James
Baldacchino

SEO, brand and marketing strategist with a career spanning 19+ years. Still more curious now than when I started.

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About

Strategist.
Curious mind.
Good company.

I'm a Malta-based strategist with nearly twenty years across marketing, branding and SEO. Marketing and branding came first: a start in B2B marketing and advertising that became an obsession with identity, positioning, and how organisations think about themselves and communicate that outward. This naturally grew into a deep interest in UX and CX, and moving into SEO deepened all of that further in ways I didn't fully anticipate. It turns out that understanding how a brand should be seen and strategising how it actually gets found are simply the same question asked from different directions.

These days I lead SEO and Strategy at Ellipsis, a specialist B2B SaaS agency, across our client portfolio. The work is detailed and demanding, which is exactly how I like it.

Outside of work, I have my own little recording studio and a deep love of music: producing for myself or others. Most people who spend any time with me find out fairly quickly about my slight obsession with Tolkien lore and trees. I'm also deeply bonded to my cat, Orla, who is young, ginger, and entirely convinced she runs things. She's not wrong!

What I Do
01
Branding
Identity, positioning, and the harder question of how an organisation wants to be understood. I spent a long time here before SEO, and the two haven't stopped informing each other since.
02
SEO Strategy
Technical audits, content architecture, AI visibility, and organic search as a long-term growth engine. Not especially interested in shortcuts.
03
Fractional CMO
Senior marketing thinking for teams that don't need a full-time CMO. Positioning, strategy, measurement, and the occasional difficult conversation that someone needs to have.
04
CX & UX
Customer journey mapping, friction analysis, and experience thinking that connects what users actually do with what a business actually needs.

How it
unfolded.

2021 –
Present
Head of Strategy & SEO
Ellipsis, B2B SaaS Agency, UK
I lead SEO and marketing strategy across a portfolio of B2B SaaS clients in the UK, EU and North America. The core work is organic search and AI-powered visibility, with a fractional CMO remit for a number of longer-term clients. It's varied, demanding, and exactly the kind of work I love doing.
SEOAI Search Fractional CMOB2B SaaS
2015 –
2021
Brand Manager
Vodafone Malta
Six years at Malta's leading telecoms provider. The work covered full brand strategy ownership: all major campaigns, a team of eight, a substantial budget, and close collaboration with Vodafone's global brand team. The other big project was bringing creative, media, agency and digital fully in-house.
Brand StrategyPositioning CampaignsTeam Leadership
2014 –
2015
Marketing & PR Manager
Arts & Culture sector, Malta
A shorter stint, but a formative one. I ran all marketing and PR for a national creative centre and led a full rebrand from scratch: research, brief, strategy, and implementation. The brand is still going strong.
BrandingPR RebrandingDigital
2007 –
2014
Early Career
Advertising, Aviation, Malta & Vienna
The foundational years: a marketing executive role at an advertising agency handling a varied client portfolio, including a major rebrand of Malta's largest bank. Before that, airline marketing at Malta International Airport and a management traineeship in Vienna.
BrandingAdvertising MarketingAviation
Contact

Say
hello.

I'd love to hear from you. Drop me a line.