How to hire a marketing manager
for a small business (2026)

What the job pays

Two government rows cover this posting. BLS files the title "Marketing Manager" under Marketing Managers, which includes the director seats at large companies. O*NET lists Marketing Coordinator under both occupations; we price a small business's first marketing hire against the specialist row, Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists, because that is where the salaries in the postings we read sit.

The six largest metros by employment in this occupation, with the marketing specialist median in each: New York $100,520; Los Angeles $82,990; Boston $102,390; Chicago $80,400; San Francisco $123,250; Washington $87,160.

Data: BLS OEWS May 2025 (released 2026-05-15); O*NET 31.0 (August 2026). National figures, self-employed excluded. Last updated 2026-09-17.

What does a marketing manager do day to day?

O*NET's task list for the manager occupation, put in an owner's words for a business with one marketing seat:

• Plans what runs on every channel, social, email and text, ads, the Google listing, and keeps that plan moving week to week.
• Watches what sells, what customers ask and what competitors do, and changes the plan when the numbers say so.
• Decides with you what to promote, when, and at what price.
• Briefs the freelancers, printers and agencies you already pay, and checks their work against the brief before it goes out.
• Keeps an eye on what each channel costs and what it brings back.
• Reads the reviews and the market, and tells you what they say.
• Keeps the list of what you sell current everywhere it appears.

At a small company the same person also does the specialist's tasks: writes the posts, builds the emails, fixes the Google Business Profile, answers the comments, and writes a report where every number comes from somewhere.

What to look for

• Someone who has run every channel alone before, at a company your size.
• A calendar they kept, and the counts behind it: posts published, emails sent, reviews answered.
• Plain writing in someone else's voice.
• Comfort with numbers. They should know the difference between a lead and a like.
• The rules of the work: real reviews only, consent on every text, an address and an unsubscribe on every email.
• Judgment about what not to post.

How to write the posting

Name the channels you actually run, not the ones you wish you ran. Say what a good month looks like in counts. Say what stays with you: events, filming on site, vendor negotiation, spending money. Say who they report to (you) and what else exists (a freelancer, an agency). Put the salary in. It is the anchor for every conversation that follows.

Five interview questions

1. "Here is our Instagram, our Google listing and our last three emails. What would you change first, and why?" A good answer is specific: they name what they saw, order the fixes by effect, and do not propose a new tool.
2. "What did the weekly report look like at your last job?" A good answer has counts per channel, says where each number came from, and ends with one recommendation.
3. "A customer leaves a one-star review saying we overcharged them. What do you do in the next hour?" A good answer brings it to you before replying, drafts a reply that neither admits nor offers, and never suggests getting the review removed with a discount.
4. "We have a list of 4,000 emails. How would you use it this month?" A good answer asks how the list was built and whether people agreed to hear from you, then proposes one campaign and one automated message, each with an address and an unsubscribe.
5. "What would you refuse to do if I asked?" A good answer includes buying reviews, claiming a health benefit, texting people who never opted in, and spending money you did not clear.

What does a marketing manager cost a small business in 2026?

An employee: the title you post sets the row, and the row sets the cost. In June 2026 wages and salaries were 70.0% of what private employers paid per hour worked and benefits the other 30.0%, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' count (Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, released 2026-09-09, read 2026-09-17). At that split, a hire at the specialist median, $78,760, implies about $112,500 a year in total cost; a hire at the manager median, $166,790, about $238,300.

An agency: WebFX puts monthly retainers at $1,000 to $12,000 and up, with businesses of 11 to 50 people paying $500 to $1,500 a month (published 2026-03-04, read 2026-09-17). Resgato puts one channel at $1,500 to $2,500 a month, two or three channels at $2,500 to $5,000, a full program at $5,000 to $10,000 and up, senior strategists at $150 to $250 an hour and execution work at $75 to $150 (dated 2026-08-03, read 2026-09-17).

A fractional marketing executive: Chatter Buzz Media puts fractional CMO retainers at $10,000 to $40,000 a month, for companies with $10 million to $200 million in revenue (read 2026-09-17). That is above most small businesses.

Allying's price for this job is 30% of the salary you post, billed monthly, month to month, with a floor of $1,500 a month. A posting at the $78,760 specialist median is about $1,969 a month; a $60,000 posting works out to exactly the floor. Your ad spend is never in the price and never on Allying's card. The exact figure is on your proposal before you decide.

What should the first week produce?

From anyone you hire: a read of everything public (your site, your channels, your listing, your reviews, the emails you send), a 30-day plan across the channels you run, the first pieces in your voice, the Google listing fixed, and a first report with counts. If the first week is spent getting to know the tools, you hired for the wrong seat.

When not to hire a marketing manager

• The job is mostly on your feet: filming projects, running events, visiting referral partners. That is a content creator's job, or yours with a phone.
• You need one channel run well. Hire for that channel.
• You have no product photos, no words of your own and no reviews yet. Build that first; a manager with nothing to work from produces nothing.
• You cannot give an hour a week to approvals and questions in the first month.
• You want someone to spend a budget without you. Say so in the posting; it changes who applies. Allying does not spend your money: the accounts and the card stay yours.

How Allying does this job

Before any call, on a private work page in your brand, the first week of the job is done from public sources: your posting, your site, your last 30 posts per channel, your ad library entries, your Google and Yelp listings, 90 days of reviews, the emails you send, and three to five competitors. It produces:

• A 30-day plan across social, email and SMS, paid and local search, one page per channel, every claim cited to your own facts or marked as a blank with one question for you.
• First assets for each channel: ten social pieces from your own product or premises photos with captions in your voice, two email drafts in your template, three ad creatives with a test plan for the account you already run, and two page copy drafts. Nothing is published.
• A Google Business Profile audit for every location, four local posts drafted for the first two weeks, and a reply drafted for every unanswered review in the last 90 days, with one- and two-star replies flagged for you.
• The weekly counted report, filled in for the week before contact.
• The receipts (what was read and when), the list of what the worker will not do, and the agreement drafted from your posting.

After hire: a morning note and an evening report every day, the counted report every week, a review every month. Approvals start per item. After your first approved piece of a kind on a channel, that kind runs on its own; images, video and anything with money still come to you, and you can take any of it back. Low-star replies, complaints, promotions, anything legal, safety or press always come to you.

The work is done with AI and overseen by a named specialist who answers for it.

Mae Santos, Allying's co-founder, is the person you talk to; write to hello@allying.com and she answers. The work is reviewed before it reaches you.

What Allying refuses on this job

• Spending money or changing a budget, bid or payment method on any platform, at any amount. You spend, in your own account.
• Publishing, sending or replying to a customer outside a permission you have set on the agreement. A permission that is not in the agreement is not a permission.
• Inventing a fact about your business: a price, an ingredient, an award, a customer, a result, a founder quote. Unknown facts are marked blanks until you or a source fills them.
• Writing, buying, paying for or gating reviews or testimonials, or presenting an employee's or an AI's words as a customer's. Real reviews come from customers, asked unconditionally after service.
• Regenerating your product, a real person's face or your premises in an image. The real product is composited from your own photo, never redrawn.
• Making a health, safety or comparative claim that is not in your approved claims file, whatever the posting asked for.

Questions owners ask

Related pages

What this job costs with Allying, and the other ways of getting it done, with every figure sourced and dated.

• Pricing: the share of the posted salary, job by job
• Allying vs hiring an employee
• Allying vs a marketing agency
• Allying vs freelancers
• Allying vs doing it yourself
• Every hiring guide

Guides for owners

• What small businesses pay in 2026
• How to write a job posting that fills