Hire a Marketing Employee or a Done-For-You Team? The Real Comparison for Small Business

At some point, every growing small business considers hiring "a marketing person." It feels like the responsible move. Before you post the job, here's an honest comparison with the alternative: a done-for-you team.

What one employee can realistically do

Modern small business marketing needs a videographer, an editor, a copywriter, a designer, a web developer, an ads manager and a strategist. That's six or seven skill sets. A single hire — especially at a small business salary — will be good at one or two of them. The rest either gets done badly or doesn't get done.

The full cost of a hire

• Salary and taxes: $40K–$65K for a junior to mid-level marketer, plus payroll taxes and any benefits.
• Equipment and software: cameras, lighting, audio, editing software, scheduling tools, ad accounts.
• Management: your time to direct, review and course-correct someone who may know less about marketing than you do.
• Ramp-up and turnover: three months to get productive; industry-average tenure in these roles is short. When they leave, the content stops and you start over.

What a done-for-you team looks like

A team like Heights Digital brings all seven skill sets and the equipment. We show up monthly with cameras, produce and post the content, build and maintain the website, run the ads, and report. Pricing scales with output and is typically a fraction of one salary. No hiring, no training, no equipment, no turnover, month-to-month.

When hiring is the right call

If you're large enough to need someone on site daily for events, internal communication and coordination across departments, an in-house marketing coordinator makes sense — often working alongside an outside content and ads team. For most businesses under a few dozen employees, outsourcing the production and execution is more capable and less risky.

Questions to ask either option

1. Who is shooting the video and how often?
2. Who is editing, writing and posting, and on what schedule?
3. Who builds and updates the website?
4. Who runs ads and how are results reported?
5. What happens if this person or team leaves?

Whichever way you go, insist on real content, consistent output and clear reporting. If you want to see what a team costs for your situation, book a free strategy call.