Step 1 – ANALYSIS is the competitive research and brainstorming components (mission, vision, purpose, core values, value proposition, differentiators, etc.) that set the foundation to build strategic, focused, and proven initiatives to help companies increase revenue.
Step 2 – STRATEGY is understanding the marketing areas (target markets, SWOT, marketing mix, products/services, budget, metrics, etc.) that help a company reach its goals, no matter what growth metrics are utilized.
Step 3 – IMPACT is successfully implementing plans, programs, campaigns, processes, or products to effectively market a company.
Hiring a marketing consultant should be a pretty easy process; however, finding the right one for your company may be a bit challenging. Here are a few questions to ask yourself before you start searching to hire a marketing consultant:
- Do all consultants make you sign a 12-month (or more) service contract?
- What services do we need the marketing consultant to help us deliver?
- What is our budget (most times monthly) for spending on an outside marketing consultant?
- What expectations should we expect from this relationship?
- Who will be responsible to keep the marketing consultant moving forward?
- What qualities are most important for the consultant we hire?
Maybe this FAQ should be titled, “what makes a good marketing consultant?”
When you hire a consultant to help guide your marketing efforts, here are some expectations you should set (and measure):
- Does the consultant listen and respond to your ideas or do they throw them out and only do what they want to do?
- Is the consultant always working with you to stay on time and budget?
- When you ask the consultant a question, do they fumble to provide an answer or do they say they’ll do some research and get back to you with the option that best fits your company?
- Are they constantly asking more questions to further understand your business?
- Are they using new technology to advance digital marketing efforts?
Segmenting your audiences is actually a simple concept, but sometimes misunderstood. It’s simply breaking your list(s) down into smaller lists to target your products / services. For example, if you are a company who offers products to the construction, manufacturing and engineering industries, you will want to break your marketing messages into each, so you can speak directly to that sector.
Absolutely! But email marketing is just one piece of the content strategy that is needed to be successful in digital and traditional areas of marketing. For example, these steps should be considered (and implemented) to advance an email marketing strategy:
- Draft content that is relevant to your audience
- Build the email with a call to action
- The call to action sends readers to your website (preferable a landing page)
- The landing page provides valuable information – and sometimes gathers visitor information to further engage with the audience
- Follow ups (triggered emails, segmented, or personalized responses or phone calls) are absolutely necessary to achieve email marketing success
Everything your company does should be planned. Why? The most important reason is to be able to measure what is working and what isn’t.
Sometimes companies don’t have a written plan, but make a plan in the owner’s mind. A plan of this nature is very difficult for any professional to implement – because the initiatives to get to the outcome are not clearly defined. If you write it down, someone can implement successfully and your business won’t be making decisions on the fly – which can be very costly and ineffective.
When you write down your plan, you become focused and driven by results. Visually seeing your goals, strategies and activities in a written document is the way to avoid losing sight of what you want to achieve – turning ideas into reality.
A marketing consultant should be able to provide you with a statement of work / estimate for the services you are requesting. Strategic marketing plan development is normally a higher hourly rate (ranging from $150-$250/ hour). A full service consultant generally charge at least $90 to $200 per hour, lower hourly rate for strategy + implementation and higher rates for just strategy development. As yourself, is the engagement simply to develop a strategic marketing plan or to hire a professional to help in implementation of the plan?
Marketing consultants are best utilized for either small businesses who don’t wish to hire a full-time marketing professional or companies who need additional assistance from a competent, proven professional who can assist with implementing the company’s strategies / vision / plan.
Hiring a consultant can:
- Get programs or initiatives implemented faster
- Bring a specialized expert opinion to what’s working or what’s not
- Be more efficient, because they are versed in the processes for successful implementation
- Prompt a perspective that the internal marketing team was struggling to find
If any of these points sound like your company right now, hiring a consultant may be your best next step.
A marketing consultant is an outside advisor who works with companies to create and implement strategies to grow a company. By building a plan of action, identifying the right strategies for a company and successful implementation, marketing consultants can be a cost-effective way to grow your business (without the salary and benefit costs of a full time professional).