Creative Marketing
    Live calculator · UK 2026 benchmarks

    How much is your marketing really costing you?

    Your in-house team, your agency retainers, your SaaS stack — together they're burning a number you've probably never added up. Move three sliders. See the real figure, what AI replaces, and what you'd save with a bespoke agentic marketing system.

    • UK 2026 cost benchmarks (loaded salaries, agency retainers, SaaS)
    • Realistic automation rates from live client work — not vendor hype
    • No email needed for the headline figure
    • Built by an AI-first marketing agency, not a SaaS vendor
    Quick estimate
    Live
    £20,000
    5
    60%
    Projected annual saving
    £158k
    / year
    ≈ 3.5 FTE freed up · 75% AI-replaceable
    Current annual burn
    £240,000
    AI-replaceable
    £179,520
    3-yr waste of inaction
    £473,933
    Payback
    1.4 months

    Pick exactly what your team / agency does today. AI pre-fills realistic hours.

    1-click sector benchmarks

    Or jump to a typical UK setup for your sector

    Pre-filled with realistic team size, spend and outsourcing mix for each industry.

    Detailed mode

    Pick exactly what your team does — see exactly what AI replaces.

    Enter weekly hours per marketing function, or let our AI pre-fill a typical UK setup for your sector. Watch the savings shift in real time.

    AI quick-start
    Powered by Gemini

    Pick a sector — our AI will pre-fill realistic weekly hours per task for a typical UK 2026 setup. You can tweak after.

    Blog & article writing
    £65/hr loaded · 75% AI-replaceable
    hrs/wk
    Annual
    —
    SEO strategy & technical SEO
    £85/hr loaded · 60% AI-replaceable
    hrs/wk
    Annual
    —
    Keyword research & content briefs
    £60/hr loaded · 85% AI-replaceable
    hrs/wk
    Annual
    —
    On-page optimisation
    £55/hr loaded · 80% AI-replaceable
    hrs/wk
    Annual
    —
    Link building / digital PR
    £90/hr loaded · 45% AI-replaceable
    hrs/wk
    Annual
    —
    Content repurposing (video → blog → social)
    £55/hr loaded · 90% AI-replaceable
    hrs/wk
    Annual
    —
    Google Ads management
    £95/hr loaded · 70% AI-replaceable
    hrs/wk
    Annual
    —
    Meta / Instagram / TikTok Ads
    £85/hr loaded · 70% AI-replaceable
    hrs/wk
    Annual
    —
    LinkedIn Ads
    £95/hr loaded · 65% AI-replaceable
    hrs/wk
    Annual
    —
    Programmatic / display
    £100/hr loaded · 75% AI-replaceable
    hrs/wk
    Annual
    —
    Ad creative production
    £75/hr loaded · 70% AI-replaceable
    hrs/wk
    Annual
    —
    Landing page / CRO
    £90/hr loaded · 55% AI-replaceable
    hrs/wk
    Annual
    —
    0 tasks with hours · adjust any to see live savings
    Your tailored saving
    £0
    / year
    ≈ 0.0 FTE freed · 0% AI-replaceable
    Annual marketing burn
    £0
    AI-replaceable cost
    £0
    AI investment
    £0
    3-yr waste of inaction
    £0
    Payback
    —

    Unlocks per-function chart, comparison table & PDF blueprint.

    Your full report

    The brutal truth about your marketing P&L

    Headline savings, comparison table, per-function breakdown and a 3-year waste counter. Personalised to your inputs.

    Annual marketing burn
    £240k
    AI-replaceable spend
    £180k
    75% of your stack
    Projected annual saving
    £158k
    FTE equivalent freed
    3.5
    Back to strategy & brand
    The cost of doing nothing

    If you wait 3 years, you'll have burnt

    £0

    On work AI agents already do — today. Your competitors deploying agentic stacks are shipping ~10× the campaigns at a fraction of the cost.

    Typical payback
    1.4 months
    On a typical £18,000 build
    AI investment
    £21,542/yr
    ~12% of replaced spend

    Old world vs AI-first agentic

    Year-1 economics, side by side.

    In-house + agency + SaaSAI-first agentic build
    Year-1 cost£240,000£39,542
    Speed-to-marketWeeks per campaignHours
    Output volumeLinear (1×)~10× compounding
    Always-onOffice hours24 / 7 / 365
    Scales overnightHire & onboardSpin up an agent
    You own the systemRenting from agencyBespoke, owned by you

    Ready to stop renting work AI does?

    A 30-min call. We map your highest-ROI agent first. Live in 4–8 weeks.

    Book a strategy call
    The brutal maths

    Your marketing team isn't lazy.They're doing 80% of work an AI agent does in seconds.

    Across the UK clients we've migrated to AI-first systems, between 60% and 85% of weekly marketing work is fully automatable today. Not in 2030. Today. The agencies you pay £15k a month are quietly running the same models — and charging you the markup.

    65–85%
    Content & SEO

    Briefs, outlines, on-page, reporting, repurposing. Production at 5× the speed.

    70–90%
    Email, CRM & Reporting

    Lifecycle flows, segmentation, dashboards, weekly client reports — all agentic.

    20–35%
    Brand, strategy & relationships

    What stays human. Where your team spends time when AI handles the rest.

    FAQ

    The questions UK founders ask before switching

    How accurate are these savings figures?+

    They are conservative directional estimates based on UK 2026 benchmarks: loaded FTE salaries (salary +30% for NI, pension and overhead), typical UK agency retainers, and average marketing SaaS spend. The automation percentages reflect what we currently ship for live UK clients — not theoretical maximums.

    Will an AI marketing system replace my team?+

    No. It replaces the 60–80% of repetitive work your team is currently buried under — content production, briefs, reporting, ad creative variations, email flows, posting. Your humans get freed up for strategy, brand, and relationships. The teams who survive 2026–2030 are the ones who deploy AI agents alongside humans, not instead of them.

    How much does it cost to build a bespoke AI marketing system with you?+

    Typical bespoke builds start from £15k–£25k one-off, plus a small monthly run cost. Most clients see payback inside 3–4 months when measured against current agency or in-house spend. We give you a fixed quote after a 30-min discovery call.

    Why not just keep using HubSpot, Semrush, Klaviyo and an agency?+

    Because that stack has the same AI under the hood — and your agency is charging you a 3–5x markup to operate it. A bespoke agentic system collapses content + briefs + paid + email + reporting into one always-on layer that you own. You stop renting the work.

    How long until our AI marketing system is live?+

    Typical builds ship in 4–8 weeks. We start with the highest-ROI agent (usually email/CRM or content/SEO production) so you see savings inside the first month, then layer the rest in.

    Stop renting work AI already does.

    We build bespoke AI-first marketing systems for UK businesses. Live in 4–8 weeks. Payback in 3–4 months. Owned by you.