World Host Group

Building an internal creative agency and global marketing function from scratch + key Tech and Data hires

• World Host Group is a leading web hosting and domain name provider, with 30 brands and a truly global customer base.
• In 2023, they grew from 80k actively hosted sites to 1 million. They acquired eight businesses and grew their global team from 30 to almost 600 people. WHG’s Founders wanted to build an internal creative agency and a world class marketing function, from scratch.
• We began with three senior appointments – a Creative Director, Global Marketing Director (CMO) and Head of Performance Marketing.
• Initially working alongside another national recruitment agency, our specialist Creative, Marketing and Digital teams worked together using a combination of headhunting, advertising and other proactive searching methods to successfully place all three roles, resulting in an exclusive relationship with WHG moving forward.
• Next, we worked at pace to build teams for the three functions using branded advertising to signpost WHG as an employer of choice attracting the best agency and in-house talent from across the South of the UK.
  • Creative team hires: Senior Copywriter, Senior Designer x2
  • Marketing team hires: Campaign Manager x2
  • Digital Performance team hires: Paid Media Manager, PPC Manager, SEO Manager, Data Analyst
• In addition, our Technology Recruitment team were invited to support one of WHG’s sister companies, Upmind, successfully placing a Lead DevOps Engineer, Front end Developer, UX/UI Designer, and two Senior PHP Developers.
• Branded adverts work exceptionally well for scaling businesses with a story to tell. They attract candidates that fit the mission and vision, including many that aren’t actively looking to make a move until their dream opportunity lands in front of them.
• Being explicit about the organisation we’ve partnered with led to much higher response rates from InMails and headhunting outreach as the messaging stands out from the masses of generic approaches candidates receive on a weekly basis.
• ADLIB received over 1,000 applications in the first 4 weeks of posting the roles to socials, job boards, and Linkedin, on top of our proactive outreach. This would have been unmanageable for the WHG team and would have required weeks of screening to arrive at a shortlist that truly fits their unique culture and requirements.
• By choosing ADLIB as their Outsourced Recruitment Partner, WHG received the very best shortlist of candidates whilst saving huge amounts of time and admin work.