OUTSOURCED MARKETING ROLES
Hire a content designer, without hiring a content designer
A content designer is the person who turns your marketing into something people will actually stop scrolling for: the social graphics, the carousels, the templates your team reuses, the ad variants, the one-pager that goes out with a proposal. It is a production role with a taste requirement, and it is the seat European SMEs most often try to fill with a founder, a marketing generalist and a Canva subscription.
That works until the volume arrives. Twenty posts a month across three platforms, each in two or three aspect ratios, all needing to look like the same company, is a job. It is the job this page prices.
What a content designer actually costs
The honest comparison is not salary against retainer. It is total employer cost against retainer, and in Belgium those two numbers differ by roughly a factor of one and a half. Here is the arithmetic in full, then the table.
| Option | Cost | What that number covers |
|---|---|---|
| In-house, Belgium | €3,815–€6,265 / month | All-in employer cost on a gross of €2,435–€4,000 a month. One person, one skill set, minus holidays and sick leave. |
| In-house, Netherlands | €4,350 / month | All-in employer cost on the Dutch average gross of €3,174 a month, holiday allowance included. |
| Belgian freelancer | €640 / day | €87 an hour for graphic and digital design. Four days a month comes to €2,560, which is above our senior rate, though a freelancer you already trust may still be the better answer. What you are not buying is continuity between those four days. |
| Dutch freelancer | €50–€95 / hour | Around €72 an hour on average for a zzp designer. Same continuity problem, in euros per hour. |
| Swiftly Marketing, dedicated | €1,500–€2,500 / month | One named designer on your account. €1,500 junior, €2,000 medior, €2,500 senior. Month-to-month, 30 days’ notice. |
| Swiftly Marketing, inside a package | from €595 / month | Design as part of social media management rather than as a seat of its own. The right shape if you need twelve to thirty finished posts, not a designer. |
Belgium. Take the monthly gross and multiply by 13.92, not 12. Belgian annual gross is conventionally 12 months plus double holiday pay worth 92% of a month plus a 13th month, standard in joint committee PC 200. Then add about 35% employer loading: roughly 25% statutory social security, plus work-accident insurance, occupational health, meal vouchers, social secretariat fees and group and hospitalisation cover. The combined factor is 18.79. A designer on the Belgian average of €3,007 a month therefore costs about €56,500 a year, or €4,710 a month.
The Netherlands. Twelve months, plus employer charges running roughly 30–37% above gross with the statutory 8% holiday allowance inside that. The figures above use the top of that range: a factor of 16.44 on monthly gross. The Dutch average of €3,174 a month works out at about €52,200 a year, or €4,350 a month. Treat the Dutch figure as softer than the Belgian one. Belgium has a single documented statutory rate to build on; Dutch employer cost is a sum of variable premiums plus a pension that depends on the sector scheme, and published ranges differ, some starting nearer 20% than 30%. The 8% holiday allowance is the only part that is fixed by law. Read it as a reasonable point estimate rather than as arithmetic.
The in-house figures are still understatements. They ignore recruitment time, the ramp before anyone is productive, software licences, holidays and sick leave, and the months when the workload does not fill a full-time seat.
So is ours, and it would be dishonest to leave that out. The €1,500 to €2,500 is what we invoice, not what the arrangement costs you. Add the time someone on your side spends briefing and reviewing every week, the brand immersion in the first fortnight, and the rework while a new designer learns what you actually mean by on-brand. We think the gap still favours us, and it is a smaller gap than the two headline numbers suggest. Anyone comparing a loaded salary against a bare invoice line is comparing two different things.
Sources. Belgian gross: WageIndicator Belgium 2026 (€2,435–€4,864 a month) and Indeed Belgium (€3,007 average for grafisch vormgever). Dutch gross: WageIndicator Netherlands 2026 (€2,629–€4,743) and Indeed Netherlands (€3,174 average). Belgian freelance rates: Creative Shelter’s 2025 rate survey, published April 2026, with UNIZO’s Freelancer Focus 2025. That is €87 an hour and €640 a day for graphic and digital design. Dutch freelance rates: Knab’s 2026 zzp designer figures. Belgian employer loading follows EY Belgium and Vandelanotte on double holiday pay and PC 200 on the 13th month. Checked 23 September 2026.
What actually lands, and how often
A dedicated designer on a standard engagement. Volumes are what a full-time seat sustains; a package seat produces the design inside that package’s post count instead.
| What | How often | In what form |
|---|---|---|
| Social posts, on-brand | 20–30 a month | PNG and JPG, exported per platform: 1080×1350, 1080×1080, 1080×1920 |
| Carousels | 2–4 a month | 5–10 slides, exported as a numbered sequence plus the editable source |
| Story and Reel covers | Weekly | 1080×1920, matched to that week’s posts |
| Reusable templates | First month, then as the brand moves | Editable Figma or Canva templates your own team can fill in |
| Ad variants | On campaign | 3–5 variants per concept, sized for Meta and LinkedIn placements |
| One-pagers and simple print | On request | Print-ready PDF, CMYK, with bleed |
| Source files | Continuous | Your Drive or Dropbox, your folder structure, organised by month |
The source files are yours and stay yours, in your own storage, from the first week. That is worth checking with any supplier: a designer who only ever hands over flattened exports is a designer you cannot leave.
How the seat gets filled
There is usually no vacancy to open. Swiftly Marketing staffs against the brief rather than from a bench, and several people carry part-time loads, so a new account often starts with someone already on the team.
- 1
Intro call, 15 minutes
What you are producing now, what you wish you were producing, and whether a designer is actually the missing piece. Sometimes it is a writer.
- 2
Proposal, within 48 hours
A recommended shape (dedicated seat or inside a package), scope, and what the first month produces. Revisions to the proposal are free and unlimited.
- 3
Matching
A named designer is matched to the brief on sector, visual register, and the tools you already work in. You see portfolio work in your register, not a generic reel.
- 4
Brand immersion, 3 to 5 business days
Run by the founders: visual identity, voice, competitors, audience, and the decisions nobody wrote down. This is the step most outsourcing skips, and skipping it is why most outsourced design looks like stock.
- 5
Handover and first work
The founders hand the account to your designer, who runs it day to day. First content is live within 14 days of signing.
- 6
Review
Everything goes into a shared calendar for your approval before it is published. Revisions are unlimited, and European project management sits between you and the work if anything needs escalating.
What they work in
The stack follows yours. If your brand already lives in Canva, moving it into Figma to suit a designer is a cost you should not pay.
Design
- Figma
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe InDesign
- Canva
- Affinity Designer
Motion and video, at a basic level
- After Effects
- CapCut
- Canva animations
Handover and review
- Google Drive
- Dropbox
- Figma comments
- Frame.io
Planning and communication
- Slack
- Notion
- Trello or Asana
- Google Calendar
Craft, not software
- Typographic hierarchy
- Grid and layout systems
- Colour and contrast for accessibility
- Working inside a brand system rather than around it
- Taking direction in writing
When not to hire a content designer
When the problem is the message, not the visuals.
If the posts look fine and still land flat, a designer will make them land flat more attractively. Hire a writer or a strategist first. Design amplifies a point of view, it does not supply one.
When you need fewer than about ten finished pieces a month.
Below that, a dedicated seat is idle capacity and a package or a freelancer is straightforwardly cheaper. We will tell you this on the intro call.
When the work is brand identity rather than brand production.
A content designer works inside an existing visual system. If you do not have one, meaning no defined palette, no type scale and no logo that survives a square crop, that is a brand designer’s job and a different, usually one-off, engagement.
When the deliverables are packaging, print or motion-first.
Regulated packaging, complex print production and heavy motion design are specialisms. We staff them separately, and pretending otherwise would waste your first month.
When you genuinely need someone in the room.
If the value comes from a designer sitting in your Monday meeting, absorbing what nobody writes down, employ one. It costs €3,800 to €6,300 a month in Belgium and it is the right call more often than outsourcing firms admit.
Might you want a different role?
These three overlap, and the wrong one is an expensive way to find that out.
Social media manager
If nobody is deciding what the month is for, writing the captions or reading the numbers afterwards, a designer produces good assets on no schedule. That is the seat to fill first.
Community manager
If the posts already land and the problem is that nobody answers the comments and DMs, you want cover on the replies rather than more design.
Questions about hiring a content designer
What does it cost to outsource a content designer?
A dedicated Swiftly content designer is €1,500 a month for a junior, €2,000 for a medior and €2,500 for a senior, month-to-month with 30 days’ notice. Design inside a social media package starts at €595 a month. For comparison, the same seat in-house costs €3,815 to €6,265 a month all-in in Belgium.
How is a content designer different from a graphic designer?
In practice the titles overlap, and most Belgian and Dutch job ads use them interchangeably. The useful distinction is scope: a content designer works to a publishing cadence inside an existing brand system, producing social and campaign assets week after week. A brand designer builds the system itself, usually once.
Do I own the source files?
Yes, from the first week. Working files live in your own Drive or Dropbox in your own folder structure, not in a supplier’s account. You can end the engagement with 30 days’ notice and keep everything.
How many designs will I get each month?
A dedicated seat sustains roughly 20 to 30 on-brand social posts, 2 to 4 carousels, weekly story and Reel covers, and campaign variants as they come up. Inside a package the design volume matches that package’s post count: 12 a month on Starter, up to 30 or more on Enterprise.
What if I do not like the work?
Revisions are unlimited. Everything goes into a shared calendar for approval before it is published, so nothing goes out unseen. If it is not the right fit within the first 30 days, the engagement ends with no outstanding charges.
Where is the designer based?
In the Philippines, working your hours rather than Philippine office hours, so a Belgian working day of 08:00 to 17:00 is covered end to end. Project management is European. Every engagement runs under a Data Processing Agreement as required by Article 28 of the GDPR.
Read before you decide
What Social Media Management Actually Costs in Belgium
The full arithmetic behind the in-house numbers above, with the published Belgian agency rate cards next to them.
In-House vs Agency vs Outsourced Marketing Team
The three shapes compared on cost, control and speed. This page sits inside that decision.
Working With a Filipino Marketing Team
How the day-to-day actually runs: hours, handover, review, and what goes wrong.
Try it for €1 a day before you commit to anything
€365 for a year buys one professionally designed, written and scheduled post a day on one platform. You approve every post before it is scheduled, and you only pay after you have approved them. It is the cheapest honest way to find out whether we are any good at this.
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