Hiring an in-house marketing manager sounds like the logical next step when your business starts to grow. But is it the most cost-effective or efficient way to build your marketing capability?
Here’s a simple comparison of cost and value between hiring in-house and working with an outsourced agency like Remora.
Cost: In-House vs Outsourced
Let’s start with salary. A mid-level marketing manager in the UK typically earns between £45,000 and £65,000. Add pension, employer NI, holiday, sick leave, software, training, and management overhead, and you’re looking at a real cost closer to £70,000–£90,000 a year.
By contrast, a lean marketing agency retainer starts around £3,000 to £6,000 per month. That’s £36,000 to £72,000 per year. And for that, you’re not getting one person, you’re getting access to a whole team.
If your business needs more than basic marketing support ie SEO, content, PPC, analytics, email automation, CRM integration, it’s nearly impossible to find one person who can do all of that well. You’ll need to either hire more people or accept the gaps.
Experience: Depth vs Breadth
An in-house marketer typically brings experience from a few past roles in one or two industries. That can work well if you need someone to deeply understand your brand and stay close to your internal teams. But what if your needs change? Or your channels stop performing?
Agencies work across multiple sectors and constantly evolve their approach. Zafar and I have helped SaaS firms in aviation, fintech, energy, security, and government grow from £5m to £50m in ARR. We’ve seen what works in different markets and what doesn’t. We bring that learning, those marketing systems and that extensive experience with us.
We also work at a strategic level. That means helping you prioritise where to invest, shaping your message to investors, refining your customer positioning, and building marketing systems that can scale.
Focus and Flexibility
Hiring is slow and expensive. Getting it wrong is worse. With an agency, you can start quickly and adapt as you go. Need to launch a product? Run a campaign? Build a new website? You can scale activity up or down depending on what matters most right now.
Agencies are built for flexibility. You don’t need to train them, manage their annual reviews, or approve their holiday requests. You need outcomes. By that I mean leads, product demos, increased brand visibility, MQLs, fresh, engaging content, and you get a team aligned to deliver them.
What Are You Really Paying For?
Ask yourself this simple question: Do you want someone to manage social media and write newsletters? Or do you want a team that can help shape your strategy, uncover growth opportunities, and execute across multiple channels?
Outsourcing isn’t always the right answer. If you need someone embedded full-time in your business, sitting with sales and product every day, an in-house hire might make sense. But if you want broad experience, strategic input, and a full marketing function for less than the cost of one employee, then an outsourced model is 100% worth considering.
Final Thought
What’s the opportunity cost of trying to build everything in-house? Are you getting results, or (and we see this often) just keeping busy? The right outsourced team gives you the best of both worlds: senior input, channel expertise, and measurable outputs, without the overhead.
Remora works with B2B tech firms to build scalable marketing engines that drive real business growth. If you’re weighing up your options, we’re happy to share how others have approached the same decision.
