Haybury Search

The Brief

Haybury had built a deeply specialist business, working exclusively in pharmaceutical and life sciences search across six service lines, from executive search and board appointments through to mapping and perception audits. It is a considered, expert proposition serving a discerning industry.

What the business did not yet have was a marketing plan. There was plenty of expertise worth sharing and a strong reputation to build on, and no strategy for how to do either. Haybury came to Halt for the thinking first: what to say, who to say it to, and which channels are worth the effort for a firm talking to senior people in pharma.

They also needed someone to actually run it. A marketing hire would have been premature at that stage, so Haybury wanted the strategy and the execution to sit with one experienced pair of hands until the business was ready for more.

Strategy & Social

Chris Cranshaw led the work from the start, beginning with the strategy itself.

That meant getting properly to grips with the life sciences market and how Haybury sits within it: who the audiences are, what senior people in pharma actually want to read, and where a specialist search firm earns attention. The output was a marketing strategy Haybury could act on straight away, built around a short list of clear priorities.

From there Chris took on the virtual CMO role, which in practice means being the marketing brain of the business without sitting on the payroll. Decisions got made, the plan kept moving, and Haybury had someone accountable for marketing at a stage when many firms of that size have nobody.

Social media content followed as the strategy bedded in. Halt produced Haybury’s content on an outsourced basis, building a consistent presence in front of the pharmaceutical and life sciences audiences the strategy had identified, in a voice that matched the firm’s expert, measured tone.

The Handover

As the marketing started working, Haybury grew to the point where an internal hire made good sense. That is a natural graduation for a business, and a healthy sign for everyone involved.

Halt made the transition an easy one. The new internal resource was trained on the strategy, the tone of voice, the content approach and the day to day running of the channels, so they inherited a working system with someone on hand to learn it from. Nothing had to be reverse-engineered or guessed at.

Handing over well takes a little care. Halt had held the strategy and the content long enough to know what worked and why, and all of that knowledge went across alongside the practical detail. Haybury now manages its own strategy and social content in-house, with the confidence that comes from having a proven approach to build on.

It is a lovely way for a piece of work to mature.