How much does an in-house marketing team cost?

You are aware that marketing as a support function can bring value to your business, but you are not sure what are the costs of growing an in-house marketing team? We will help you understand this issue better, by covering 3 main aspects in this article: 

• Benefits of having an in-house marketing team;
• General costs to take into consideration when you grow such a team;
• Average salaries for a marketing team in Romania.

There is no doubt that if managed strategically, marketing can become a valuable support function that exposes your business to the market, generates new leads, builds loyalty in time and helps keep up with the pace of what your market needs and wants. Therefore planning your budget and allocating resources to your marketing efforts should become a priority (in case you have trouble deciding what budget should you spend this year, we recommend you check out these Smart Ways to Plan Your B2B Marketing Budget).

Benefits of an internal marketing team

Even if there are costs associated with growing an internal marketing team, a business shouldn’t underestimate the benefits this investment brings to the business: 

1. The communication about issues in projects might be faster since those people work beside you day by day. Therefore, any bug, issue, delay or unpredicted situation gets to you faster and you can react immediately. Not reacting when there is a situation in your project could lead to delayed launches or downtime and lost money, therefore an increased speed in communication is an advantage when having an in-house marketing team. 
2. Things get done faster since you have a dedicated team of marketers that live and breath your brand and their full time is allocated for your company only. They know it very well and they are focused on it.

Costs of an in-house marketing team

Moving forward, we will outline the main costs that go into building a marketing team. These costs, of course, vary based on the current situation of your business and the degree of specialization people need to have. Therefore we recommend you analyze what are your most stringent priorities in terms of marketing activities in the next period, what are the competencies of your current marketing team (if you have one) and what knowledge and skills should they acquire. 

1. If we talk strictly about money costs, take into consideration all the necessary investment for you to hire, train and retain people in your marketing department. You might have a fixed salary that you paid them monthly, but there are additional costs that appear from people deciding to leave, or that need to be trained, mentored. Also, even if you pay them a monthly salary, the costs of marketing activities can be at best approximated, not exactly predicted. Therefore, you always need some buffer cash for marketing activities to be covered when needed. Also, sometimes you might need to think of bonuses for your employees’ activities.
2. A disadvantage regarding costs could be that if your company is small or medium, people need to be Jack-of-all-trades and do many more things than they would do in a multinational. This translates into high workloads, additional pressure and stress and possibly poor prioritization of tasks. Instead of employees being focused on their marketing activities that bring the desired results, they might scatter their energy and time in other activities that are necessary to run the business. In such a diverse sector of activity, it’s impossible to know and do everything.
3. If you don’t have the money to employ a complete marketing team yet, then an option that you have is to employ a few people that have some of the skills, knowledge, and abilities. Unfortunately, this will limit your marketing activities. If you want to find experts in their fields, this requires adequate payment for their competencies (and for smaller businesses, these resources might not be available). Add to this the fact that it is very hard to find experts in the field that would easily switch companies.
4. To all these costs, businesses also need to take into account employee taxes, sick pay, annual leave, overtime, holidays, digital equipment, monthly online tools subscription and endless cups of coffee.

Average salaries for a marketing team in Romania

There is a much easier way to have an overview of the costs of a team and this is by looking at the average salaries in the labor market. We compiled from Paylab the average monthly gross salary of the typical members from a marketing department. 

• Marketing manager - 1000 euro
• Digital marketing specialist - 714 euro
• Marketing specialist - 607 euro
• Social media manager - 577 euro
• SEO analyst - 745 euro
• Graphic designer - 624 euro
• Copywriter - 622 euro
• Marketing analyst - 673 euro

These are only some of the roles that can be found in an in-house marketing team, with the monthly salaries rising up to around 5.562 euros/month in this case. Of course, this sum varies based on what team roles you establish in your team and what salaries you offer as an employer.

Conclusion

Having an in-house marketing team definitely has advantages for a business that has a long-term vision and wants to build an internal culture with capable marketing people to support its business. But until that point, they need to be grown, educated and supported in their career path. The good news is that until they develop the necessary knowledge and skills, you can complement the efforts of your marketing department with NNC Services’ team of experts. an external marketing agency. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!