Your Local Hire Costs More Than You Think
Most companies budget for salaries, but they end up paying for systems. The gap between those two numbers is where hiring decisions usually go wrong.
When a company decides to bring on a marketer, the brain anchors on one figure: base salary. Say that’s $8,000 a month. That number feels real, feels manageable, so it becomes the budget.
But that’s not what the hire costs.
The 1.72 Multiplier
Stack benefits, vacation pay, severance, stock options, and pension contributions on top of that base. And then add the desk, the computer, the software licenses, the real estate, and the insurance on both the space and the employee.
That $8,000 easily becomes $13,760 a month. The fully burdened cost of onshore talent routinely runs 72% above base. The Society for Human Resource Management has tracked that figure consistently across U.S. industries. Most finance teams never model it that way.
What the Alternative Actually Costs
An external firm absorbs every one of those burdened costs. The client pays a single fixed fee and offloads the entire infrastructure, which is typically a third to a fifth less than what a seated employee actually runs.
It’s more of a structural difference than a marginal one.
One Person Has One Ceiling
Here’s where the conversation shifts from financial to operational. Take “Molly the Marketer.” She has a few great skills and the capacity of one person.
The video editor can’t build the webinar landing page, compile the database, produce social content, and run the email drip campaign from the CRM.
McKinsey’s research on specialist versus generalist teams confirms what most operators already sense: distributed specialists consistently outperform a single generalist stretched across too many functions.
The Jack-of-All-Trades Tax
Forcing one hire to cover too much ground doesn’t save money; it dilutes quality across every function they touch. University of Michigan’s Cognitive load research shows that task-switching carries a measurable performance penalty, especially in creative and strategic work.
Specialists hired for specific outcomes simply outperform. It’s an operational reality.
Build the Right Structure
The cost of a local hire is compounded. Understanding the real math is the first step toward a leaner, higher-output marketing function.
Most companies don’t fix this because they’ve never seen it laid out clearly. Once you run the numbers, the case for distributed specialist talent becomes reasonable.
Want a whole team without the added costs?
