Running marketing alongside everything else your business demands is one of the most common pressures UK business owners face. Content, campaigns, social media, paid ads, and brand visuals all need consistent attention and they rarely get it when one person is trying to do everything.
Research by Constant Contact found that the most time-consuming marketing tasks for small businesses are posting on social media at 51%, planning and strategy at 40%, and determining what is working at 35%. These are also the tasks small businesses are most likely to avoid.
Building a small dedicated remote marketing team is one of the most practical ways to solve this. This article covers which roles belong on your remote marketing team, how to decide which to hire first based on where your business is right now, what it costs, and what to look for when making each hire.
Why Most UK SMEs Get Marketing Hiring Wrong
One key mistake small businesses make is hiring without a strategy. A founder may realise they need to post more consistently on LinkedIn, so they hire a social media assistant. A few months later they realise their website is not generating enough traffic, so they hire someone for SEO. Then they need someone to create campaign graphics, followed by someone to manage paid advertising. Before long, they have several people working on different parts of marketing without a clear strategy tying it together.
The other common mistake is trying to find one person who can do everything. Expecting a single employee to manage social media, write content, run campaigns, analyse performance, and generate leads creates unrealistic workloads, inconsistent results, and gaps in specialist knowledge. The smarter approach is a small dedicated remote team where each person focuses on what they do best.
Who Should Be on Your Remote Marketing Team?
The four roles below cover the core marketing needs of most UK SMEs. You do not need all four from day one. The right starting point depends on where your business is now, which we cover in the next section.
- Marketing Assistant
A marketing assistant keeps the day-to-day running. Content scheduling, email marketing, social media management, basic research, reporting, and campaign coordination all fall within this role. For a smaller business, a marketing assistant can support several channels simultaneously, which makes them one of the most versatile and immediately impactful hires on the team.
For a small business, this role does not necessarily need to be full-time. You could combine a part-time marketing manager with specialists who execute specific areas of the strategy. - Marketing Manager
While a marketing assistant handles execution, a marketing manager is responsible for setting direction, defining priorities, creating campaigns, monitoring performance across channels, and making sure everything the team does is aligned with the same business objectives. For a smaller business, this role does not need to be full-time at the start, and a part-time marketing manager combined with specialists who execute specific areas is often more cost-effective than hiring someone full-time before the workload justifies it. - Paid Ads Specialist
A paid ads manager handles campaign setup, audience targeting, budget optimisation, and performance reporting across Google Ads, Meta Ads, and other paid channels. Poor campaign management can turn an advertising budget into wasted spend quickly, and specialist knowledge here makes a significant difference to the return your business gets from every pound spent on advertising. - Graphic Designer
A remote graphic designer is responsible for the visual layer of your marketing, producing social media graphics, ad creatives, presentation decks, email headers, and brand assets consistently and to a professional standard. Having a dedicated remote designer means your business has reliable visual output without the overhead of a full-time in-house hire.
As the marketing function matures, some businesses also bring in additional specialists. A content writer or SEO specialist can build long-term organic visibility once the core execution team is in place and the fundamentals are working consistently.
What Order Should You Hire In?
There is no single right answer here because the best first hire depends entirely on where your business is right now and what is holding your marketing back the most.
If your marketing has no direction or strategy
When campaigns are inconsistent, messaging is unclear, or no one is sure what is working, a marketing manager should come first. Getting execution right without any strategic direction wastes time and money, so bringing in someone to set that direction before hiring for execution is usually the smarter move.
If your biggest problem is time and admin
When you or your team are spending too much time on scheduling, posting, reporting, and coordination, a marketing assistant is the most practical first hire because they take those recurring tasks off your plate and free up space for higher priority work.
If you are spending on ads with poor results
Wasted ad spend is usually the most visible and most expensive marketing gap in a growing business, which makes a paid ads manager the right first hire when campaigns are running poorly or not running at all. Getting campaigns properly set up and managed pays for itself quickly when done right.
If your brand looks inconsistent or unprofessional
Visual credibility affects how every other part of your marketing performs, from social media engagement to ad click-through rates, so if the brand looks inconsistent or unprofessional across your channels, a graphic designer is the right place to start before investing more heavily in any other area.
Adding the next role becomes significantly easier once the first working relationship is established, because each new team member learns the brand faster when there is already someone in place who understands how things work.
What Does It Cost to Build a Remote Marketing Team
The cost of building a marketing team varies depending on which roles you hire for, the experience level you need, and how you structure the team. To give you a realistic picture, here is what UK businesses are currently paying for each of the four core roles according to Indeed.
Hiring locally in the UK can become expensive once you account for salary, employer costs, equipment, benefits, recruitment and other overheads. The National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is £12.71 per hour from April 2026, before considering the additional costs associated with employment.
A marketing assistant earns an average of £25,570 a year in the UK, though this rises with experience and location. A paid ads manager typically sits between £30,000 and £42,000 depending on platform expertise and proven campaign results. A graphic designer averages £30,453 a year nationally, with senior designers earning closer to £39,000. A marketing manager commands an average of £42,317 a year, reflecting the seniority and strategic responsibility the role carries.
On top of base salary, UK employers also pay employer National Insurance at 15%, auto-enrolment pension contributions, paid holiday cover, equipment, and recruitment fees, which typically add between 20% and 30% to the total annual cost of each hire. For a detailed breakdown of the full employment cost for individual roles, see our guides on marketing assistant costs, paid ads manager costs and graphic designer costs.
Conclusion
Building a remote marketing team does not have to happen all at once, and the right first hire depends on where your business is today and what is holding your marketing back most. Get that first hire right, establish the working relationship, and the next hire becomes significantly easier.
A small dedicated remote marketing team gives most UK SMEs more consistent output than any freelancer arrangement or agency retainer at the same budget, because the people involved learn the business and improve over time.
With Arwana, UK businesses can hire dedicated remote marketing professionals from £699/month, with no recruitment fees and no long-term contracts. If you are ready to build your team, book a call with us today.
