Marketing Hire Cost Card

01 — Role level

SME: Yes

Coordinator

Does the work. Needs direction and management. Your cheapest hire — and your highest-supervision hire.

0–2 yrs$55K–$80K

5% strategic

SME: Sometimes

Marketing Executive

Runs campaigns end-to-end. Competent across a few channels. Still needs someone to set the strategy.

2–4 yrs$70K–$95K

10% strategic

SME: Sometimes

Senior Executive

Confident multi-channel operator. Can manage agencies. Needs a strategy to execute — won't build one.

4–6 yrs$80K–$115K

15% strategic

SME: Sometimes

Marketing Manager

Plans and executes. Owns a channel mix and manages a small team or agency. The SME sweet spot.

6–10 yrs$110K–$160K

30% strategic

SME: Rare

Senior Manager

Builds and leads a team. Owns commercial KPIs. Hard to justify without a marketing function already beneath them.

8–12 yrs$130K–$190K

40% strategic

SME: Rare

Head of Marketing

Owns the full marketing function. Reports to the CEO. Strategy, leadership, and commercial accountability. Typically justified at $10M+ revenue.

10–15 yrs$145K–$200K

55% strategic

SME: Very rare

Marketing Director

Board-level strategic input. Shapes brand and commercial positioning. Delegates execution entirely. Almost never the right first hire for an SME.

12–18 yrs$155K–$220K

65% strategic

SME: Very rare

CMO (In-house)

Full commercial ownership at executive level. Revenue architecture, org design, board-level leadership. Most SMEs don't need one in-house — they need a fractional one.

15–20+ yrs$180K–$500K

80% strategic

02 — Scope — what are you actually asking for?

Strategic need Pure execution — runs campaigns and content

ExecutionStrategy

1.0

Autonomy required Closely supervised — needs direction on tasks

SupervisedAutonomous

1.0

Scope of remit Single channel focus (e.g. social media)

NarrowFull function

1.0

Brand complexity Simple, well-defined brand in a clear market

DefinedBuild from scratch

1.0

03 — Market premium — modern capability

AI-Native Workflow

Builds prompts, automates tasks, uses AI across content, analysis, and ops. Genuinely fluent — not just a ChatGPT user.

+ 8% salary premium

Revenue & Lead Gen Ownership

Owns pipeline targets and qualified lead metrics. Speaks in revenue, not reach.

+ 10% salary premium

Vibe Coding / No-Code

Ships landing pages, builds automations, sets up integrations without dev dependency.

+ 7% salary premium

Paid Media Self-Sufficient

Runs and optimises paid campaigns in-house. Meta, Google, or LinkedIn — no agency required.

+ 6% salary premium

Data & Attribution Depth

GA4, CRM reporting, multi-touch attribution, custom dashboards. Can tell you where revenue is actually coming from.

+ 8% salary premium

High-Velocity Content

Writes, edits, and publishes at scale without agency or freelancer support.

+ 5% salary premium

04 — Location

No adjustment — metro market rates apply.

↳ Recommended salary offer range

$123,000 – $143,000

Base salary · ex-superannuation · Marketing Manager

No skills premium applied

↳ True Year 1 cost to your business

Base salary (mid of offer range) $133,000

Superannuation (12%) $15,295

Acquisition costs (pre-employment) $26,645

Cash out before day one — job ad spend, recruiter fees (15–20% of base if used), interview time across all stakeholders, reference and background checks.

Ramp & onboarding (first 5 months on the job) $40,125

Lost productivity after day one — they're typically 40–60% productive in month one, ramping to full output by month 5. Plus your time managing the ramp, tooling setup, and work that didn't ship while they got up to speed.

Software licences, tools & equipment $9,000

True Year 1 cost $224K

Effective hourly rate

$125 /hr

Year 2+ ongoing cost

$167K /yr

Strategy ratio

30% strategic

Typical in SMEs <$10M

Sometimes

↳ Mis-hire exposure

When the wrong hire costs you everything.

The salary number is the visible cost. The real cost lives here — what it takes to recover when a hire doesn't work out. Most SMEs underestimate this by a factor of 3.

Total exposure if this hire fails

$174K

At 25% probability of turnover within 18 months at this role level.

Hard costs

$73K

Recruitment fees and time burnt. Ramp investment lost. Exit costs — notice period, accrued leave, knowledge transfer.

Delay to traction

$55K

5 months minimum to identify the problem, exit them, find a replacement, and get to productivity. Marketing is held back the entire time.

Short-term opportunity cost

$47K

Campaigns that didn't ship. Pipeline that didn't build. Competitor share you didn't take. The compound cost of a slow marketing function.

Everything exists on a spectrum. We've analysed hundreds of marketing job ads on Seek and LinkedIn, spoken with CEOs who've hired marketing leaders, and the recruiters who place them. These numbers are the averages we've landed on. Every business is different. Treat this card as a directional starting point, not a quote. All figures AUD.

Before you hire full-time —

The fractional alternative.

A fractional CMO delivers 80%+ strategic input without the Year 1 cost above. No recruitment fee. No superannuation. No ramp period. No long-service leave accrual. Engagement scales to your needs and stops when you say so.

No recruitment or onboarding overhead

No superannuation liability

Senior strategic capability from day one

No mis-hire exposure

Month-to-month commercial flexibility

GrowthOps systems, not just advice

Book a Strategy Sprint →