EDMONTON, Canada, Dec. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — A North American title is always a nice way for a business to begin its second quarter-century in operation.

And as the only Canadian firm named among Marketing Tech Outlook magazine’s Top 10 Hubspot Solution Providers of 2018, Edmonton-based Graphos demonstrates it has not merely remained resilient as a marketing agency.

It has asserted impressive dominance.

“It’s a really nice, somewhat unexpected honour,” admits Graphos president, founder and lead consultant Laurier Mandin. “As a Hubspot partner agency for several years, we don’t exactly fit the mould. We do many things in massively different ways, and apparently that worked in our favour.”

For Graphos, doing things differently as an inbound marketing agency means taking a more holistic, brand-focused approach. “We’ve continued to build on our three pillars of branding, development and growth. Our approach is to lay foundation with brand, lead with strategy, and work very hard to build clients into industry leaders. It takes experience, depth and a hunger to help client organizations succeed.

Marketing Tech Outlook ranks Graphos at #2 on its Top-10 list, and the only agency in Canada to make the cut. Its selection team cites the firm’s holistic creative approach to marketing, including video and media production, marketing automation, sales funnel management—and recruitment marketing to help clients manage growth.

Also highlighted is Graphos’ fundamental focus on delivering excellence in design, a point often lost in the commoditization of marketing agencies.

“Too many Hubspot partners have unwittingly turned themselves into list peddlers,” Mandin says. “They tend to have clients choose from three bundles of deliverables, including x number or blog posts, social media shares and downloadable offers per month. There is value and scalability in that approach, but often the creative and strategy sides are lost as the offerings become more productized and further from the client’s growth aspirations and profitability goals.’

To the strategy end, Graphos works with business owners and senior leadership teams to plan not only marketing but end-to-end business solutions. This can include helping startups plan how products and services will roll out and be distributed, developing enterprise-wide content strategies, and plan how the client will manage growth and human resources across multiple markets.

“We’ll go to the client’s offices in different cities, and observe top performers,” says Mandin. “Often enterprise organizations need to unify cultures from one branch to another. Vancouver is incredibly different from Edmonton or Winnipeg, and Toronto culture is worlds away from that of Montreal or Halifax. Audience persona goals, preferences and staff work-life balance often end up meaning different things from city to city. On one and often both ends of every customer interaction is a human being, and we help clients optimize for those differing needs and goals. It’s too common to focus on growth without considering all the impacts it will have.”

Graphos has also worked to integrate high-production-quality video into its marketing offerings, Mandin says, indicating how platforms like Hubspot, Facebook and Linkedin will ramp up the already rapid growth of motion in coming years. “(Facebook CEO) Mark Zuckerberg and (Hubspot co-founder and CEO) Brian Halligan have been telling us video is how audiences want to consume more and more content. And our metrics agree, so video is a big focus for us in 2019.” The agency has added high-powered video talent to its team roster and considers video integral to its service offerings.

And as much as the marketing world has changed since Graphos entered it back in 1993, the agency is primed and enthusiastic about leading even greater changes ahead. “That’s what keeps us loving what we do,” Mandin says. “Not only do we never have to do the same work twice, we simply won’t allow ourselves to.”

SOURCE Graphos