You wouldn’t ask your accountant to fix the boiler. So why are you asking your social media exec to run your entire communications strategy?
Let’s be honest, a marketing team usually starts with the best of intentions. Your business is growing, and you want a top-notch team around you for the long haul. “In-house” means a proper understanding of your business, and so long as you pay them fairly and invest in their development, you’ll retain great people for years to come.
What you really need, you decide to yourself, is a great all-rounder to cover the bases. Your ad looks like this:
“We’re looking for a talented marketing all-rounder to handle social media content, SEO, PR, communications and digital strategy, website development, digital PR, maybe a bit of algebra”.
Of course someone applies and of course they tick all the boxes, so you add them to your team, hooray! The thing is, you may not have filled these vacant roles in the way you think.
Before you know it, your social media posts are going out, but engagement is a bit flatlined. A journalist got in touch about a story idea, and there was no proper strategy in place to handle it, so it sort of got lost, what with all those Teams calls we had in with various clients.
The “communications strategy” is a shared Google Doc that hasn’t been opened since January 2021.
It’s not a people problem. It’s a structural problem. And it’s a sign you need to start hiring dedicated support. And the longer it goes on, the more ground you’re losing to competitors who have already figured it out.
Let’s Be Honest About What “All-Rounder” Means
When businesses advertise for a marketing all-rounder, they don’t always realise how many pieces really make up a marketing department.
Obviously, you need to do the ‘marketing’ bit. Developing a marketing strategy that identifies campaigns that drive engagement, insight into customer behaviours and buying, builds brand reputation and recognition and creates demand for your products and services. All of this is ticked off by using a range of tools and disciplines. But here’s the thing, those ‘simple’ areas have grown into almost full time jobs!
Here’s a quick look at what’s included:
Social media management
This naturally involves social media content creation, but also comes with community engagement, platform strategy, trend monitoring, analytics, paid ads, and a person who can stay up to speed with a constantly shifting algorithm that changes its mind every few weeks. Especially if you want to go for social media advertising or analytics, this should be an individual role.
PR and media relations
A whole different world entirely. It’s about building relationships with journalists, knowing which story angle will land, writing compelling press releases, managing reputational damage and risk, lead generation, developing media relationships, crafting thought leadership pieces and navigating a media landscape that changes a lot. There’s a huge overlap here with copywriting, but it is actually a separate job.
Communications strategy
Very different to the marketing strategy, this is where you define what you’re saying, to whom, in what tone, through which channels, and why. Done well, it connects your entire business narrative.
Done badly (or not really done at all), your messaging looks inconsistent and your audience can’t quite work out what you’re doing. A dedicated comms expert can assist you in crisis management, and can build a narrative around any tricky topic to make sure you stay on top. It’s not PR! Good comms results in good PR.
SEO
This is technical, data-driven, and highly analytical. This involves keyword research, on-page optimisation, backlink strategy (which can be huge), content marketing and planning for search intent that earns organic traffic. Above all else, it’s keeping up with Google’s updates. Get it wrong and you’re facing a drop in rankings. Fall of the top 5 in the search engines and you’re missing out on potential customers who will be clicking on your main competitors instead. Clawing that traffic back could take months of focused work. You probably know what we’re going to say next…. This is a specified role and should not be done by a generic marketing assistant.
Copywriting
From long-form blog posts, to snappy ad copy to tone-of-voice guidelines, copywriting is a major skillset in itself. Great writers spend years building their skills. Asking someone to “just knock together a few blogs” once they’re done with a bit of technical SEO is a bit like asking a chef to also rewire the kitchen.
There’s also internal communications activities, brand awareness management, stakeholder engagement, reputation management, crisis communications … shall we go on?
In-House Teams Are Brilliant. They’re Just Not the Whole Answer
Having in-house marketing staff is genuinely valuable. Someone who knows the business inside out, attends internal meetings, builds relationships across departments, and carries the brand’s DNA with them in everything they do. That’s not something a PR agency can ever replace.
But the smartest businesses work out when specialist support does just that, supports your team so they deliver the best results.
Your in-house team can manage day-to-day activity, brief in external partners, coordinate marketing and PR, and keep everything ticking.
Where they shouldn’t be expected to operate alone is across every specialism simultaneously. That’s where even the best people hit a ceiling, through no fault of their own.
Public relations (probably more than the others) is often underestimated as a job people think pretty much anyone can do. And it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Public relations requires years of media outreach knowledge, an instinct for what makes a story, maintenance and building of relationships with journalists and editors, the ability to handle sensitive communications… not to mention a strategic brain that’s always thinking about the delicacy of reputation management. PRs are a breed of their own.
What Dedicated Support Actually Gets You
When you work with an PR agency to support your public relations and communications activities, you’re not just buying time. You’re buying experience, relationships, and a strategic perspective that’s genuinely hard to replicate in-house (unless you’re a very large business with a very generous budget).
A good PR agency has people who eat and breathe their specialism. They are know which publications and media outlets will get editorial coverage for your sector for press releases. They know the journalists who are actively looking for a story like yours. They know what tone will land with your target audience and what will fall flat.
They keep up with industry changes so you don’t have to worry about it. And crucially, they can spot the story in your business that you might have walked straight past because you’ve been busy on other things.
With social media support, a specialist brings more than just posting content for content’s sake. They’re looking at what works, testing formats, reviewing messaging and linking up with influential industry leaders. After all, it only takes one poorly handled comment or a tone deaf post to instantly undo all the good work.
On the SEO side, the difference between someone who’s vaguely done SEO and someone who really knows it is enormous. Many good copywriters can optimise a landing page…. But we’re talking now about detailed keyword research, technical audits, content strategy…. All of which has to keep pace with algorithm changes: these things take years of focused expertise to do well. Guesswork in this space costs real money.
Communications strategy, done properly, touches everything. Your tone of voice. Your messaging hierarchy. Your public relations crisis management. What story you’re telling and why it matters to the people you’re trying to reach. Getting this right creates consistency, builds trust, and ultimately drives the kind of reputation that means people choose you without even needing to be sold to.
Is it time to get dedicated support?
Why not answer these questions to yourself:
- Has your marketing activity felt busy but not particularly effective? Lots of work going in, not a huge amount of brand visibility?
- Is your marketing team wrung dry – trying to tick every box and never managing it?
- Have you had great news to shout about but not really known how to get it in front of the right people?
- Are you sending out lots of news stories but struggling to get media coverage?
- Is your website sitting on page two or three of Google despite being genuinely excellent?
- Do you feel like your competitors are getting more coverage in media outlets and on digital platforms?
If you’re nodding along, that’s probably your answer. It might be time for you to get an PR agency involved.
Hiring an Agency in 2026
The best set-up for most growing businesses isn’t either/or. It’s a bit of both.
Absolutely keep your in-house team. Let them do what they do brilliantly every day, with the advantage a PR agency won’t have – knowing your brand and your objectives inside out.
But alongside them…bring in a PR agency to handle the specialist work that they may not have the skills for (paid ads, we’re looking at you).
We know what you’re thinking – agencies are expensive. Yes, a good PR agency costs can feel high, but you have to balance that with the ROI the PR agency delivers. Knowing the media atmosphere and securing coverage in the right place, keeping your company website top of the list, relatable messaging and a social media strategy that keeps your customers engaged.
A good comms and public relations agency doesn’t just bolt on to your existing team. The best ones merge in with you naturally, so they feel like part of the in-house team themselves.
That’s when the results start to look a bit different.
The business case for doing it properly
There’s a version of marketing that looks active but doesn’t quite connect. And then there’s the version where the right message reaches the right people at the right time, consistently, through channels that are actually working. Achieve this and the leads, business growth (and subsequently sales) will roll in.
The difference, more often than not, comes down to having dedicated experts in the disciplines that matter most. Not generalists doing their best under pressure, but specialists who live and breathe this stuff every day.
At Aura PR, we take the time to really get under the skin of your business, understand your story, and figure out the best way to tell it to the right people through the right channels. Whether that’s digital PR and media relations, communications strategy, writing thought leadership pieces for your executive team, social media, market research or SEO. We bring the specialist expertise so your in-house team can focus on what they do best. We’re not here to fill the space. We’re here to make things happen.
Get in touch with us and we will guide you in the right direction.
Aura PR is a Marketing & PR agency with a personal touch and proven track record, taking the time to truly understand you and your business. That way, we can confidently deliver the value of what you do and make your story fly.
