigger plan. Rerun it with your own figures.

Step 4: compare output, not just cost

Cost is half the decision. The other half is what gets done.

A single hire brings one person's skills. They may be strong at social media and weak at ads, or good with words and lost in analytics. A team spreads the work across people who each do one part regularly. On the other hand, an in-house person knows your business intimately, is on site to take photos, and can answer the front desk.

Score each option from 1 to 5 on the tasks that matter to you:

Running paid ads profitably
Keeping the website and Google profile current
Setting up tracking and reporting honestly
Taking photos and gathering job stories
Following up leads quickly
Covering holidays and sick days
Staying when things get busy

Multiply each score by how important the task is to your business, then add them up. That gives you an output score to set beside the monthly cost.

When hiring in-house is the right call

Be honest with yourself here. A hire makes more sense when:

you have more than one person's worth of marketing work, every week, all year
you or a manager has the experience to direct a marketer, not just hope they figure it out
marketing needs to sit close to other functions, such as a busy showroom or front desk
you are building a business you plan to sell, and a buyer will value in-house capability

If two or more of those are true, hiring may be right, and a team can still help with the technical parts. If none are, a done-for-you team is usually the lower-risk start. Our sister site VictoriaAgency.ca covers the middle path, where an agency advises and your own staff do the work.

Mistakes in this decision

Comparing a wage to a fee. Always compare total cost to total cost.
Ignoring your own hours. Managing a marketer is real work, and your time is the scarcest thing in the business.
Assuming a hire fixes broken accounts. Lost logins and bad tracking need fixing either way; see the takeover page.
Signing long contracts to save money. A small annual discount is not worth it if you cannot leave a poor provider.
Deciding once and never revisiting. Run the numbers again every year as the business grows.

Next step

Fill in both tables with your real figures. If the answer points to a team, our guide on what to hand off and what to keep helps you set the split, and the contact page explains what to send us. If it points to hiring, we would rather you hire well than sign up with us for the wrong reasons.

Hire a marketing person or hand it to a team? Do the sum first