In-House Marketing, or Marketing Agency? What’s Best for Small Business Owners?

Every second week a Brisbane business owner asks me the same question. Should I hire someone in-house, or hand marketing to an agency?

It gets debated like a religion. It is not. It comes down to two numbers and one honest look at your workload. Most owners skip both and pick whichever option feels safer, which is usually the more expensive one.

Here is the maths, using real Australian figures, so you can make the call in about ten minutes.

What an in-house hire actually costs

You are not just paying a salary. There is super, leave loading, workers comp, the recruiter who found them, the laptop, and the software. Year one is the expensive one because recruitment is a one-off hit.

Here is a marketing coordinator on $70,000 in Brisbane, next to a marketing manager on $110,000.

Three things worth noticing.

First, the coordinator costs about $7,850 a month in year one, not $5,800. The gap is on-costs and recruitment, and it surprises almost everyone.

Second, year two drops to about $6,980 a month once recruitment is behind you. That is the number to use if you are comparing over three years, not the salary divided by twelve.

Third, a three-day-a-week coordinator costs about $4,700 a month in year one and $4,190 ongoing. A two-day-a-week coordinator is about $3,140 a month in year one. That is the option most small businesses should be pricing, and almost nobody does.

What an agency actually costs

Australian agency retainers sit in three broad bands in 2026.

• Boutique specialist, one channel: $1,500 to $3,000 a month
• Small agency, two or three channels: $3,000 to $7,500 a month
• Full service with strategy, content and reporting: $3,000 to $8,000 a month

Ad spend is always separate. So is GST on most quotes. A $3,000 retainer running $5,000 of ads is an $8,000 month, not a $3,000 month. Ask any agency to quote the management fee and the total spend as two separate lines before you compare them to a salary.

The break-even point

An ongoing coordinator costs about $84,000 a year fully loaded. At $3,000 a month, an agency costs $36,000. You would need to spend roughly $7,000 a month on agency fees before a full-time coordinator becomes the cheaper option on paper.

But cost per month is the wrong comparison. Cost per hour of work is closer.

A full-time coordinator gives you about 1,900 productive hours a year. That works out to roughly $44 an hour fully loaded. An agency at $3,000 a month might give you 25 to 40 hours of actual work, which is $75 to $120 an hour.

The agency costs more per hour. It also sells you fewer hours, and that is the point. You are buying the 25 hours you actually need instead of 1,900 you have to fill.

What the spreadsheet leaves out

• Someone has to manage the hire. A junior marketer needs briefing, checking and direction. Budget four to six hours of your own week, every week.
• One person cannot do web, SEO, ads, copy, design and email well. You will still buy specialists on top of the salary.
• If they leave, you start again. Recruitment, notice period, ramp-up, and three months of lost momentum.
• Agencies need briefs too, and you are one of several clients. A clear scope and a named contact matter more than the pitch deck.
• Speed cuts both ways. In-house turns small changes around in a day. Agencies batch work and chase approvals.

The five questions that decide it

Answer yes or no. Be honest about the first one.

1. Do you have 30 or more hours of marketing work every week, not just this month?
2. Is the work continuous, or does it arrive in campaigns with quiet gaps between them?
3. Do you need three or more disciplines at once: website, SEO, ads, content, design?
4. Can you give up four to six hours a week to manage a person?
5. Will the skills you need still be current in twelve months?

Four or five yes answers point to an in-house hire, most likely part-time. Two or three point to a hybrid. Zero or one points to an agency, and buying it as a project is usually smarter than a retainer.

Who should own what

Most of the argument disappears once you split the work by task instead of by job title. This is the split that holds for a service business under $3 million.

The pattern is simple. Anything that needs a local answer today belongs in-house. Anything that needs a skill you cannot keep current belongs outside.

The hybrid most Brisbane small businesses land on

Two or three days a week in-house for the work that has to happen daily: Google Business Profile, reviews, socials, email, small website changes. A specialist for the work that needs depth: SEO, Google Ads, a website build.

A Brisbane electrical contractor with two vans and a full diary does not need a marketing coordinator. The office manager handles reviews and quote follow-up. A specialist handles the website, the ads and the search. Total cost sits below a coordinator’s salary and nothing sits idle between campaigns.

A worked example

Say a Brisbane electrical business turns over $1.8 million and can put $6,000 a month into marketing.

Option one: one full-time coordinator at $70,000. The salary eats the budget. There is nothing left for ads, tools or content production.

Option two: an agency at $3,000 plus $3,000 of Google Ads. The phone rings, but nobody owns the website, the reviews or the follow-up.

Option three: a coordinator two days a week at about $3,140, plus a $2,500 specialist retainer for SEO and ads. Total $5,640. Someone owns the day to day, and the deep work still gets done.

Option three is usually the one that holds. Not because hybrid is fashionable, but because it matches the work. Daily tasks need a person. Deep work needs a specialist.

Before you decide, do this

Write down every marketing job you need done over the next 90 days. Not the job title, the actual tasks. Then estimate the hours per month.

If it adds up to less than 60 hours a month, you do not have a full-time role. You have a part-time role and a specialist gap.

Then run a paid 90-day project with an agency before you hire anyone. You will learn what good looks like, what it costs, and whether you can manage it. Hiring first and learning second is how owners end up with a $95,000 year-one mistake.

If you want a second set of eyes on the numbers before you sign anything, we will cost your first 90 days and show you where the money should go. No pitch.

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