Hiring a marketing consultant nowadays is very common, but in order to hire one, you need to make sure you choose the right one.
The truth is, you and your business will face the need to hire a marketing consultant at some time.
We live in a world where you need to have an active online presence if you don’t have that, the chances of your business to grow and expand will be very low.
A professional consultant can make all the difference in an organization’s success, in a lot of times can be a great solution for your business.
But hiring a marketing consultant is not exactly the same as hiring an employee, because you don’t need to pay vacations or offer benefits like medical or visual, although you can expect to pay consultant fees, but he will bring more value quickly to your business and it is less expensive to hire a marketing consultant than offer a salary and benefits to someone with the same level of experience and expertise on a full-time basis.
But what is a marketing consultant?
A marketing consultant is a professional who works with you to create the best strategy for your business.
They can help you create your brand or improve one, they can create campaigns, establish social media strategies, initiate sales process or improvement, and design sales training and coaching.
They work with companies to help them define the marketing message, also they can optimize your website to increase traffic and drive leads, write and post fresh content. Marketing consultants will track all the results and make sure that your company gets the best marks from their marketing campaigns.
Marketing consultants are particularly specialized in various areas of marketing such as digital marketing, copywriting, direct response, social media, and SEO
The career of a marketing consultant is very flexible, but it also comes with a lot of challenges. Marketing consultants normally work as a contractor, as an independent or within a marketing firm.
The majority of marketing consultants are entrepreneurs who started their own business.
How to find the right one?
There are so many specialists in the marketing world and you need to think about what type of marketing expertise you need.
Many marketing consultants have a few areas of expertise but in order to find the right marketing consultant you need to do some research, a lot of people want the best consultant but they don’t do any research it’s the same when you need a doctor, wIn order to choose the one, you need to define your business goals and see how much it cost a consultant, make sure you hire a person with a good background, see their reviews and their case studies.hen people don’t do any research they end up having a really bad marketing consultant experience.
Once you review all your candidates by expertise you can have a meeting with them and understand more their past work and see if they are going to be a good fit or not.
Many marketers offer a free consultation in hopes of gaining your business and you can learn a lot during these sessions.
How much it cost to hire a marketing consultant?
Marketing consultant charges are based on two models. One is by an hourly consulting rate, the second is a fixed bid on a project basis.
The fees by hourly can depend from $100 to $300 an hour this can cause some shock to the people who compare this hourly rate to an employee but you need to consider all the things that go into the project. Let’s consider a 10 hours project for $200, your investment will be $2.000. The good thing about this is you don’t need to offer benefits plus you will have an entire team working for you for $2.000.
According to Google, a senior marketing consultant earns 68,801 per year, plus marketing expenses paid by the client. So around $6,000 retainer plus marketing expenses every month, this really depends on the experience of the marketing consultant and how big the project is, could be just local campaigns or worldwide.
When do you need a marketing consultant?
1. You want to build your business
A marketing consultant can tell you what exactly needs to be done to build a profitable business, and how to execute for the best results.
2. You need to define goals
A good consultant can work with your team to guide them and help you find your goals and create a plan.
3. You need a solid marketing strategy
The point of a marketing strategy is to identify the specific goals you’re trying to reach with your marketing efforts.
4. You want to improve relations and loyalty with existing clients
Marketing consultants are professionals who know what platforms to use and they know how to improve relationships with clients because they work with different clients every single day. They are trained and they are very knowledgeable in this area.
5. You want to expand into new markets and attract new customers
A marketing consultant knows exactly what to do to expand your business, they have knowledge of SEO and digital marketing they are the ones you can easily count to expand your business.
If you recognize any of these signs is time to hire a marketing consultant, fresh blood can help a lot, especially when the marketer has a proven track record of success.
Remember, a consultant can generally offer more personalized time and services, and you’ll know you need one if you often find yourself in situations where you could use some marketing backup.
When you get a negative review on Facebook or Google or a bad comment on your blog, call your consultant.
If your website is taking 30 seconds to load, call your consultant.
See? Your marketing consultant is everything and very relabel.
A marketing consultant is your help adviser when you need help.
So why hire a marketing consultant?
Marketing consultants have knowledge, professional experience with internet marketing, search engine optimization and they have a background on how to handle different needs. A marketing consultant will be able to give you advice for your specific business and situation. They can easily look at your analytics and website and know what is missing and needed, making these way things more easily and quickly for you.
Another benefit about hiring a marketing consultant is they know what they are doing so that means they can get the job done much faster than someone who doesn’t have knowledge of marketing. They know what works and what doesn’t work for every situation. So the point is they can save you time.
Another important thing to remember about them, they have connections, they have a team ready to work for your business, ready to deliver what is needed and wanted. By hiring a marketing consultant, you hire an entire team who are skilled and have the right knowledge to work for you.
If you decide to hire one they can help you make things happen for your business and be that outside voice, also a marketing consultant can bring fresh ideas and new perspectives to your business and you can learn a lot with them.
Never forget marketing is a very important tool for every business in the world, without marketing will be very difficult and I will say impossible for your business to grow and expand.
Without marketing strategies implemented, many companies closed because they don’t have any leads, or people buying their products so their sales crashed, it’s important that you keep in your mind the importance and value of doing marketing, especially nowadays.
With marketing you can boost your sales, you can get your word out there and create your brand and reputation. Marketing can be very expensive, depending on how big you want to be, you may spend almost half of your revenue in the first year in order for your company to expand and succeed but exist a lot of benefits, you will learn your metrics, you will make more sales, consumers will trust you, you will build a social media presence, you will learn your marketplace, discover what it works and you will have a powerful brand.
Exist many types of marketing tactics you could choose to reach out to your potential customers, but it is best to have a mix of online and offline marketing.
Here I showed some benefits of marketing so you keep in mind how marketing is so powerful for any business and how can change your business to fail to succeed.
I hope that you got the idea of why marketing and hire a marketing consultant is so important and powerful for a successful business. It is true that it can cost a lot, but you have to invest in order to gain.