If you're a business owner thinking about hiring a marketer this year, you've probably done a rough budget in your head. Maybe you landed somewhere around $80k or $100k and thought that felt about right.
The Hays Salary Guide FY26/27 tells a different story.
These are the typical salaries for marketing roles in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast region, excluding superannuation:
| Role | Typical salary | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing Director | $200,000 | $160k–$220k |
| Senior Marketing Manager | $145,000 | $130k–$170k |
| Digital Marketing Manager | $135,000 | $110k–$165k |
| Marketing Manager | $120,000 | $100k–$130k |
Add 11.5% superannuation to each of those figures. Then add recruitment costs. That's before onboarding, before tools and subscriptions, and before the three to six months it usually takes a new hire to understand your business well enough to contribute at a senior level.
A Marketing Director in Queensland isn't a $200k investment. All-in, you're looking at closer to $240k–$250k in the first year.
Before the cost conversation, there's a more important one: what does this person actually need from day one to do their job?
A senior marketer joining your business needs a clear brief. They need to understand your target audience, your competitive position, your revenue goals and which channels you're already using. Without that foundation, even the most experienced hire spends their first few months building what should have been there before they arrived.
This is where a lot of marketing hires go wrong. Not because the person wasn't capable, but because the business wasn't ready for them.
If you're in growth mode and genuinely need senior marketing leadership embedded in your business, fractional CMO is worth considering. You get CMO-level thinking and direction without the full-time cost. According to Fractionus, an Australian fractional executive firm, a fractional CMO engagement typically costs 40–65% less than the true employer cost of a full-time hire once super, payroll tax and leave entitlements are factored in.
If you're at an earlier stage and what you actually need is a clear strategy and plan before you hire anyone, a structured program like the Marketing Foundations Program might be a better starting point. Six weeks. A strategy, a customer journey map and a 90-day plan at the end of it. Priced to make sense for a growing SMB.
Neither option is right for every business. But both are worth understanding before you commit to a full-time hire.
A marketing hire that doesn't work out isn't just the salary you paid. It's the recruitment fee to find their replacement, the six months of lost momentum and the second round of onboarding. The businesses I work with that have the most success with marketing hires are the ones that invest in strategy before headcount.
If you're weighing up your options, I'm happy to have a direct conversation about what makes sense for where your business is at.
Salary data sourced from the Hays Salary Guide FY26/27. All figures are in Australian dollars, exclude superannuation and reflect the Brisbane and Sunshine Coast region unless otherwise stated.