What Does Marketing Actually Cost Your Startup?

Compare the true annual cost — cash spend plus your time — across four common marketing approaches: a full-time CMO, an agency, freelancers, or doing it yourself.

Tell us about your startup

Company Stage

Your Current Approach

Active Marketing Channels: 4

1 channel 10 channels

Advanced: set your founder salary assumption (used for time cost)

Your Annual Salary Equivalent (USD)

Used to calculate the cost of your time. Default: $120,000/yr.

Annual Total Cost Comparison

Includes cash spend and the cost of your time at your salary rate.

Bar lengths are proportional to each option's total annual cost. Adjust inputs above to recalculate. These are illustrative assumptions, not supplier quotes or a guarantee of cost.

Where Lane fits

A platform for making the marketing mix more deliberate.

Lane is not another agency retainer. She is an agentic GTM platform that helps your team, agencies, and channel specialists find the work that earns traction. Start from $500 per month, then keep AI, media, and other variable budgets visible and under your control.

Ask how Lane fits your mix

See the full line-item breakdown

Get the detailed cost breakdown for every option — recruiting costs, tool costs, per-channel overhead, and more.

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