How to Hire a Digital Marketing Team

In today’s world, digital marketing for your business is more important than ever. It’s no longer enough to post to social media platforms a couple of times a month and occasionally send out an email. 

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is having their most junior-level employee (or an intern) handle their digital marketing. While this may have been an acceptable strategy in the early years of digital marketing, it’s vital to recognize how essential and competitive the digital space has become.

The Key To Success

Today, simple mistakes can have a major impact on a company’s online reputation. As a business owner, it’s important to ensure that the person managing your digital marketing fully understands your brand and how to tell its story effectively. This helps you reach potential customers, increase brand awareness, and really move the needle for your business.

The key to success is consistency. To have a comprehensive strategy across all your digital marketing channels, you have to focus on your social media strategy, email marketing strategy, search engine optimization (SEO), and establishing a strong online footprint. 

There’s no denying that labor costs are on the rise. Because of that, you might be wondering what the true cost of hiring an in-house marketing team member is, and if it’s more beneficial to work with an agency like Real Marketing Solutions. 

In this article, we’re breaking down the various digital marketing positions you might need to consider for your team and what the true costs are of going in-house.

The Cost of Hiring a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

The CMO is a C-level executive responsible for developing and executing the overall marketing strategy for the company to increase brand awareness. Their responsibilities will encompass all things marketing, including social media strategies, website and SEO, advertising, and more.

What does it cost to hire a CMO? Depending on the size of your business, you may or may not need one. But if you do, according to Glassdoor, the average salary for a C-Suite executive in the digital marketing space ranges from $144,000 to $408,000 per year. And that’s just for one person, not for the entire team, and not including benefits.

The Cost of Hiring a Team of Marketing Professionals

What if you need to hire an entire in-house marketing team or people with different types of expertise? You’ll probably need a graphic designer and a copywriter, for example, and these are vastly different skill sets. Let’s take a deep dive into what typical marketing team members make per year:

Graphic designer

A graphic designer typically makes between $54K and $211K a year and creates email marketing templates, web graphics, social media and blog post graphics and images, and digital advertising assets. Their goal is to create visual assets that will inform and inspire your target audience and turn them into customers. 

Copywriter

A copywriter typically makes $55K to $165K a year and is responsible for email marketing, blog and social media content, and managing a content calendar. A good copywriter will be able to capture your brand voice in digital advertising and social media content to attract the attention of your target audience.

Video editor

A video editor makes $50K to $154K a year and manages storyboarding, video shoots, animated videos, and all aspects of editing and production. They’ll take raw footage and turn it into a compelling piece of storytelling!

SEO strategist

An SEO strategist makes $58K to $111K a year and is responsible for research related to search engine optimization, analytics, and overall SEO strategy and direction. They’ll work on improving the online visibility of your business to get you noticed by potential customers. 

Digital ads manager

A digital ads manager makes $67K to $152K a year and is responsible for digital advertising efforts, including optimizing ad spend and targeting. The ads manager may also be responsible for reporting, spending, creation of ad copy, and setup.

Marketing strategist

A marketing strategist makes $63K to $137K a year and is responsible for building, implementing, and optimizing your digital marketing strategy and acting as a project manager for the team. They may help out with tasks that keep projects on track.

If that seems like a lot, it is! The range for an entire marketing team can be anywhere from $347K to $930K on the high end. That doesn’t include bonuses, healthcare, benefits, taxes, or the cost to train and onboard these employees. 

But your marketing efforts need all these specialized skill sets to be successful in today’s hyper-competitive online environment. Successful marketing teams see results because they have all these skills and support one another to get the job done.

Candidates that have robust skill sets and the ability to implement your entire marketing plan will ask for higher starting salaries.

Is Outsourcing a Better Option?

If you own a small business, you likely have needs in several different areas beyond marketing your product or service. Hiring a person dedicated to marketing may exceed what you can afford or be overkill for what your business requires. 

There’s another option, and that’s outsourcing your marketing to a contractor or agency; here are some of the benefits:

You Don’t Have the Expense of Hiring New Employees

Recruiting, interviewing, and onboarding new employees is time-consuming and expensive. When you outsource your social media marketing to an agency, you’re hiring a skilled team that needs very little onboarding. Outsourcing to the right agency allows you to hone in on the services you need without the overhead of hiring employees.

An Agency Covers All Your Digital Marketing Needs

When you work with a digital marketing agency, you have access to a larger talent pool. We employ a team that specializes in different areas of marketing—everything from search engine marketing to content marketing.

You Can Leverage an Agency’s Expertise

This is one of the most valuable aspects of hiring a digital marketing agency. As experts in the field, an agency may recommend additional marketing opportunities for your business.

There’s No Long-Term Commitment

Unlike with hiring an employee, there’s no expectation of a long-term commitment when you’re working with an agency. Your commitment to the agency is only as long as your contract with them.

They’re Cost-Efficient

While some big agencies might charge you an arm and a leg to work with them, boutique agencies like Real Marketing Solutions are affordable solutions for your marketing needs. Don’t believe us? Click here to schedule a complimentary call and get a custom quote for your digital marketing needs today! 

Next Step: Deciding Who to Hire

There are several things you should be clear about before deciding to outsource or hire an in-house digital marketing team:

• Determine a marketing budget.
• Get clarity on your needs and expectations.
• Understand which marketing skill sets you need to hire for.
• Outline the deliverables you need each month.
• Establish metrics that you want to achieve.

Once you have these parameters set, you’ll be able to determine whether an in-house digital marketing employee or a digital marketing agency is the right solution for your business.

If you decide on outsourcing, Real Marketing Solutions can customize our services to fit your needs. Whether you’re a marketing pro without enough time to execute your plan or you’re a social media novice, we’ve got a solution for you.

No training, no team-building, no office space required—just a team that shows up and integrates seamlessly with the systems you already have in place.

Real Marketing Solutions: Your Marketing Team

In the end, marketing is all about generating more profits. So you need to look at your marketing team in terms of your return on investment. The money you spend on marketing—plus—needs to come back to you.

Our agency offers hourly services and monthly retainers to fit the needs of clients that need ongoing and consistent support. These services include social media management, digital advertising, SEO strategy and optimization, content creation, and more. You can view all our service offerings here.

As your marketing strategy evolves, you can rely on our team and expertise to grow with you.

Chief Marketing Officer

The RMS CMO Solution provides a robust service offering that will help scale your business faster and more effectively online. With the RMS CMO Solution, our team provides strategy, implementation, and optimization for your entire online footprint. The best part is that it costs you less than one full-time employee. 

If you’d like to have a full-time, in-house marketing team led by a CMO but don’t have the resources to hire one, the RMS CMO Solution is the answer.

With an experienced team of marketing professionals on your side, you get not just a CMO, you also get a copywriter, a video editor, an SEO specialist, a digital ads specialist, a graphic designer—a team to plan and execute your entire digital marketing strategy. 

If you’d like to learn more about how our CMO Solution is a game-changer for your business, set up a complimentary consult.