Hire or delegate? The real math
A marketing employee, an agency, or nothing at all? The right choice depends on three factors the "let's just hire someone" reflex almost always ignores.
When marketing overflows, the reflex is to post a job opening. Sometimes that's the right call. But first, let's do the full math — the same math you'd do for any investment.
The real cost of an employee
On top of salary come payroll charges, benefits, equipment, training, supervision — and the most ignored cost of all: your management time. A junior marketing position truly costs well beyond its posted salary. And that cost is fixed: it lands every month, whether the results follow or not.
The "many trades" problem
An SME's marketing is at least six trades: strategy, content, advertising, website, data, design. No single person masters them all — certainly not at one position's salary. You hire a generalist, then wonder why the advertising, the site or the measurement stays weak. The person isn't the problem. The expectation is.
Three questions to settle it
- Volume: is there 35 hours of marketing work every single week? If not, a full-timer will get bored or invent work.
- Direction: can someone in-house supervise this work and judge its quality? An employee without direction produces activity, not results.
- Risk: can you absorb the fixed cost through six months of ramp-up — and start over if the person leaves?
Three yeses: hire — it's the right time. Any hesitation: external delegation gives you several trades at once, without a permanent fixed cost — and is judged on one thing only, results. The real question isn't "employee or vendor" anyway. It's: "Who owns the result, and how do I verify it every month?" Demand a clear answer — from either one.
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