Agency vs in-house vs doing it yourself
You do not have a people problem.
You have a
coverage problem
For most Australian businesses under 200 people, the answer is not one or the other. One marketer at $120,000 costs $171,804 in the first year and can properly own two of the six marketing disciplines. An agency covers all six for less. Keep the person who knows your business. Buy the specialists around them.
Three minutes. No sales call unless you ask for one.
- Brisbane based, working across Australia
- Strategy, systems and reporting under one roof
The short version
One in-house marketer
Year one, all in
Six freelancers
744 hours across a year
In-house team of three
Year one, all in
YDS
All six disciplines covered
Queensland, 2026-27. Superannuation, WorkCover, recruitment, tools and leave included. Media spend excluded.
The real problem
One hire. Six jobs.
Marketing stopped being one job about a decade ago. You hire one capable generalist and quietly expect six specialists. That is not a comment on your marketer. It is arithmetic.
Content and social
Usually covered
Brand and messaging
Positioning, proposition, consistency. Held in one person’s head and rarely written down.
Usually covered
Website and conversion
Speed, structure, forms, the paths people actually take. Reviewed when something breaks.
Thin
Search and AI visibility
Organic search, technical health, and whether you turn up when someone asks an AI assistant for options.
Thin
Paid media
Channel mix, creative, budget efficiency, attribution. A specialism, not a task you pick up on a Thursday.
Exposed
Data, tracking and automation
Analytics, CRM, lead routing, reporting that explains meaning. The first thing to go when everyone is busy.
Exposed
The numbers, in full
What it actually costs to cover six disciplines
Queensland, 2026-27. Superannuation at 12%, WorkCover, recruitment fees and tools included, because they are not optional. Payroll tax is left out, since most businesses this size sit under the $1.3 million threshold. Media spend is excluded from every column.
Figures exclude GST. Full workings available on request.
One marketer
Six freelancers
Team of three
YDS
Salary or fees
$120,000
$99,300
$275,000
$96,000
Superannuation at 12%
$14,400
nil
$33,000
nil
WorkCover premium
$1,612
nil
$3,693
nil
Recruitment, first year
$24,192
nil
$55,440
nil
Software, training, hardware
$11,600
included
$24,000
nil
Total, first year
$171,804
$99,300
$391,133
$96,000
Total, every year after
$147,612
$99,300
$335,693
$96,000
Disciplines properly covered
2 of 6
0 of 6
4 of 6
6 of 6
Cost per discipline covered
$73,806
nothing owned
$83,923
$16,000
Weeks until work is running
13 to 17
4 to 8
26 to 39
2 to 4
If someone resigns
you lose all of it
you lose one piece
you lose a third
nothing changes
One marketer
$73,806
In-house team of three
$83,923
YDS
$16,000
Cost per discipline properly covered, ongoing. Six freelancers do not appear here because no one owns an outcome across them.
If you have been doing it yourself
Disappear for thirty days and learn AI, they said
You were told to fire the team, wire up the automations and let the funnel run while you sleep. So you bought the course, built the flows, connected the tools, and came back to an inbox of half-finished sequences and no pipeline.
Here is the part nobody mentions. The individual pieces you built are usually fine. What is missing is the joins between them, and the joins are the bit that does not come in a course.
What we see most often
- Three tools doing the same job, none of them talking to each other.
- Automations that fire correctly and reach nobody worth reaching.
- Tracking that cannot answer the only question that matters, which is what a customer costs.
- A content calendar full of posts and a pipeline that has not moved in a quarter.
- The owner back doing marketing at 9pm, which is exactly what the thirty days was meant to fix.
The honest bit
Sometimes the answer is not an agency
Hire in-house when
- Marketing is your core engine, not a support function.
- You have enough volume to keep a specialist busy five days a week.
- The work depends on knowledge that lives inside your business and takes months to learn.
- You are large enough that a resignation does not take the whole function with it.
Use an agency when
- You need six disciplines covered and can only justify one or two salaries.
- You need the work running in weeks, not two quarters.
- You have a capable in-house marketer who needs specialists around them, not replacing.
- You want one person accountable for the commercial number, not five suppliers accountable for tasks.
One thing worth saying plainly. A retainer does not buy you six full-time specialists. It buys the share of each one the work actually needs, which for a business this size is a fraction of a person per discipline. That is the point, not the catch. You do not need a full-time SEO. You need an SEO who turns up, does the work properly and hands back evidence.
Where most businesses land
Keep your marketer. Buy the firepower around them.
The fastest growing model in Australia is not build or buy. It is both. Your in-house person keeps the knowledge, the relationships and the internal trust. We cover the six disciplines behind them and report on what it produced.
01
Diagnose before prescribing
We run the market assessment across your site, tracking, search visibility and paid activity before recommending anything. If the diagnosis says do nothing, we say do nothing.
02
Your marketer runs the room
They stay the owner of marketing inside your business. We are the specialists they brief, not a second decision maker competing with them.
03
Reporting that survives a board meeting
Weekly update, monthly one-pager, quarterly review. Judged on leads and cost per customer, not impressions and likes.
Hear the whole argument
Agency vs in-house,
in five minutes
The full conversation, including the parts that do not favour us. Listen while you make a coffee.
- 0:00 The question everyone asks
- 0:30 One hire, six jobs, and why it is not their fault
- 1:30 Where the value splits: coverage, speed, confidence
- 3:00 When in-house is genuinely the better call
- 3:45 How to do it well, whichever way you go
Free advice, no strings
How to choose well, whichever way you go
Use this on us as readily as on anyone else.
01
Start with a revenue number
Not a list of channels. If the first meeting is about how many posts a week, walk out of it.
02
Get a named senior person
Someone who will argue with you when you are about to make an expensive mistake. Coordinators book meetings. You need a manager.
03
Set a cadence and hold it
Weekly update, monthly one-pager, quarterly review, judged on leads and cost per customer. Agree it before you sign anything.
Proof, not promises
What it looks like when the bases are covered
Client result
Placeholder for a named client who runs an in-house marketer alongside YDS. This is the single most valuable proof point on the page and it should replace this card before launch.
Name, role, company
Case study
Placeholder for the OpsKit rebrand, from a practical operations tool to a market ready brand, with the commercial numbers attached.
OpsKit
Before and after
Placeholder for a tracking and reporting turnaround, showing cost per customer before and after the six bases were covered.
Client name, industry
Straight answers
Questions people actually ask
Should I hire an in-house marketer or use an agency?
If marketing is your core engine and you have enough volume to keep specialists busy full time, hire. For most businesses under 200 people, the better answer is both. Keep one in-house person who knows the business, and buy the specialist coverage around them. One hire cannot properly own six disciplines.
Is it cheaper to hire a marketing manager or use an agency in Australia?
A $120,000 marketing manager costs about $171,804 in year one once superannuation, WorkCover, recruitment, tools and hardware are counted, and roughly $147,612 every year after. A $96,000 annual retainer covers six disciplines instead of two. The cost per discipline is $73,806 in-house against $16,000 with an agency.
Can one marketing manager handle SEO, ads and content?
They can coordinate all three. Owning all three to a professional standard is a different question. Search, paid media and data have each become specialisms with their own tooling and their own pace of change. A good generalist keeps them moving. They rarely keep them competitive.
Do I still need an agency if I use AI tools?
AI has made producing marketing far quicker. It has not made deciding what to produce any easier, and that is where most businesses come unstuck. The businesses struggling most right now are the ones who automated a system nobody had diagnosed first. Tools execute. They do not diagnose.
Are freelancers a cheaper option than an agency?
On paper. Six freelancers on typical Australian rates costs around $99,300 a year and buys roughly 744 hours, which is about 98 days of work split across six people who have never spoken to each other. Someone in your business then has to brief them, chase them and join their work together, and nobody is accountable for whether it adds up.
What does a hybrid marketing model look like?
Your in-house marketer stays the owner of marketing inside the business. The agency covers the disciplines a single person cannot, brings the tooling, and reports against commercial numbers. In Australia this model is growing quickly, because it keeps internal knowledge in the building while buying coverage that would otherwise take three hires and six months.
Three minutes, no sales call
Find out which of the six bases you are actually covering
Answer twelve questions about how your marketing runs today. You get your coverage map on screen straight away, showing what is owned, what is thin and what is exposed. No obligation, and no phone call unless you ask for one.
Prefer to talk it through first? The discovery call is a conversation, not a pitch.
Cost figures are Queensland, financial year 2026-27, and exclude GST and media spend. Salary benchmarks from the Hays Salary Guide FY26/27 and Seek. Superannuation rate from the ATO. WorkCover premium rate from WorkCover Queensland. Payroll tax thresholds from the Queensland Revenue Office. Time to hire from Robert Half, December 2025. Freelance rates are Australian mid-level market rates for 2026. Full workings available on request.