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ivor@ivorization.com

> what kind of operator is he, really?

Fifteen years of building marketing into revenue.

I'm a growth and business development leader based in Hong Kong, fifteen years into the work of turning marketing into revenue. I've sold full-page ads and signed enterprise XR contracts; written the SEO blog and built the knowledge-graph entity behind it; run a channel and, lately, run the whole function. What connects all of it is a bias I've never lost: marketing is judged by what it returns, not what it reaches.

These days I own the entire marketing and business development function for a Hong Kong law firm and its corporate-services arm — on my own. The remit has read like a director's for a while. This page is how it got here.

Ivor Ngo in a navy blazer and open collar in a modern Hong Kong office.
Hong Kong

01 / The 15-year arc

The path looks varied. It isn't.

Each step added a layer the last one was missing: sell, then prove, then lead, then own.

Phase 01 · Learning to sell2009–2016

Media sales

Advertising at HK Magazine and TimeOut Hong Kong, then Coconuts Media. Print and digital, real quotas, real rejection. Grew sales 30% in my verticals at TimeOut; ran every sponsored event in the city for Coconuts, up to the city-wide Gin Jubilee. Where I learned that nobody buys the product — they buy whether they trust you.

Phase 02 · Learning to prove it2017–2022

Performance marketing

At Clickwise I moved from selling space to selling return. Affiliate and performance campaigns for ASOS, Farfetch, Expedia, JD.com, Trip.com and Amazon — accounts where “I think it's working” doesn't survive a quarterly review. I learned to build a campaign that defends itself in a spreadsheet.

Phase 03 · Learning to lead2022–2024

Emerging-tech BD

At Shadow Factory I pointed everything commercial at hard sells: blockchain, AI and XR into conservative enterprises. I won 20+ accounts — HSBC, Standard Chartered, JP Morgan, Audemars Piguet, Marriott — grew the client base 25%, ran cross-functional delivery teams, and was promoted to Director of Business Development. The title named what the job had already become.

Phase 04 · Owning the whole thing2024–present

Full-function ownership

Now, at TITUS Solicitors and IMSG, I run all of it solo: brand, content, SEO, social, lead gen, partnerships, client acquisition — across two businesses and six legal departments — plus a GEO programme that got the firm recommended by AI assistants. Strategy through pipeline, one operator.

Selling, then proving, then leading, then owning. It was never a detour. It was a build.

02 / The one-person engine

> isn't this just "a marketing manager at a law firm"?

No. It's a full function, delivered by one.

It's a complete marketing and business development function — brand architecture, a bilingual content engine, SEO, social, lead gen, partnerships, and a technically demanding GEO programme — delivered by one person across two businesses.

Director-scope thinking with founder-grade operating leverage.

That's possible because I build systems, not just campaigns, and because I've designed an AI-augmented workflow (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor) that gives a single operator the output of a small team without the overhead of one. I don't need a department to produce a department's worth of work — though I know exactly how to run one when there's budget for it.

03 / How I work

Four operating principles.

01

Revenue first

Impressions and followers are inputs. Pipeline, accounts and client growth are the scoreboard. I lead with the scoreboard.

02

Build the system

A good campaign wins a month. A good engine — content, SEO, GEO, partnerships, all benchmarked — wins the year. I build engines.

03

Trust is the asset

In fintech, virtual assets and legal services, regulatory awareness isn't a constraint on the marketing — it is the marketing. (And it's “virtual assets,” not “crypto.”)

04

Range, on purpose

Demand generation and closing are the same muscle worked from both ends. I've spent fifteen years working both.

04 / Languages & range

Native in both halves of the market.

Languages

English (native) · Cantonese (native) · Mandarin (professional) · Spanish (conversational). The bilingual EN/中文 content engine at TITUS isn't a translation exercise — it's written native in both.

Continuing development

Harvard Online — Probability & Statistics (FC1x, 2020) · Google Analytics 4 certifications 101/102/201/301 (2021) · Google Analytics 3 certification (2018).

Industries I've operated in

Professional servicesLegalFintech & virtual assetsE-commerceStartups & ventureCorporate servicesFund structuringLuxuryInsuranceHospitalityMedia

05 / Experience timeline

Exact titles. The Director title earns its weight.

Roles, exact titles and dates
DatesTitleCompany
Nov 2024 – present Business Development & Marketing Manager solo owner of the full marketing + BD function across both businesses TITUS Solicitors / IMSG Corporate Services
Jan 2024 – Oct 2024 Director, Business Development promoted from BD Manager, Jan 2024 Shadow Factory
May 2022 – Jan 2024Business Development ManagerShadow Factory
Jan 2017 – May 2022Senior Account ManagerClickwise
Jan 2016 – Jan 2017Account ManagerCoconuts Media
Jan 2013 – Jan 2016Advertising ExecutiveTimeOut Hong Kong
Jan 2009 – Jan 2013Advertising ExecutiveHK Magazine / HK Where