Author: Mel Strutt

Once upon a time, hiring a marketing coordinator was the no-brainer move in Perth. Got a pile of marketing tasks, too busy to do them yourself? Easy, bring in a generalist. That’s exactly where I started my career: the marketing (and let’s be honest, admin) all-rounder.

Fast forward to now and it’s the fastest way to torch $80K+ on someone still Googling how to run Meta Ads. No business owner wants another Canva cowboy or endless ‘let’s circle back’ meetings. They want marketing that’s sharp, smart and accountable.

Here’s the real question: can one person actually do all that?

Do you bring someone in-house, or do you outsource the lot? At the end of the day, most business owners don’t care about titles or team structures. They just want marketing off their plate and in the hands of people who’ll actually follow through.

One human can’t wear five hats, and definitely not look good in all of them at once.

Take one task: running a paid social ad. Sounds simple, right? Here’s what it actually takes:

•      Strategy: Which platform? Where’s your audience hanging out? 
•       Social specialist: Is your ads account even set up? 
•      Strategist again: What’s the targeting? What’s the budget? 
•      Designer: What creative are we using? Static, video, A/B versions for testing? 
•      Copy & conversion specialist: What’s the call to action? What landing page are we sending them to? 
•      Web developer: Build that landing page. 
•      Digital specialist: Link all the CTAs in Google Tag Manager for tracking. 
•      Strategist again: Test it, tweak it, make sure the user experience holds up.

And that’s just one campaign.

Meanwhile, your poor ‘generalist’ is spending half their day Googling answers or asking AI for instructions. Lovely, there goes an 8-hour day, blown on one campaign, riddled with mistakes and guesswork.

So let’s call it: the marketing generalist myth is bullshit. As business owners, we know experience matters. You’re not hiring one person, you’re trying to cram eight jobs into one salary. No wonder the wheels fall off.

So you’ve decided to go in-house. Time to recruit.

Good bloody luck. We’re in Perth, it’s 2025, and the market is red hot. I know because I’m competing in it, and here’s the kicker: I run a top-tier consultancy dripping with talent, mentorship, and career pathways. You’ve got… one role, no mentorship, no real progression. And with all due respect, you might know what you want your marketing to look like, but you sure as shit don’t know how to do it.

Here are your choices:

1. Top-end talent: already snapped up by the big boys at $150K+.
2. Mid-tier marketers: 2–3 years in, often burned out from agency life, looking for a ‘slower’ role… which also means they’ve lost the hunger to truly make shit happen.
3. Graduates: ah, the grads. Zero industry experience, no mentor, no safety net. Are you ready to hold their hand for 12 months and hope they turn into an exceptional resource? Didn’t think so. But sure, resilience and autonomy grow on trees with Gen Z… right?

Everyone thinks hiring in-house is cheaper, until you actually crunch the numbers.

Your ‘marketing resource’ is costing you $80K at the low end (if you want any experience at all). Now let’s add the extras:

Total: $135K+ for one person who still can’t do it all.

Or… you could spend less and get an entire team of specialists with 3BY2. Strategy, design, content, digital — all covered, no extra invoices, no babysitting.

A junior hire will do what you tell them. Doesn’t mean they know what to do. And that’s the problem.

That’s how you end up with ‘Tuesday posts’ because, well, it’s Tuesday. Or a random EDM because it’s been a while. Or boosting posts and crossing your fingers for clicks.

That’s not marketing strategy, that’s guesswork.

As a business owner, you need a resource who knows marketing better than you do. That’s the whole reason you hired them. You also need someone who brings a different perspective, who challenges your thinking, so you can actually grow the business instead of running in circles.

Otherwise? No strategy, just a cycle of ad-hoc uncertainty.

You know that feeling as a business owner…

That conference is coming up, have we registered?
Have we sorted Christmas gifts this year?
Why do we never have posts ready for the days that actually matter to our industry?

That’s the feeling of you still driving marketing.

It’s the same when you’re sitting there at 9pm completely rewriting copy because your marketer just doesn’t get it. Or when you’re asking questions they should be ahead of, because you don’t have a proactive resource on the job.

How to actually find support that works

You didn’t hire marketing so you could manage it yourself. You hired it to get it off your plate.

So are you really looking to hire an in-house resource, or do you actually want to solve your business marketing this time?

Before you make the decision, talk to me: