The Real Cost of DIY Marketing
I had a call last month with a founder who'd spent six months "doing the marketing herself." She had a Canva account, posting schedule, email platform, and a list of tactics she'd pulled from three different marketing resources.
She also had £8,000 in ad spend with nothing to show for it, an Instagram account talking to the wrong audience, and genuine confusion about why none of it was working.
"I just need someone to tell me what I'm doing wrong," she said.
The problem wasn't what she was doing. It was that she was doing anything at all before answering three fundamental questions:
Who are your customers?
What makes you different?
How do you reach them effectively?
The Hidden Price Tag
Here's what most people don't calculate when they decide to "just handle marketing themselves":
The Time Tax
That founder spent 15-20 hours a week on marketing activities. At her day rate for client work, that's huge in opportunity cost every month. For six months.
The Mistake Premium
The £8,000 in failed ad spend? That was just the visible cost. The real expense was the audience data she'd polluted, the brand positioning she'd confused in the market, and the email list she'd burned through with inconsistent messaging.
Fixing that takes longer than building it right the first time.
The Strategy Void
Without a clear strategy, every tactic is a guess. She'd tried:
- Instagram Reels (because everyone says you should)
- LinkedIn posts (because that's where B2B happens)
- Email campaigns (because she'd heard email marketing had the best ROI)
- Google Ads (because competitors were doing it)
None of it was wrong. All of it was random.
When DIY Actually Works
I'm not here to tell you that you can't handle your own marketing. Some of the most effective marketing I've seen has come from founders who genuinely understand their customers and have a clear point of view.
DIY makes sense when:
- You've got a clear strategy and you're executing specific tactics within that strategy
- You're validating assumptions through small tests before scaling
- You have the time without sacrificing revenue-generating activities
- You're documenting what works so you can eventually hand it off
The founder who's killing it on LinkedIn because she's sharing authentic stories about her industry? She's doing DIY right. She knows who she's talking to, what makes her different, and how to reach them. She just needs help with the execution.
The Part Nobody Talks About
The real cost of DIY marketing isn't the money or even the time. It's the opportunity cost of not growing when you should be.
I've worked with businesses that spent 18 months "figuring it out" when they could have been scaling. By the time they brought in strategic help, they'd missed market windows, let competitors establish positions, and exhausted their internal teams.
One client came to me after two years of DIY. In our first strategy session, we identified three fundamental positioning problems that were undermining everything they did. Fixing those took four weeks. Not two years.
What This Actually Looks Like
Last year, I worked with a bakery start-up entering the competitive food gifting market. The founder knew her product was brilliant. She had no idea how to get it in front of the right people.
We didn't start with tactics. We started with:
- Who actually buys artisan food gifts and why?
- What makes this different from buying from Hotel Chocolat or Fortnum & Mason?
- Where do those people spend time and what would make them notice?
Once we had clarity on those questions, the tactics became obvious. We built the e-commerce site, implemented the CRM, grew social from zero to 2k engaged followers quickly, secured press coverage, and established brand partnerships - all because we knew exactly who we were talking to and why they should care.
They hit their Year 1 and Year 2 sales targets with a strong repeat customer base. Not because the founder couldn't have learned those tactics herself, but because she didn't have 18 months to figure out the strategy while her competitors gained ground.
The Question You Should Ask
It's not "Can I do this myself?"
It's "What is the most valuable use of my time right now?"
If the answer is "Building marketing strategy from scratch and testing it through trial and error," then DIY away. Document everything, measure relentlessly, and be prepared for it to take longer than you think.
If the answer is "Growing revenue, developing product, serving clients," then you're not saving money by doing it yourself. You're spending the most expensive resource you have - your time - on something that isn't your zone of genius.
Here's What I Actually Think
The businesses I work with don't hire me because they can't learn marketing. They hire me because 16+ years of marketing at Microsoft, Xbox and current clients taught me how to build strategies that work, and they'd rather spend six weeks getting it right than two years figuring it out themselves.
That founder I mentioned? We did a Marketing Strategy Sprint. Four weeks, clear deliverables, focused outcome: audience definition, positioning framework, channel strategy, and a 90-day execution plan she could either run herself or hand to her team.
She's now back to doing the work that actually generates revenue. Her marketing is focused instead of scattered. And she's not spending thousands of pounds a month of her time posting to the wrong audience on Instagram.
If you're currently doing your own marketing and it's working, brilliant. Keep going.
If you're doing your own marketing and secretly wondering why it's not delivering results... maybe it's time to ask whether you're solving the right problem.
Want to talk through whether strategic marketing support would actually be worth it for your business?
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