Is it cheaper to hire a marketing agency or a full-time marketer?
What a marketing specialist and a marketing manager earn in the Des Moines metro by federal figures, what benefits add on top, and how to compare that with an agency retainer before you sign either.
It depends on what you need covered. In the Des Moines metro the federal wage survey puts an average marketing specialist at about $75,500 a year and a marketing manager at about $143,200, before benefits. One hire gives you one person's skills for a full week, while an agency retainer buys several skills for fewer hours, so the cheaper option is the one that matches the work you actually have.
## What a hire costs in Des Moines
The Bureau of Labor Statistics metro page for Des Moines-West Des Moines, which shows the May 2023 estimates, lists:
- Market research analysts and marketing specialists: 3,230 jobs, mean wage $36.29 an hour, or $75,490 a year. - Marketing managers: 960 jobs, mean wage $68.86 an hour, or $143,230 a year. - Graphic designers: mean $50,560 a year. - Public relations specialists: mean $71,000 a year.
Those are wages only, and they are a few years old, so treat them as a floor. The BLS employer cost survey for June 2026 found that benefits made up 30 percent of total compensation for private industry workers, at $14.07 an hour on top of $32.82 in wages. Applying that share to the Des Moines means gives an estimate of roughly $108,000 a year all in for a specialist and about $205,000 for a manager. That is our own estimate, and your benefits plan will move it.
The hire also comes with costs the survey does not count: software seats, the time it takes to recruit, and the months before a new person is fully up to speed.
## What an agency buys you
A retainer spreads the work across several people: strategy, design, copy, paid media and reporting. You pay for their hours and their tools, and you skip recruiting and benefits. The trade is attention. An agency splits its week across clients, so ask who will do your work and how many hours a month they will spend on it.
Agency fees vary too widely for a single local average to mean much, so get two written proposals with the hours, the people and the deliverables listed for each month. Then put the monthly fee next to the all-in hire estimate above.
## A quick way to decide
- **Hire** when the work is steady, mostly one skill, and needs someone inside the business every day, such as running social channels or managing events. - **Use an agency** when the work needs four or five skills a few hours each, or when you need a campaign built quickly and do not yet know what the full-time job would be. - **Get direction first** when nobody can say what marketing should achieve next year. Neither a hire nor an agency fixes a missing plan, and both cost more when they have to guess.
The two-minute check on this site tells you whether an agency fits the problem you have, or whether senior direction or a single bottleneck should come first, and then points you to a checked list of firms.