What does an in-house marketing team actually cost per year in the UK?
Around £250,000 a year. A complete B2B marketing function needs five sets of hands, and that salary cost arrives before recruitment fees, tools, agencies or the risk that five separately hired people never become one operating team.
Which roles does a B2B marketing team need?
The Head of Marketing owns positioning and the plan. Growth runs demand and channels. Content produces proof and the founder voice. The SDR creates conversations. Marketing operations keeps CRM, automation and reporting honest. For comparable roles at London companies with 50 to 250 staff, Robert Walters' UK Salary Survey 2026 gives a combined base salary of £224,000 to £376,000, so £250,000 is a conservative figure.
The roles and London base salary bands used, companies with 50 to 250 staff: Head of Marketing £72,000 to £124,000; Demand Generation Manager, for the growth marketer, £46,000 to £67,000; Content Manager £33,000 to £51,000; Business Development Representative, for the SDR, £31,000 to £72,000; Marketing Automation Manager, for marketing operations, £42,000 to £62,000. Base salary only. Source: Robert Walters UK Salary Survey 2026, pages 107, 111 and 112.
What does the £250,000 leave out?
Employer National Insurance and pension, SDR commission, recruitment fees, the months between offer and useful output, the software each hire expects and the commercial cost of learning slowly.
The hardest cost is coordination: five capable people can still operate five different versions of the go-to-market.
How long before an in-house team produces pipeline?
Longer when the system is undefined. The first quarters disappear into choosing segments, clarifying the offer, rebuilding CRM and agreeing what success means.
Is hiring ever the right answer?
Yes. Hire when the offer and segment have stopped moving and the sales process repeats. At that point permanent people are the right way to expand what is already working.
What does Forte do instead?
Forte takes over your go to market and marketing: messaging, content, outbound, CRM, automation, sales process and demand generation. It builds, improves and runs the motion to get you results, with execution starting inside the first weeks.
The company can later hire into a working system or keep Forte operating it.
ALPER YURDER · FORTE GROWTH
A practical look at salaries, tools, recruitment time and the coordination cost behind a first in-house GTM team.
What should we do first?
Take the diagnostic. It shows where the motion breaks and which part should be fixed before more budget or activity is added.
Related playbook: The 90-Day GTM Clarity and Execution Tracker, thirty-one go to market decisions in one document, each with what good looks like at 30, 60, 90 and 180 days.
Related reading: We need a marketing department, not five new hires. Can we outsource it? · Should we hire an in-house marketing team or use a fractional one?