Should a £5m B2B firm hire a marketing team or use an outside growth team?
It depends on whether the firm already knows what works. An in-house team makes sense once there is a proven way of winning customers that needs running every day. Before that point, a single marketing hire is usually too junior to set direction and too stretched to deliver. An outside team costs less than the salaries, starts sooner, and can be stopped if it fails.
The same questions, both ways.
| What you are weighing | Hire four people | Fortitude |
|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | £203,991 a year at 2026 UK medians, plus about £39,210 in year one. | From £2,500 a month. A £6,500-a-month programme is £78,000 a year. |
| Time to start | Months. Job specs, interviews, notice periods, then they learn the business. | A free Growth Review, an optional two-week Growth Plan, then work begins. |
| Who sets direction | You. £56,950 buys a capable manager, not someone who has built and sold a company. | A founder who has built and sold companies owns your plan. |
| Knowledge of your business | Deep, and deeper every year. They sit in your meetings and hear your customers. This is the real advantage of hiring. | Learned from a monthly interview and what sales hears. Never as close as someone in the building. |
| Tools and tracking | About £12,000 a year in software and data, chosen and run by your team. | Included, with our own platform recording who AI assistants name for your buyers' questions. |
| If it does not work | A performance process, a settlement, a rehire. Slow and unpleasant. | You can stop after any step. |
When each option is the right one.
When the alternative is the better choice
- You already know what works and need it run daily. If one channel reliably brings customers, hire an operator. They will be cheaper and better at it than any outside firm.
- Marketing is the product. If the business lives on content, community and events, the team needs to sit beside the people building the product.
- A proven marketing leader is ready to join. Someone who has grown a firm like yours is worth more than any supplier. Build around them.
When we are
- You have never had marketing that worked, so you cannot write the job spec. That is how firms end up with a marketing manager producing brochures.
- You need senior judgement without a senior salary. A founder owns your plan and specialists deliver each part, for less than the four salaries.
- You want to learn what works before committing to headcount. Run the programme for a year, then hire people to run the parts that produced customers.
The 2026 UK medians, from the Ashdown Group guide: marketing manager £56,950, content and search manager £42,055, marketing executive £35,046, sales development rep base £32,000. Add employer NI at 15% (£21,908), pension at 3% (£4,032) and £12,000 for software and data. Total: £203,991 a year, plus about £39,210 in year one for recruiter fees at 20% and laptops. A £6,500-a-month programme is £78,000 a year. Our prices exclude VAT.
The short answers.
Yes, and it is often the best arrangement. A marketing executive inside the firm handles events, sales requests, approvals and the small jobs an outsider cannot see. The outside team supplies direction, specialist skills and tracking. The hire improves faster working alongside senior people than guessing alone.
More present, certainly. But an employee is paid whether or not customers arrive. Part of our fee is not: outreach is charged per qualified meeting held, and if fewer than six are held in months two and three combined, month four's management fee is waived. You can also stop after any step.
Thirty minutes to begin with. The Growth Review is free and ends with three fixes in writing, which you can hand to anyone. After that, a two-week Growth Plan costs £1,500, credited against the programme. Set that against a recruiter's fee of 20% on one salary.
Founders weighing this also said these.
We've been at £5m for three years.
A founder-led B2B firm usually stalls when the things that built it, referrals and the founder's own selling, reach their ceiling. The network has been worked, the founder's diary is full, and each year's new business only replaces the clients that left. Growth tends to restart when strangers can find the firm, trust it before the first call, and are approached on purpose.
Growth Team programmeIf I took a month off, sales would stop.
Separate the parts of selling that need the founder from the parts the founder merely happens to do. Finding prospects, first approaches, follow-up and proving the firm's credibility can all run without you once written down and owned by someone. Closing the largest deals may stay with you for years. The aim is conversations that keep arriving while you are away.
Growth Team programme
Weigh it with someone who has done both.
Thirty minutes with a founder. We check your site, two competitors and what Google and ChatGPT say about all three beforehand. You leave with three fixes in writing.