Offshore marketing team structure: roles, costs and who to hire first

An offshore marketing team gives an Australian business dedicated people for content, social, email, website updates and reporting, at about $1,400 to $1,500 a month per role on Tarino’s typical salaries. Most businesses start with one hire, either a marketing assistant or a social media manager, managed by someone onshore who owns the strategy and the approvals. Add specialists once the first person is producing consistently. This offshore marketing team structure, strategy onshore and execution offshore, is the one that holds up as the team grows.

This guide is for business owners, marketing managers and agencies. It covers what an offshore marketing team does, which marketing roles to hire first, how to structure the team so it works, and what it costs. For hiring a single digital marketing specialist, see our guide to hiring an offshore digital marketing specialist.

What is an offshore marketing team?

An offshore marketing team is a group of marketing staff based in another country who work on your business full time, inside your tools, under your direction. It differs from an agency in one key way: the people work only on your brand, and you direct their day.

For Australian companies, the Philippines is a common choice because of strong written English and working hours that overlap with Australia’s. Businesses also hire marketing talent in countries such as India and Malaysia. The right location depends on the skills you need, the talent available and the cost.

Most offshore marketing teams use a hybrid model: local strategy, offshore execution. Your onshore lead sets the marketing goals and approves the work. The offshore team produces content, runs campaigns and reports on results. This closes the capacity gap that stops many in-house marketing efforts, where one person has the ideas but no time to produce them.

What should an offshore digital marketing team do?

A marketing team turns your business goals into work customers see: content, campaigns, social posts, emails and a website that converts. An offshore digital marketing team can cover most of the day-to-day marketing functions:

Marketing function	Typical offshore tasks	Usual role
Content marketing	Drafting blog posts from briefs, formatting and publishing, refreshing old pages	Marketing assistant or content specialist
Social media marketing	Content calendars, captions, graphics, scheduling, community replies	Social media manager
Email marketing	Building campaigns, segmenting lists, testing links before approval	Marketing assistant
SEO	Keyword research, on-page updates, internal links, reporting on search engines	SEO or content specialist
Paid ads	Building and monitoring pay per click campaigns within a set budget	Paid media specialist
Graphic design	Social graphics, ad creative and presentation layouts to your brand guidelines	Graphic designer
Marketing operations	CRM hygiene, campaign naming, asset library, weekly reports	Marketing assistant

Two areas usually stay onshore: market research that needs local customer insight, and decisions about positioning, pricing and the marketing budget. A strong online presence comes from both halves working together.

Which marketing roles should you hire first?

Start with your biggest bottleneck, not an org chart. Ask where marketing work gets stuck each week.

Option 1: a marketing assistant (the generalist)

A marketing assistant is the most flexible first hire. Typical work includes:

• Drafting copy and simple graphics from approved briefs
• Formatting and publishing blog posts with metadata and internal links
• Building email campaigns, segmenting lists and testing links before approval
• Updating website and landing pages in your CMS
• Pulling channel results into weekly and monthly reports
• Keeping the CRM, campaign naming and asset library tidy

Hire this role first if your problem is “lots of small jobs that never get done”.

Option 2: a social media manager

A social media manager owns social media management from plan to report:

• Planning monthly content calendars from your strategy and campaign dates
• Writing captions and creating graphics, carousels and short-form video
• Sending content for approval and making revisions
• Scheduling posts across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and TikTok and other online platforms
• Monitoring comments and messages, responding within guidelines and escalating the rest
• Reporting monthly on reach, engagement, audience and follower growth

Hire this role first if social is your main channel and it’s being done in gaps between other work.

Key roles to add later

Once your first hire is consistent, add specialists in the order your results point to:

• Graphic designer or video editor if content creation volume is the limit
• SEO or content specialist if organic search matters to your sales
• Paid media specialist if you’re spending on paid ads and want more people watching the numbers

Tarino can benchmark salaries for roles not listed on our role pages on a call.

How should you structure an offshore marketing team?

The structure that works best is simple: strategy onshore, execution offshore, one clear owner.

The onshore lead. One person in Australia owns the strategy, the brand, the budget and final approval. In a small business that’s often the owner. In an agency it’s the account lead. They write briefs, set priorities each week and sign off before anything is published.

The offshore team. Produces, publishes and reports. Each person has a defined lane (for example, one owns social, one owns email and web) so work doesn’t fall between them.

Shared tools. Everything runs in your systems: your project board, your design tools, your CMS, your email platform. Each person has their own login. Nothing lives in personal accounts.

A weekly rhythm. A short planning call on Monday, a written status update on Thursday, and a monthly report review. The Philippines is two hours behind AEST, so your team can work your business hours and join live calls. That overlap matters more than round-the-clock coverage: most marketing work needs quick answers from the onshore lead.

A typical progression

Stage	Team	Onshore role
Start	1 marketing assistant or 1 social media manager	Owner or marketing manager briefs and approves
Grow	Marketing assistant plus social media manager	Marketing manager runs a weekly plan for both
Scale	Add a graphic designer, content or paid media specialist	Marketing manager plus a senior offshore team member who reviews work first

At the scale stage, promoting your strongest offshore hire to review drafts before they reach you saves the onshore lead the most time. You don’t need a full team on day one.

For marketing agencies

Agencies follow the same pattern with one change: each offshore hire works across a set of client accounts, with the account manager as the approver. Keep client communication with your onshore team unless you’ve agreed otherwise with the client. The marketing agencies industry page covers the roles agencies usually start with.

How do you manage an offshore marketing team well?

The difference between an offshore team that works and one that doesn’t is usually management, not talent.

1. Onboard properly. Walk new hires through your brand, your audience, your products and your brand guidelines before they produce anything. Industry familiarity cuts ramp-up time, so share past campaigns and customer examples.
2. Write standard operating procedures. A short SOP for each repeat task (publishing a blog post, building an email, scheduling the week’s posts) keeps quality steady and makes handovers easy.
3. Measure output, not hours. Set KPIs on what gets delivered and what it achieves: posts published on time, campaigns shipped, error rates, leads generated.
4. Review performance regularly. A monthly one-on-one with structured feedback works better than fixing issues as they arise.
5. Protect the brand voice. Approve early work closely and give written feedback on tone. Cultural nuance in humour and local references is the area most likely to need onshore input.
6. Keep communication clear. Written briefs, one channel for questions and a fixed time for daily check-ins reduce the delays and misunderstandings that come with remote work.

Offshore team vs in-house team vs agency

	In-house team in Australia	Marketing agency	Offshore team you hire
Who directs the work	You	The agency	You
Works only on your brand	Yes	No	Yes
Cost	Highest	Retainer, varies by scope	Lower cost salaries plus a one-time fee
Best for	Strategy and senior roles	Specialised expertise and short projects	Ongoing execution

Many businesses combine them: an onshore lead, an offshore team for execution, and a specialist agency or partner for a product launch or a new market. The benefit is lower cost execution without losing control of the brand.

What does an offshore marketing team cost?

The figures below compare a two-person team: one marketing assistant and one social media manager. They’re typical, not quotes.

	Local team (Tarino’s typical figures)	Managed offshore agency (one published rate)	Direct hire through Tarino
Salaries	$95,000 + $100,000 = $195,000	$18,000 + $16,800 = $34,800	$18,000 + $16,800 = $34,800
Super at 12%	$23,400	Generally not applicable	Generally not applicable
Fees in year one	Recruiter fees vary	$28,776 (A$1,099 per person per month plus A$1,200 per hire)	$10,000 excl. GST, once, before any multi-hire discount
Year-one total	About $218,400 plus on-costs	About $63,576	About $44,800
Fees from year two	n/a	$26,376 a year	$0

Offshore salaries are Tarino’s typical figures: about $1,500 a month for a marketing assistant and $1,400 a month for a social media manager. Super uses the 12% guarantee rate the ATO lists from 1 July 2025. For offshore hires, also budget for laptops, software seats such as Canva or your scheduling tool, and the Philippine side of the arrangement, including 13th month pay.

The savings free up marketing budget for the things that boost results directly, such as paid ads or better technology. Tarino offers discounts on multiple hires, generally 20%. Try different team sizes in the cost calculator.

What rules apply to an offshore marketing team?

Your marketing still has to follow Australian law, wherever the person sending it sits.

Spam rules. The ACMA’s guidance on avoiding spam says you must have consent before sending marketing messages or emails, and that this applies even if someone else sends them for you. Each message must identify you as the sender, include your contact details and make it easy to unsubscribe. Give your team a written rule: only send to lists with recorded consent, and never import a list without the onshore lead’s approval.

Customer data. Email lists and CRM records are personal information. The OAIC’s APP 8 guidelines explain the obligations when personal information is disclosed overseas. Keeping customer data in your own platforms, under logins you control, and limiting exports keeps this manageable. Define security measures in writing from day one. Our security checklist covers access setup.

Approvals. Keep final sign-off on anything that makes a claim about prices, results or competitors with your onshore lead. Your reputation rests on what gets published.

This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm your obligations with a qualified adviser.

How do you hire the right people?

Ask for a portfolio and references, then test with your own brief. A short practical task tells you far more than a portfolio of other people’s approved work:

• Marketing assistant: build a simple email from a brief and copy you supply, and set up a test segment.
• Social media manager: plan a week of posts for your brand from a one-page strategy, with captions and one designed graphic.

Score the task on accuracy, taste and how well they followed the brief. Then check written English and communication, because most of the work is written. Experience in your industry is a bonus, not a requirement.

Practical assessment is a standard stage in Tarino’s screening. We build a pool of 1,000+ candidates per role, screen them through CV checks, video screening, a practical assessment and a structured interview, and send you 3 to 4 finalists, typically within about 2 weeks.

How does Tarino help you build the team?

You hire and pay each team member directly. Tarino’s fee is $250 upfront plus $4,750 when you hire, $5,000 excl. GST per hire, with the $250 credited back when you hire and no monthly fees. Each placement includes 6-month replacement cover for the same role. If you’d rather not run Philippine payroll, Tarino EOR handles contracts and payroll for $387 per employee per month.

See pricing for the detail, or book a 30-minute call to plan your first hire and how the team should grow from there.