Marketing Consultant – Unlocking Explosive Business Growth

Do you need a Marketing Consultant?

Do you feel like your business is in a good position? Are you scalable?

If the above is correct, you want to grow your client base right?

Do you as a business owner have the ability to drive more leads to your business? Do you know where you should be allocating time & resources?

If you don’t, I wouldn’t be suggesting a shotgun approach.

I suggest that you look for a business marketing consultant in your specific niche, vertical, service, or product.

They will be able to grow your business dramatically as they are generally niche to something specific in a range of industries.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is an umbrella term that’s used to describe various forms of marketing activity that are done online.

This includes, but is not limited to, Web Design and Development, Geofencing, search engine optimization (also known as SEO), and Paid Media such as Google Adwords, Facebook/Instagram advertising, and (YouTube) video advertising.

Digital marketing allows businesses to leverage different online channels to better target their customers and prospective customers. It brings together all of the latest marketing tools, technology, and trends, and utilizes them to help businesses of all shapes and sizes to effectively reach out to their customers and prospective customers.
Each channel is designed for different audiences and offers various targeting methods.

For example, Facebook advertising provides the ability to target people by demographics, psychographics, and online browsing behaviors. Essentially it works well to generate awareness (the user never knew this existed but I might be interested), interest (user may have known this existed but now I’m interested), and even desire for a product or service. This is part of the A.I.D.A. marketing funnel.

Google AdWords, on the other hand, can be used to find potential customers that are actively seeking to buy NOW based on their search queries (search and shopping advertising) or to just generate awareness and interest (display and video ads).

The reality is that thanks to new technology, people now spend more time online than ever before.
The average person spends twice as much time online as they did 12 years ago, which means that the way people shop for products and services has changed. The fact is that offline marketing is nowhere near as effective as it once was, which is why digital marketing campaigns has become such a popular option for many brands.

Effective marketing is about connecting with your audience at the right time and place – today that is online.

In fact, according to Andrew Perrin And Jingjing at The Pew Research Center, “About a quarter of U.S. adults say they are ‘almost constantly’ online”.

Overall, 77% of Americans go online on a daily basis. That figure includes the 26% who go online almost constantly, as well as 43% who say they go online several times a day and 8% who go online about once a day. Some 11% go online several times a week or less often, while 11% of adults say they do not use the internet at all. 

With more and more brands looking for effective digital marketing, the need for digital marketing consultants is at an all-time high. There’s a major need for marketing consultants that are skilled and experienced within a wide range of online marketing methods, from social media platforms to display advertising.

Marketing consultants are so sought after because they help to bridge the gap between businesses and the online world, helping them to market their products, services, and brand in the right way.

Those are the basics of digital marketing, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Interested in finding out what a digital marketing consultant actually does? Yes – then read on for everything that you should know.

When to look at a Marketing Consultant?

When a company needs to outsource marketing efforts, it is often time to seek out a hands-on Marketing consultant.

A marketing consultant is an outside advisor who works with companies to create and implement marketing strategies.

A consultant helps create a customised marketing plan, determine a business’s marketing message, and identify the appropriate marketing mix to get the message out to the target market. Most consultants are also involved in implementing the marketing strategy. They often help monitor results and tweak campaigns as they go to ensure that companies get the best results from their marketing efforts. 

When to Hire a Marketing Consultant

Both small businesses with no marketing experts on staff and large companies with a dedicated marketing department can use the advice of a marketing consultant. Hiring a marketing consultant can:

• Supply specialized skills and expertise that a company lacks.
• Provide an external viewpoint to internal challenges.
• Prompt a new perspective on customers or marketing strategies.
• Allow a business to focus on product development and overall operations.

What Skills Should Marketing Consultants Have?

Marketing consultants need a mix of technical and soft skills to work effectively with their range of clients. These consultants are skilled in marketing, business, communications, and psychology. Many will also specialize in specific areas of the marketing process, such as:

• Online marketing
• Social media marketing
• Nonprofit marketing
• Copywriting
• Print or TV advertising
• Public relations
• Direct response marketing

If your business is considering hiring a marketing consultant, look for one who can show both creative thinking and practical, results-driven analysis. Anyone you hire should be familiar with the consumer behavior of your target audience and willing to work collaboratively to achieve the best possible results, not just for their own portfolio but for your business’s goals.

How Much Should I Pay a Marketing Consultant?

Often, companies find themselves faced with the challenge of establishing a more effective strategy for their marketing, branding, and advertising initiatives. This could be developing a brand identity, a brand strategy, or developing the concept or strategy for a marketing campaign. More than likely, you also need a skilled team to complete the creative work, such as website development, writing copy, and designing branded materials as well. Perhaps you are in this very situation, and you’re wondering how to budget for these marketing services. My first recommendation is to separate the work into two categories: strategy and execution.

Skilled labor (the execution phase) such as copywriting or design may be relatively affordable, but developing (and sometimes managing) the strategy associated with that work requires more expertise and is, therefore, more costly. In most cases, the strategy and the execution are conducted by different individuals or teams. Often, the execution of marketing or branding tasks might roll into the consultant’s deliverables, but generally, a marketing consultant is an outside advisor developing and directing the strategy for all the deliverables. This means that, while a consultant or their marketing teams may work on execution, they typically only focus on the high-level strategy, and hand off the heavy lifting on executing these tasks.

So how much is marketing worth? Full disclosure, the writer of this blog is a marketing firm, so of course, we believe that you should pay as much as possible.

OK that is partially a joke, but it is worth mentioning that you do get what you pay for. The most successful marketing consultants provide value that can last for years, and often their fees often reflect that. While hourly rates are often still in consideration, this is merely one way to measure the effort put toward the project at hand.

Common Pricing Models for Marketing Consultants

The typical marketing consultant charges based on one of two models. First, and maybe most common, is by an hourly consulting rate. The second is a fixed bid on a project-by-project basis. Often this is based on a predetermined number of hours that are allocated to the customer project. This is simply the anticipated number of hours for a project multiplied by the hourly rates of the consultant. What those rates are will generally depend on the experience of the consultant, the demand, the geographical market, and other economic factors. Ultimately, you are paying for the time of the consultant with some kind of margin to cover expenses and profit.

As a benchmark, in our experience, these fees tend to be between $65-$300 per hour. This varies greatly depending on one’s resume, overhead and demand. For your average marketing consultant, fees are most commonly in the $100-$175 per hour range. This can cause sticker shock to those that are comparing it to the salary of an employee that might be closer to $30 an hour ($60,000 per year). What you must do is consider all the things that go into a project.

For simplicity, let’s consider a 10 hour project that is preparing a simple marketing strategy for a short-term marketing campaign. At the common rate of $150 per hour, your investment is $1,500. This might only cost $300 of in-house talent time to work for 10 hours. So why would anyone ever hire a consultant? Why not just hire an in-house marketer to do it instead? The real reasoning boils down to the true cost of a project.

The Cost of Ownership

In general, a “marketing strategist” is worth more than a “marketing coordinator.” I’m generalizing based on common uses of these titles. Strategy is often a small percentage of the work, while executing that strategy might require a lot more time. A marketing coordinator could perhaps demand a salary of $40k to $60k per year, while a strategist can demand the salary of $100k to $150K per year. Those starting numbers put you at $20-$30 per hour versus $50-$75 per hour respectively. Additionally, they will need to have equipment, office space, lunch hours, vacation time, benefits, employment taxes, and there is often lost time at the water cooler that cannot be tracked or recouped.

This increases the cost substantially per hour, but still probably less than a consultant’s hourly fee. The kicker is that a quality employee expects a full-time living. That means that the six figure employee’s 10 hours turns into 40 per week. It’s generally cost prohibitive for most companies to keep the more strategic person on staff on a full time basis. Not only that, it’s rarely necessary. 

This is where the consultant comes in. A good consultant is worth a larger per hour investment for a fraction of their time because of their expertise. Furthermore, they are absorbing all the costs associated with their employment instead of you.

How Much Should I Pay a Marketing Consultant? A Rule of Thumb

As a rule of thumb, most consulting fee rates should double, or in most cases triple ‚the actual wage of the position being covered. That means that the $50 per hour strategists should charge $100-$150 per hour for his services. Generally, a freelancer is in the double category and a consultant that is part of a broader company which includes physical overhead falls in the triple category. Of course this all varies based on many factors. You might pay them a little more for their time, but you have them only when you need them, for the amount that you need them.

Let’s get more specific though. To take a closer look at value, what if one consultant is able to provide you a 10-hour ($1,500) strategy that yields new sales and a profit increase of $10,000? Would that be worth the expense? Absolutely. As I alluded to before, the best position to be in is to pay based on value – not just time and materials. Imagine that a more strategic consultant is able to offer you similar marketing services, but asks for a flat fee of $100,000, anticipating 5 hours spent on the marketing project. Would you pay for that? The “value” in this case is what the results of their work is worth to your business.

If you are paying $1,000 for a week of brainstorming and advice with no return, it might be a total waste of time and money. On the other hand, if you spend the five hours time at $100,000 to put in place a strategic change that turns into an increase of $1 million to your company’s bottom line, that would be $100,000 well spent! In this case, most businesses would be far less concerned with how much billable time it took. My guess is you would take the deal as well.

“The best position to be in is to pay based on value – not just time and materials.”

The Serial Seller Summary

Not all business owners have a degree in marketing and need help growing and scaling their business’s customer base.

Bringing in a Marketing Consultant is an exciting opportunity for a business owner as it can reduce the stress of bringing in new clients and also see long-term growth for marketing activities.

I hope this equips you to better evaluate a marketing consultant. My advice is to sit down, crunch the numbers, and determine from there if hiring a marketing consultant is right for you and believe they could make a positive impact for your business.

If you decide you’re in the market for a marketing consultant, Book A Call With Us Now!