The True Cost of Doing Inbound Marketing with HubSpot Yourself

Many business owners get wrapped up in the vision of what HubSpot can do for their company, but when it’s time to actually implement that vision, it can be overwhelming. Do you do inbound marketing yourself? Do you hire an agency to do it for you? To make your decision, you’ll need to compare the true costs of each. 

In order to get a basis for comparison, let’s look at the time it would typically take in-house employees to develop the components of an inbound marketing campaign, then look at the financial cost for an in-house team. 

The Time Commitment of an In-House Team 

If you expect a single in-house employee to create every aspect of an inbound marketing campaign (copy, design, build, promote, report), things can turn south pretty quickly. Even the most talented inbound marketers generally aren't completely proficient in every aspect of campaign development. That means it will take more than one employee to execute the most effective inbound marketing tactics — and outsourcing would still be needed to compensate for those skill gaps. 

In-house managers also have the time management hurdle to cross with the limited amount of time one person has to complete the work. For example, when creating a premium offer (such as an e-book, whitepaper, case study, etc.), there may be a dozen or more tasks: 

• Researching the offer (2 hours) 
• Developing the campaign outline (3 hours) 
• Writing the copy and designing the offer (15 hours depending on the offer complexity) 
• Copywriting, design and building of the landing pages (2 hours), thank you page (1 hours), emails (2 hours), automated nurturing sequences (2-4 hours depending on the sequence length) and Calls-To-Action (1 hour) 
• Quality checking each piece of the campaign (3 hours) 
• Adding the campaign to the website and current promotions (2 hours), as well as creating unique promotions specific to the campaign (depends on the promotion) 

If one or two people were executing all these tasks, it could take a minimum of 35 hours — or 4.5 days of work if the employee is only working on that task — to complete one campaign. However, a typical HubSpot agency has multiple people working on multiple tasks in unison. That means in the one week it would take an in-house employee to develop one campaign, the agency could also create the same campaign, write blogs, schedule social promotions and review analytics and reports, all with a more professional, cohesive finished product. 

The Financial Commitment of an In-House Team 

To compare money, let’s take a quick look at the costs associated with hiring an in-house team of inbound marketers:  

• The national average salary for a single marketer is $60,000 (according to Glassdoor).  
• Multiply that by five team members and you get a team salary of $300,000.  
• Divide that by 12 and you’re paying $25,000 per month on salary alone.  

That doesn’t even include other costs, such as recruiting, benefits, training, management and office space — which all add up over time. You also have risks when it comes to turnover, culture, fit, retention, among others.  

A typical monthly engagement for a HubSpot inbound marketing agency, on the other hand can start at the fraction of the cost of an internal team. Plus, you don’t have to worry about any of the details. Simply budget inbound sales and marketing as a fixed monthly cost and enjoy a team of inbound marketers for a fraction of the total price you’d pay with one or two in-house team members.  

The True Value of Outsourcing Inbound Marketing 

It’s no secret that money is one of the biggest reasons a company may be hesitant to outsource inbound marketing with HubSpot. But when you really look at the true cost of what it takes to hire a team of inbound marketers in-house, it’s impossible to miss the value that comes with outsourcing to an agency.