Engagements start at $7,500 a month.

Month to month, and scoped in plain English before a dollar is committed.

SLAM becomes your marketing department, scaled to the functions you are missing. Here is what the same ten titles cost in-house.

Marketing is among the highest-turnover business functions, and replacing a hire runs 50 to 200 percent of their salary. That bill stays on the in-house side.

Mid-level base salary for each of the ten corporate marketing titles hired in-house, summed and loaded, against the SLAM engagement, which starts at ninety thousand a year.
The corporate title	Mid-level base, a year
Marketing Strategist	$60,000 to $85,000
Graphic Designer	$50,000 to $75,000
Copywriter	$65,000 to $82,000
Web Developer	$84,000 to $98,000
Videographer	$50,000 to $75,000
Social Media Strategist	$50,000 to $75,000
Media Buyer	$60,000 to $90,000
Communications Specialist	$60,000 to $85,000
Marketing Ops Specialist	$60,000 to $85,000
Marketing Technologist	$70,000 to $100,000
Ten titles on payroll, base	$609,000 to $850,000
All in, loaded and equipped	$880,000 to $1,231,000
SLAM, all ten	$90,000+

Base is national mid-level. All in loads benefits and payroll taxes at 1.4x, then software, recruiting, and equipment. These are corporate, in-house salaries; agency talent runs less, which is the whole point. Sources: BLS OEWS 2024; Salary.com, Glassdoor, PayScale, and ZipRecruiter 2025-26; SHRM. Major metros run higher.

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Pick the hire you are weighing. The left column runs at real market salary for that role. The right column never moves.

The one hire

The first marketing hire

One founder-level salary

plus the hours nobody has left to supervise it

Covers about 1 of the 10 roles.

The one local generalist

$95,000 to $115,000/yr

salary + benefits + tools + recruiting + management

Covers about 3 of the 10 roles.

One senior corporate hire

$160,000 to $220,000+/yr

before benefits, and corporate never stops at one

Covers about 3 of the 10 roles.

Marketing strategy not covered
Brand and visual not covered
Content and copywriting not covered
Website design and development not covered
Video storytelling not covered
Social media covered
Advertising and media planning not covered
Communications and thought leadership not covered
Marketing operations not covered
AI and automation not covered

The riskiest dollar in a young company is the one nobody is watching.

Strong at three of the ten, stretched across the rest. Every gap gets a freelancer invoice, paid from mission dollars.

The senior hire needs a team. The team eventually hires an agency on top of itself. The honest comparison is a floor of them.

Same money.

The SLAM engagement

The price of one or two hires

flat monthly · scoped before a dollar is committed · month to month

All 10 of the 10 roles.

Marketing strategy covered
Brand and visual covered
Content and copywriting covered
Website design and development covered
Video storytelling covered
Social media covered
Advertising and media planning covered
Communications and thought leadership covered
Marketing operations covered
AI and automation covered

Every specialist on the one job they are best at. That is the only way the word best earns its keep.

In fairness

The one honest reason to do it the other way.

There is exactly one good argument for building the whole department in-house, and it is the pleasure of saying my team in a meeting. We get it. It is also the most expensive phrase in marketing. Until the day it pays for itself, the wiser move is the bench that already exists.

Bring us the budget. We will show you what it can really do.

Reach out and you’ll get a straight read on where your marketing stands and what it would take to get where you’re going. You keep that clarity whether or not you hire us.

“I have worked with SLAM for many years. They continue to produce high quality video and social content while being a spectacular resource for so much more in the marketing world. I can’t say enough good things about them.”
Angela Caputa · Director of Marketing, Hoffmann Brothers

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