Hiring a marketing consultant is a big step, but it can be hugely beneficial.
There are many reasons you might consider hiring a marketing consultant. If you run a small(ish) business without a marketing team, a consultant can be a cheaper, less risky approach than taking on employees. Maybe you already have a marketing team, but you're not getting the kind of results you desire. Perhaps there are new competitors in your field, or you feel your business is stalling, lacking a clear marketing strategy, or simply in need of a fresh approach. If any of these sound familiar, stay tuned.
Marketing is always changing. Hiring a marketing expert is the way to go if you want interesting marketing solutions.
An outside perspective can bring objective and new ideas. In this guide, we cover how you can tell you need some outside marketing help, the benefits of hiring a marketing consultant and what you should be aware of before you get started.
In this article:
The signs you might need a marketing consultant
5 advantages of hiring a marketing consultant
How to prepare for working with a marketing consultant
Marketing services at Medito Digital
Signs you need a marketing consultant
Your business is stalling
There are many signs that your business is stalling. Maybe your sales are flat, or your competitors are starting to grow faster than you.
You see that your profits are stagnant and your business is going in many directions, but you can't decide which direction the company should take.
If any of those sounds familiar, it's time to seek help.
Many people have difficulty trusting others, but trust is essential for growth. You can't know everything. If you had the answers, you would have solved it already. Just like professional athletes need coaching, sometimes your business needs advice to move forward.
You need to take informed decisions and trust people around you to follow the plan.
You have new competitors
To beat your competitors, you must first know and understand them. But it's hard work keeping a constant eye on the marketplace, and it's never enough. You must analyse how your competitors interact with their customers and understand what they're not providing, so you can make sure you are.
You must highlight your differences, clarify your message and maybe target new markets. All these solutions take time, and it's a waste of resources to do everything alone.
You're not converting enough
There are a lot of possible explanations for a poor conversion rate. The only sure thing is that a low conversion rate hurts your business.
The top 25% of companies convert at ~5%, and the top 10 at ~11%, but it always depends on what product/service you are offering, and to whom.
There are multiple reasons behind a low conversion rate. Your website might be giving a bad first impression. Maybe you're failing to capture abandoned carts, you don’t do any remarketing, or you simply don’t know your customers enough.
Often, we're too committed to seeing the obvious, and that is when we need the help of a consultant.
You lack a clear strategy
More than a quarter of business owners admit they have no clear strategy at all or not one that they could articulate. They might enjoy occasional success but mostly rely on luck. And when people adopt a clear strategy it's often similar to their competitors.
A clear marketing strategy must be aligned with your customer's needs and corporate/product strategy. You need an adequate and effective marketing strategy to build momentum. All of this is hard to do and takes time, and on top of that, trends are always changing. It is better now to think of your customers as “communities” than “segments”.
There are resource gaps in your company
Resource gaps come in many forms - you can be short in time or budget, and lack qualified people or knowledge.
The truth is that you can't do everything by yourself.
You're wasting your time by trying to design newsletters, create SEO-friendly content, or create headers for your social media profiles. The trick is to focus your time on higher payoff work and outsource the rest.
You would hire an attorney for legal advice, right? So, why are you not treating marketing the same way? Marketing is changing really fast - it's almost impossible to follow the latest trend if you don’t dedicate your life to it.
If you want to grow your business, you must focus on marketing. You won’t create sustainable growth without marketing your business consistently.
You want to try something new
If you plan on launching a new product/service or a short-term project and want to make sure it can work, you could benefit from hiring a consultant. Most companies can’t support fast growth, so you'll need to make sure your business is ready and has the proper plan to scale when the product takes off.
Before you invest too much, you should test the product to determine if it offers the right features. Testing also allows you to make sure your product has a market - you can identify if your potential customers are ready to buy or not.
Depending on the complexity of your product, your future clients might need to be educated. Many problems can arise during the launch of your project, and you'll be more prepared to face them efficiently with a marketing consultant on your side.
5 advantages of hiring a marketing consultant
1. It will save you time and money
It's less expensive and risky for your business to hire a marketing consultant than to hire somebody with the same knowledge, experience and expertise on a full-time basis. And you'll be delegating, instead of having to manage new full-time employees.
Good marketers get the job done in less time than it would take for someone who only has a superficial knowledge of marketing. They understand how success arises with different marketing tools and can recommend the best practices according to your goals.
The consultant could also bring ideas on how to optimise your business and save money.
2. They'll bring an objective and fresh new perspective
Nobody knows your business better than you. And while, in many cases, that's an advantage, it can also be problematic. You might neglect some aspects of your business out of habit. A marketing consultant brings a new way to look at things.
Marketers are also always aware of the latest trends and will have a new perspective on your problems.
3. Better ROI
You will have an initial added cost when you hire a marketing consultant, no doubt about it. But you will actually save money in the long run.
When you are not sure about your marketing decisions, you have to play around with different tactics and rely on your trial-and-error system.
Marketers know better what is working, and they will keep testing it so that you always stay optimised.
4. Better connections
Just like you have your own network of capable professionals, marketing consultants often have an entire team of people ready to work on different aspects of the marketing strategy.
By hiring a marketing consultant, you also hire all the photographers, code writers or graphic designers working for them.
5. Expertise
You will get all the expertise your marketing consultant has from previous clients. Chances are they faced the same problems you're facing with other customers and have proven solutions for them, and by looking at your metrics and learning about your vision, they'll be able to create tailored advice for your business.
How to prepare for working with a marketing consultant
Before you start working with a consultant, you'll need to be prepared.
Be ready to:
Invest in other parts of your business
Investing in a marketing consultant will increase your revenues, but it might also put pressure on other parts of your business. You should be ready to act and invest to synergise with your marketing efforts.
When your business starts to grow, you'll face new challenges. You might need a stronger website to support the traffic, efficient customer service or even a human resources manager. If you're not ready to face these challenges, you might not be ready to hire a consultant.
Your brand must be ready to handle the new volume of sales.
Commit to the plan
Marketing consultants are experts in different subjects. For example, here at Medito, we master all the technical parts of your online business that might hold it back, but we also are email, content and social media ads experts.
We do not take shortcuts. We build sustainable growth that your business will continue to benefit from long term. In order to do that, we follow the plan we create with you and for you.
Once the process starts, you need to trust the consultant's actions, as it is the only efficient way to delegate some of your responsibilities and grow your business.
Understand the nature of an “ongoing process”
Marketing is not a single event, but an ongoing process. You can't do your marketing once and hope for eternal results. The first three months are really important to optimise all the fundamentals and start growing. It's not something you do overnight.
Some business owners have unrealistic expectations of marketing. If you're not ready to invest in your marketing medium to long term, you might consider spending your money elsewhere.
Marketing Services at Medito Digital
Now that you're clear on the reasons why you should hire a marketing consultant and what might be required of you, you should be ready to go.
A great place to start is learning what different marketing consultants can offer.
So, while you're here, why not have a read of what we can do to help?
Technical Audit
We can take care of your website's technical aspects better than anyone else.
Overall Marketing Strategy
We make sure your business implements all the tools necessary to stand out online.
Most of the time, clients are unaware of their growth possibilities. We discuss with you your objectives, desires and values in order to create a strategy that suits your needs.
Analysis of previous marketing campaigns
We understand what works and what doesn't. We analyse previous marketing actions to learn more about your brand and your customers. We optimise what worked, correct mistakes and bring new ideas to the table.
SEO, SEA and content audit
We dive deep into your analytics and find hidden opportunities. We compare your content strategy with your competitors and deliver suggestions to drive more traffic to your website. We will also design a marketing content calendar that correlates with your customer’s demands.
Email marketing audit
You're leaving money on the table if emailing does not provide 20% to 25% of your online revenues. We inspect your email marketing strategy, opening rates and click-through rate and suggest ways to get more money out of it.
Social media ads audit
Social media techniques become outdated fast. We examine your business manager, inspect creatives, the target audience and remarketing campaigns. We give our honest opinion about your return on investment and the overall quality of your ads.
Next steps
Once we know your brand and understand your problems and your vision, we talk about your future.
With all the insights we acquired during the consulting, we are in a great position to implement the marketing tools that your brand needs.
We usually start with a 3-months plan, which gives us enough time to correct all the technical issues and marketing problems, implement solutions and start to scale. Our services include SEO/SEA, content marketing, email marketing and social media ads.
We stay close to you and deliver all the data that could help your business.
If this sounds interesting to you, you have any questions or you're keen to get started, get in touch via our contact page and we'll be happy to chat.
