Why look for a unicorn when you can get a team of legends?

By Michele Lithgow, Feb 28 2020

“Hi Lisa! We need a marketing person – stat! We’re looking to pay around $70k.

We need someone who knows how to create a killer marketing strategy, but is also the bee’s knees at brand development, digital strategy, SEO, PPC, social media, and content. And if you could find someone with a comms and PR background – that would be ace. Oh, and they also need to know their way around InDesign and Illustrator – actually, some sweet video editing skills would go a long way too.

And can they start tomorrow?”

Does this sound familiar? Has your business decided it needs to hire a marketing person, and set out to find a unicorn?

Unicorn / definition: A mythical creature, someone amazing who is hard to catch or simply a very rare find. 

In a marketing sense, a unicorn is someone who specialises in all aspects of marketing, from high-level strategy to the hands-on implementation of online and offline tactics. Think, someone who can drive the marketing strategy of your business, but also set up and run AdWords, create engaging content for your social media, report on campaign data, and whip up a professional sales brochure.

Someone with a CV like this, is a very rare find.

Most people working in marketing and communications are generalists, or Jill-of-all-trades. Yes, everyone has key areas they specialise in, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who specialises in all things marketing.

And we’re proud to be generalists! Being a generalist allows you to focus on the bigger picture, while understanding how all the moving parts work together to get results. Generalists know the right people to bring into a project (the specialists), and how to align everyone’s efforts to achieve shared goals.

It takes a team

Delivering a full suite of marketing services takes a team of generalists and specialists. And that’s the beauty of working with a marketing agency.

Agencies bring together generalists – people who work alongside the decision-makers of a business to understand where the business wants to go, and how marketing can get you there (at HGB we call them strategic marketing consultants), and specialists – people who focus on specific areas like digital marketing (PPC, SEO), website development, graphic design, and content creation.

Partner with a marketing agency and you get the best of both worlds! You’ll have access to a wealth of skills, knowledge and experience – which is all harnessed to drive the success of your business.

Hiring in-house vs working with an agency

There’s no one size fits all solution – it’s about what’s best for your business. Here are a few benefits to each approach:

Agency:

• One phone call can connect you to a team of talented people with experience across all facets of marketing
• No need to outsource additional resources like graphic designers, digital specialists and web developers – an agency can take care of it all
• High levels of accountability
• Effective cost structure

In-house:

• Focused solely on your business
• Marketing generalist who can manage additional resources as needed (at an extra cost)
• Set annual salary
• Based on-site and part of the team

Case study: Urban Homes

HGB is proud to be the strategic marketing partner of Waikato based builders Urban Homes, and this is an awesome example of our multi-skilled team working together to achieve results for a client.

At a strategic level, director Daniel Klinkenberg and general manager Andrew South work with HGB director Jacqui Gage-Brown to set marketing and branding strategies that will help Urban Homes meet its business objectives.

At an operational level, strategic marketing consultant Ann Graham, works alongside head of sales and marketing, Craig Geer, to ensure marketing activities support the sales team and vice versa.

The HGB design team create beautiful artwork and collateral that reflects the Urban Homes brand, while our digital specialists are responsible for executing digital campaigns and analysing the results, feeding these back to the strategic thinkers.