My professional services consultancy is growing profitably and (at long last!) can now afford to pay for a content creator for the website, social media platforms and mainstream media. Is this sensible? Or should I outsource?
Congratulations on your company’s profitable growth!
Profit is sanity, turnover is vanity and cash in the bank is reality, so the fact that your business is bringing in more than it is spending is great news and cause for a celebratory jig.
Marketing is essential for most businesses – it is right that you want someone doing the content marketing for you whilst you focus on the bigger picture.
Route to success
Working ON the business, not IN the business, can be the best route to success for many owner-managers.
The biggest mistake is for them to try and do everything themselves. Therein lies sleepless nights.
But bringing in a salaried member of staff so early on in the business journey, whilst freeing you up for what you do best, can be fraught with difficulties.
Salary costs
Above all, there is the cost element – a starting salary for a content creator can be around £25,000 a year.
But the overheads soon stack up…
There are Employers National Insurance contributions to pay, along with pension contributions, life insurance contributions (if you don’t offer that, you are potentially doing a disservice to the family of the new employee) and other employment-related outgoings.
Don’t forget – you need to factor in the time and cost of having someone process the new person’s salary every month, along with licensed software accounting costs and IT costs, such as a laptop and 24/7 IT support.
More costs
What about a smartphone work contract? Costs soon escalate.
As a rule of thumb, erring on the side of caution, the actual cost of an FTE salaried hire can amount to upwards of 1.7 times salary.
So that £25,000 per annum can morph into £42,000 per annum.
Appointment justification
That means your business needs to generate £3,500 per month to ensure the new member of staff breaks even, not £2,083.33 per month as first thought at £25,000 per annum.
If the sales pipeline shows that your business can afford £3,500 each month, then the new employee may well bring in returns on investment through enhanced marketing.
That being the case, the justification for the appointment is a sensible one.
Holiday cover
Secondly, it is worth bearing in mind that your new member of staff is entitled to holidays, so you need to think about the cost of content generation cover if they are away for a few days – effective marketing is often about consistency, not intensity.
Yep, more cost…
Oh, and don’t forget you will need to pay for onboarding advice from HR (you can’t fudge this on your own) and get the employment contract drawn up by legal advisors (you can’t fudge this either).
Human aspect
Furthermore, many content creators are not trained in how to write market announcements for mainstream media and are therefore not comfortable doing it – this task may have to be given to an external specialist, such as Deep South Media.
Don’t overlook the human aspect.
The person you choose to be your company’s content creator is hopefully loyal, kind, decent, hardworking and conscientious.
Reasons to outsource
Sadly, things sometimes don’t always work out if the new hire becomes difficult – the euphemism is that they “get in the way of themselves” and this can take up valuable time and headspace in resolving, diverting you from money-making tasks.
It is also worth noting that some hires prefer to move on after two years or so for career-building reasons, just when they were starting to make money for your business, thereby costing you further time and money in recruitment.
Given the reasons above, many companies much prefer to outsource their content generation to a consultancy.
Seamless service
That way, they know the monthly fixed fee costs and what output they are getting for the money.
Consultancies like multimedia content provider Deep South Media have an in-house content team – if the account director is away on holiday, a colleague steps in to provide a seamless service.
Moreover, there are only monthly contracts – easy in, easy out. That means, if you wish to discontinue the service, there are no costly exits or awkward conservations.
Better outcomes
Efficiency and experience also come to the fore. What may take your salaried hire five hours can be done in 60 minutes by consultancies such as Deep South Media, with equally good, or better, outcomes.
Yes, the hourly rate is much higher than what a salaried staff member on a comparable hourly basis but, crucially, the overall cost is much lower.
Salary savings
Also, few smaller companies actually need an FTE content creator.
So that £42,000 pa cost we calculated earlier would be circa £17,280 pa (including VAT) with Deep South Media, a saving of nearly £25,000 pa.
Over five years that adds up to an accumulative saving of £125,000, which is a large sum of money by any stretch of the imagination and could be invested in new business or in profit share or dividends.
No-nonsense advice
There’s the intangible too – consultancies like Deep South Media are comprised of professionals who have worked for many companies and can provide no-nonsense advice based on long experience.
Chief executives, MDs, business owners open up in a way they cannot do with their staff.
Thank you for asking the question and we wish you every success with your decision.
How to get in touch
If your company is looking for external content creation support, Deep South Media’s MD, Ron Wain, is available for a friendly, no-obligation chat.
You can contact Ron via DM on his LinkedIn, or email info@deepsouthmedia.co.uk. If you prefer, please contact Ron on 01202 534487.
Looking for training on how to write effective press releases for your employer? Please visit https://www.deepsouthmedia.co.uk/services/training/
