Hiring a marketer sounds simple. You find someone good, bring them into the business, give them a desk (or a laptop), and marketing gets taken care of. Except… it’s not quite that simple anymore.

In Brisbane, a typical Marketing Manager salary is now around $120,000, while a Digital Marketing Manager sits around $135,000, before superannuation.

So once you add the current 12% super guarantee, you're looking at approximately $134,400–$151,200 a year before you've paid for a single Google ad, Meta campaign, SEO platform, CRM, email system or piece of creative software.

And that's where things get interesting. One marketer can't be a whole marketing department. Modern marketing isn't really one job anymore. You might need someone who understands:

- Google Ads and paid search

- Meta/Facebook advertising

- SEO and Google Business Profile

- Social media

- Email marketing

- CRM and lead nurturing

- Content marketing

- Websites and landing pages

- Analytics and reporting

- Marketing strategy

- AI and automation

Of course, a good Marketing Manager can oversee many of these things. But being able to manage a channel isn't necessarily the same as having deep expertise in it. And recent salary data reflects just how specialised some of these roles have become.

Current Brisbane salary benchmarks put roles such as an SEO Specialist, CRM Manager and Social Media Manager around the $105,000–$110,000 mark, while specialist digital and performance roles can sit much higher.

So the challenge for a small or mid-sized business isn't necessarily finding a marketer. It's getting access to the range of skills modern marketing requires without building an entire marketing department.

And finding those skills isn't getting easier. This isn't just about money. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that 35% of Australian businesses experienced a skills shortage in 2024–25. Among businesses experiencing skills shortages, 57% said specialist skills or knowledge were required, while 48% identified wages or salary costs as an issue.

The skills are specialised. And the cost of getting the wrong person can be significant.

So what is the alternative?

This is where outsourced marketing has become an increasingly practical option. Not because outsourcing is automatically cheaper, and not because every business should outsource everything. It's a totally different business model.

Instead of employing one person and expecting them to cover every aspect of marketing, you can bring in a senior team with different areas of expertise and use the skills you actually need.

You might need more Google Ads expertise one month. More content the next. A website or landing page built after that. SEO running in the background. Someone keeping an eye on the numbers and making sure all of those activities are actually working towards the same business goal.

You're accessing a team of skills, rather than trying to find one person who happens to have them all. The question isn't really "hire or outsource?" It's a slightly different question: What level of marketing capability does your business actually need?And what is the most sensible way to access it?

For some businesses, that's an in-house marketing manager. For others, it's a combination of internal and external expertise. And for many smaller businesses, having a senior outsourced marketing team sitting alongside them can make more sense than trying to build a marketing department before they're ready for one.

Because you don't necessarily need a $120k marketer. You need the right marketing capability for your business.

And those aren't always the same thing.

If this all makes sense, and you would like to have a chat, contact us today, and let's work out together the best way forward for your business.