Recently, a marketing consultant told me that her website is solely a reference to her, and she relies on 100% referrals and word of mouth for her business.
I was shocked and could not believe what I heard from a marketing consultant in 2024.
Occasionally, small business owners might need a marketing consultant to support them with their marketing strategies and to help them market their businesses effectively and achieve results.
But how are you going to find one, and how do you know who the right marketing consultant is for your business?
Most people go straight to the Google search bar and search for a marketing consultant near me.
Word of mouth is another popular way people find what they are looking for.
But how do you know who is the right one? What does a marketing consultant actually do? What can you get out of from them?
Here are 6 valuable tips and red flags to watch out for when choosing the right marketing consultant to save time and money.
Marketing covers a wide variety of areas. What is their key skills as marketing consultants.
A marketing consultant can not be good at everything, but she/he will be an expert in two or three areas.
If their expertise matches your business industry and your desired goals. Great, you can tick this box for now.
The next box you need to tick is their hands-on experience.
What are they good at doing daily?
If they provide digital marketing consulting services but do not practice digital marketing themselves.
How can they effectively give you digital marketing advice?
Only having some knowledge about digital marketing is not enough to give constructive advice that will deliver results.
Digital marketing is all about hands on experience.
As marketing consultants, they need to know what works and what does not in digital marketing channels and give a practice experience to back up.
Digital marketing is also called online marketing. Almost all business owners know the importance of moving their business online, marketing their business on social media channels, search engine optimisation, and PPC(Google ads).
Online marketing is essential for businesses to succeed.
Imagine a marketing consultant who does not use any digital marketing channels themselves and does not have any hands-on experience but provides digital marketing consultancy services.
You will definitely waste your time and money.
There are also a lot of elements in digital marketing, and they are all interconnected. For instance, a social media marketer specialises in social media but cannot perform search engine optimisation(SEO) on your website.
An SEO specialist will not be as good as a social media marketer when executing social media campaigns.
If a marketing consultant does not understand social media, SEO and PPC. Don’t use any digital marketing channels or are not good at any channels; that is definitely a red flag.
If you are looking to promote your business online, you need a digital marketing consultant. A digital marketing consultant focuses on promoting and campaigning online and using various digital channels such as social media, PPC, SEO, email marketing, content marketing, data analytics, and technologies to build online referrals for your business.
Online referrals is much more powerful than offline referrals. Online referrals will help your business reach tens of thousands people around the world.
Check out their website and ask questions while reading their content. Do they have consistent, proven results related to your business?
Do they demonstrate their skills on their website?
Do they make you feel like they are the right people you should work with?
Or is it just a page full of small text content? That is a red flag.
If a marketing consultant tells people their website is solely a reference site, that is another red flag.
What that tells you is they donot understand digital marketing and donot practice digital marketing at all.
The best decision for you at this stage is to move on to another marketing consultant and keep searching.
LinkedIn is a social media channel for professionals, business to business(B2B). As marketing consultants, they should have an active profile, post content regularly and have a decent number of followers and connections.
Most importantly, they provide value in their content and market their business well on the platform.
If a marketing consultant tells you, 100% of their business is referrals and word of mouth. In that case, that is a serious red flag to business owners. Because, what they saying is they do not do marketing for their business. They do not practice marketing.
We are all human, after all. Paying attention to how you feel about another person is very important.
Do you think you will get along with the marketing consultant? Set up a couple of meetings before committing to a contract.
Get a feel for whether the person fits your company culture. Find out if the person is suited to giving more practical advice or just presenting a lot of theories that sound good but are useless to apply to your business.
Do your research before deciding on a marketing consultant, and take your time thinking about the questions.
Sometimes, referrals do not always work well with your business. You still need to evaluate them before making a decision.
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