What's the return on your
marketing hire's development?
Three inputs. Three value pillars. One number your CEO can act on.
Gross annual salary including employer costs
Time reviewing, directing, or correcting marketing
estimated annual return on investment
£75,267 estimated annual benefit
This calculation uses the conservative 2.4× productivity floor (Accenture, 2024).1 Specific marketing functions document substantially higher multipliers: 5–15× on email production (FTI Consulting/Knak),2 5–10× on content production (Writer),3 15× on campaign creation (McKinsey).4 AMPLIFY installs the architecture that puts the upper end within reach within six months.
- 1 Accenture Technology Vision, 2024. Peer-reviewed study of 4,000+ organisations. Defined as AI-led process redesign, not tool adoption alone.
- 2 FTI Consulting / Knak, 2024. 316× capacity increase on email production. Amazon: 95% time reduction. Knak: 76% of marketing teams now produce emails in under one week vs. 21% in 2023.
- 3 Writer, 2026. 83× content multiplication: one photoshoot becomes 500+ weekly content pieces through AI workflow redesign.
- 4 McKinsey Global Institute, 2025. Fortune 250 documented case studies; 15× on campaign creation specifically.
Built on conservative assumptions
Every figure in the model is drawn from peer-reviewed research, published benchmarks, and direct client experience. The defaults are deliberately conservative. Your actual numbers will almost always be higher.
Productivity floor for organisations with AI-led processes, per Accenture's peer-reviewed 2024 study. Used as the calculator's conservative baseline. Specific functions like content and email production consistently document higher multipliers.
Additional FTE-equivalents generated at the 2.4× productivity floor on a £40,000 base valuation. At the 3× blended multiplier (McKinsey), this rises to 2 additional FTE-equivalents; at 5×, it reaches 4.
Replacement cost as a percentage of annual salary. Covers recruitment (20%), a 3-month onboarding ramp, and the momentum lost during handover.
Implied founder rate used to value CEO time, based on £200,000 annual earnings across 1,800 working hours. Adjust the CEO hours input to match your reality.
Ready to make this real?
The calculator gives you the number. A discovery call gives you the plan. Highland Edge's mentorship programme is for B2B firms whose senior marketing hire needs to lead, not just execute instructions.