Instead of hiring

You are about to spend $110,000on one person to do four jobs.

Nothing against hiring — most companies get there eventually. But the first marketing hire is the one that most often goes wrong, and it is worth being clear about what the money actually buys before you commit to it.

The real number

What a first marketing hire costs.

Salary is the part everyone budgets for. It is usually about two thirds of the actual cost.

Base salary: $75,000 – $110,000
Payroll tax and benefits: + about 30%
Software and tools: $300 – $800 / month
Freelancers they will still need: Varies
Time to fill, then to ramp: 6 weeks, then 3 months

Loaded, that is roughly $8,000 to $12,000 a month for one person who is strong at one part of the job and learning the rest on your time.

Why it goes wrong

Four ways the first marketing hire fails.

Not because the person was bad. Because of what was asked of them.

The job description is four jobs
Strategy, content, design, website, SEO, campaigns and reporting. Nobody is good at all seven. You will hire for one of them and hope for the rest.
There is nobody senior to direct them
A first hire needs someone to decide what matters. If the founder is that person, the founder is now running marketing again, just with more meetings.
They arrive without a team
The role still needs a designer, a developer and someone who can write. Either you hire more, or your new manager spends their time briefing freelancers.
If it does not work, you start again
Six weeks to find, three months to ramp, and a difficult conversation at the end of it. Then the search reopens and another quarter is gone.

The alternative

Use a team for ninety days first.

You get the function running now, and you learn what you actually need to hire — from real work rather than a job description.

Working inside two weeks, on the priority work first, with no recruitment
Strategy, creative, web, content and campaigns from one team rather than one person
A fraction of the loaded cost of the hire you were scoping
Ninety days, then month to month. Cancel with thirty days' notice
Every account, file and login in your name from day one
At the end of it, a clear view of which role to hire, and what that person should own

Plenty of these conversations end with us telling a founder to go ahead and hire. That is a fine outcome — it is a better decision than the one they were about to make blind.

Questions

The ones founders ask

Answered straight, including where hiring is the better call.

Something not covered? Just ask us.

No. Most companies should, eventually. We are saying the first hire is usually made before anyone knows what the role should be, which is why it so often ends badly. Ninety days of real work tells you that far better than a job description does.

Yes, and it often goes better that way. Plenty of our work sits next to a junior marketer who is capable and overloaded. We set direction and cover what nobody else is covering, and they usually get better fast.

It is cheaper because you are buying a share of a team rather than a whole salary, and because we use AI heavily in production. You are not getting three full-time people. You are getting the capability of several, applied to two priorities at a time instead of everything at once.

Month to month, cancel with thirty days. Some companies continue, some hire and keep us for the parts the hire does not cover, and some take the roadmap and run it themselves. All three are fine, and everything is in your name either way.

Not sure whether to hire someone or bring in a team?

Thirty minutes, no deck. Tell us what you are trying to grow and who you have doing it now, and we will tell you honestly whether this is the right shape for you.

We reply within one business day.

You are about to spend $110,000on one person to do four jobs.

The job description is four jobs

There is nobody senior to direct them

They arrive without a team

If it does not work, you start again

The ones founders ask

Not sure whether to hire someone or bring in a team?