The Rise of Digital Marketing Consultant

For most organisations, digital marketing consultant is a nebulous word. There have been various misconceptions about marketing consultants as a profession as well as the job of a marketing consultant in the marketing sector.

For decades, the consultant has been defined as providing business services with a conventional emphasis on organisational management. However, in order to keep up with the changing business world, consulting firms had to develop, which led to the advancement of their sales and marketing consultant services. Furthermore, marketing and advertising companies have been expanding their advisory services and expanding into new sectors such as digital transformation, automation, data analytics, and branding consultant services.

However, independent forces in the digital marketing sector began to redefine the word by offering highly specialised consulting in channels like as SEO, social media, content marketing, and PPC.

What Is the Definition of Digital Marketing Consultants?

The phrase "digital marketing consultant" refers to highly experienced marketers with superior digital technology skills. Strategic thinker with strong analytical abilities and years of expertise managing marketing channels and developing branding and acquisition programmes. Businesses hire consultants on a contract or as freelancers to handle marketing difficulties or to do research and audit activities.

Independent consultants are mostly cost-effective and quick accelerators for digital marketing projects. Furthermore, consultants contribute to the advancement of digital marketing channels, marketing technology, and paid media. According to Report Linker, the Marketing Consulting Services Industry in the United States of America is expected to be worth $46.1 billion by 2021.

The definition of marketing consultancy has evolved throughout time. One of the primary causes for this shift is the rapid advancement of technology and social networks. As a result, marketing methods and applications were influenced, and digital channels began to emerge and replace traditional media channels.

This transition resulted in the emergence of a new generation of native digital marketers who redesigned marketing to keep up with the social media revolution. Furthermore, the online experience and shopping habits have been at the forefront of the transformation, and customer behaviour is moving constantly.

Research vs Enabling

Startups have been ahead of the game in recent years, moving swiftly with revolutionary ideas in digital marketing and customer-centric techniques. As a result, the notion of marketing consultancy took on new functions in the commercial world.

The mentorship concept and its benefits have had an impact on the culture of startups. That is exactly what happened in marketing consultancy, as consultants began to serve as external advisors to corporations. However, consulting firms and organisations continue to serve the conventional job of consultant, conducting more detailed study on enabling.

The position of a digital marketing consultant is evolving gradually, with agencies shifting toward technology changes and recruiting highly trained digital marketers to assist clients with execution and technology.

As mentorship began to build the idea of consultancy as a business requirement, startups had various areas and terminologies. With all of these tendencies, marketing consulting has not been declared or acknowledged directly. However, the demand for a competent digital marketing consultant has grown significantly, and organisations have begun to have a better understanding.

What Digital Marketing Consultants Do?

Part of the problem is having goals but not knowing how or why to achieve them. The key to comprehending digital marketing experts is based on four factors:

Consultants help with uncertainty:

The primary function of consultants is to identify the problem. The term itself describes the definition of a consultant function. When business owners and marketing departments need to find efficient answers to marketing difficulties, they frequently turn to experienced consultants.

To summarise, it is not critical if the company was unable to clearly define the problem. It is the consultant's responsibility to investigate, identify, and propose ideas.

Consultants transform the marketing:

Hiring a digital marketing consultant differs from hiring a marketing firm or a full-time marketer. The biggest value of consultants is to bring the change that the business need. It is not about completing the job; rather, it is about researching marketing objectives, processes, and monitoring.

The greatest value of a digital marketing consultant is bringing change to the marketing department, from restructuring and recruitment to creating new strategic objectives and optimising digital marketing channels.

Consultants are partners:

Consultants, as opposed to hiring an agency, are devoid of conflicts, bureaucracy, overhead, and company policies. They act as counsellors and are results-oriented, so they are aligned with the corporate objectives. The collaboration with consultants enables business managers to have an outside expert examine marketing performance and strategic approaches. The main advantage of this relationship is that it is outside of any conflicting circles.

Consultants enhance the knowledge:

The primary goal for business owners is to bring on board a digital marketing professional. The primary reason that businesses require a professional consultant is to get sophisticated know-how and technical hands-on experience. Consultants work in essential and sophisticated areas such paid channel optimization, programmatic advertising, social media strategy, marketing automation, and lead generation campaigns.

Because of the consultant's significant knowledge, the value is enormous for organisations who use an in-house marketing team or an agency. In other words, it serves as a plug and contributes to the ability to train and educate internal talents.

Fundamentally, these basic values of what a marketing consultant can do to redesign the digital marketing department and provide advanced expertise are motivated by the desire to scale the business and, most significantly, to track the marketing dollar.

Why the Role of Digital Marketing Consultant is Becoming Important for Businesses?

The Competition is Getting Harder

Everything is becoming increasingly competitive in the online world. Everyone is vying for attention on social media and Google search. According to Facebook, nearly 80 million small businesses use the platform's free business features. All purchasing habits theories are being challenged by new generations of digital consumers.

Competing in this environment necessitates getting ahead of the game and acquiring the best minds available. Obtaining full-time digital marketing employees with advanced abilities, on the other hand, can be costly and difficult.

Digital Marketing is Changing… Fast

Digital marketing isn't what it used to be. Social networks' algorithms are continuously changing, and the era of organic reach is coming to an end. When it comes to administration and paid ads, digital marketing platforms are becoming more sophisticated and complex.

AI and Machine Learning are two areas of rapidly developing technology. Even consumers on each channel are rapidly changing, and Facebook users are not the same as they were three years ago. The more the influence of Generation Z, the greater the shift in behaviour, content, creativity, and even mediums.

The evolution of social media apps, algorithms, and customised timelines has resulted in more intricate targeting. Companies must move faster or their campaign strategies will become obsolete and ineffectual.

Lack of Strategic Approaches

The most typical mistake that businesses do is to execute marketing without a strategy. Surprisingly, I've interviewed hundreds of firms of different sizes, and the most common issue I've seen is a lack of strategic ideas. While some organisations had the staff and agencies on board for years, there was nothing in the way of a defined strategy.

Departments and divisions have been working in silos, and control has been ineffective. It is true that developing a successful marketing strategy is not a simple undertaking for businesses for a variety of reasons. Some of these causes have to do with corporate management and the high turnover rate in marketing positions.

As a result, marketing consulting plays a critical role in helping businesses determine the optimal strategic approach and employ an expert viewpoint to analyse data and insights in order to construct a strategy.

Gaps Between Marketing & Business Objectives

The main source of frustration for senior management is the misalignment of marketing and business objectives. The most typical challenges differ depending on the sort of business. Inconsistency between Sales and Marketing activities is the most typical problem in B2B. Gaps in large corporations may be caused by inefficient processes and a siloed marketing division.

Aligning marketing with corporate goals is not as simple as it may appear. Typically, it requires a significant amount of inquiry, resources, and data analysis to arrive at a final conclusion. Here comes the consultant role as an external resource with a strategic perspective and marketing experience. While internal teams can have a robust process and framework in place, a digital marketing consultant can provide vast experience.

The Incompatible Marketing and Sales

Other aspects of the Marketing and Sales connection are always labelled as'mission impossible.' Startups attempt to overcome this issue by combining it with a growth division. Ultimately, the most difficult difficulty stems from the dispute between the two departments.

Huge investments are being made in technology to structure the process, allowing us to trace the customer journey and set up the donation. CRMs and marketing clouds have attempted to address these difficulties through sophisticated tracking and automation. Salesforce, HubSpot, and Marketo have been the dominant players in the industry, providing effective solutions for tracking leads and customers.

To manage tasks and develop consistency in the process that is not restricted to technology, it appears that it is about selecting the correct Tech Stack and effectively setting up the process. An skilled consultant can assist with transformation strategy and execution. As a result, marketing cloud providers frequently recruit consulting teams to assist corporations with change and training.

Inability to Assess Marketing Performance

Data is a key part of the largest transformation in the world of digital marketing. Trackability has transformed the industry, and performance is now represented in charts and tables with precise figures and indicators.

However, most marketers are aware that marketing in some circumstances, such as organic leads and brand creation, necessitates long-term strategies. The issue is difficult to articulate, but marketing teams tend to focus all of their energy on reporting rather than developing new concepts. Performance evaluation is a challenge that can be solved by merging consulting with marketing strategy and operations.

Setting up KPIs and automatic real-time dashboards can help to overcome time-consuming reporting concerns. To execute the consistent dashboard and KPIs, a marketing analytic approach should be used to examine the data and develop the marketing dashboards.

Underdeveloped Marketing Process and Technology

Technology is a big problem for all marketers, and this is reflected in the process management. Getting into technology can have an infinite number of layers, and there are over 5000 marketing tools on the market. The difficulty for marketing is determining the best strategy to shortlisting the technology that works and connecting the dots by developing an efficient process.

It takes more than equipping individuals with technology to complete the process; it is about people first and foremost. The function of the consultant is to review the scenario and choose the technology based on the most crucial factor, which is human. One of the most significant advantages of hiring a marketing consultant is the ability to provide personalised training based on the demands of the organisation. It is a fast-paced, to-the-point presentation with live examples from the marketing department's heart.

Expensive Marketing Resources

The most critical stage in developing a successful marketing strategy is headhunting. Acquiring the proper digital marketing abilities is what distinguishes every brand we see online. The appropriate individuals, according to Steve Jobs, do not need to be supervised since they know what to do. However, in a competitive environment, it is difficult to afford the top talents on the market.

Initially, engaging a consultant has a number of cost-effective advantages, including negotiation and remote part-time contracts. The contract is frequently linked to outcomes and particular activities. According to a Credo poll, the average hourly pay for digital marketing consultants worldwide is $140.29 per hour, with 41.25 percent charging less than $100 per hour.

Lack of local market knowledge

While some organisations may have a country-specific marketing staff, hiring in-house local marketers for each area is difficult. Companies looking to develop and expand into new markets are looking for local specialists with in-depth knowledge of the market and the consumer.

Marketing consultants are essentially market gurus that have years of knowledge in a specific region or local market. They can provide advice to the organisation on prospective possibilities and dangers. In the case of cultural boundaries and various languages, a digital marketing consultant may help businesses throughout the early stages of developing a local marketing strategy and understanding the consumer persona.

Area of expertise

The complete stack consultant is quite rare in the digital world. However, there are always consultants who excel in specific areas due to their demonstrated experience and skills. As a result, it is critical for organisations to choose a consultant based on their priorities and strategic goals.

Because of the complexities of the digital environment, digital marketing consulting encompasses a wide range of disciplines. As a result, it is critical to outline some of the most significant categories to evaluate here.

Market Research: Conduct market research to uncover opportunities, competition analysis, customer persona analysis, and digital media trends.
Brand consulting entails developing standards for branding strategy, positioning, brand image, and marketing messaging.
Marketing Plan Consulting: Create and implement a marketing strategy based on the objectives, budget, and resources available.
Marketing Management Consulting: Investigate the marketing process and make recommendations for structure, recruitment, roles, and procedures.
UX Design and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Analysis: Conduct a website analysis to examine the customer's online journey and design an optimization strategy.
SEO Consulting: SEO consulting services include SEO audits, SEO analyses, keyword research, and optimization strategies.
Social Media Consulting: Social media consulting entails developing a social media strategy, optimising channels, establishing a paid social strategy, and developing a campaign plan.
Google Ads Consulting: Perform a PPC audit, performance analysis, technological integration, and optimization strategy.
Content Marketing Strategist: Provide content strategy and implementation of the content calendar, as well as inbound marketing and email workflows.
Marketing Technology Consulting: Analyze marketing technology requirements and provide guidance on how to configure automation tools and AdTech.
Marketing Analytics Consulting: Creating a marketing analytics strategy, integrating marketing data, providing a data analysis methodology, and designing marketing dashboards.

Companies with established in-house digital teams may be too deep in the weeds to recognise their shortcoming. It could be a lack of upgrading marketing technologies or avoiding strategy gaps rather than taking rigorous activities and rebuilding their approach.

As a result, businesses are aware of the risk of losing market share chances or brand positioning owing to a lack of effective marketing reach or inefficient performance control. As a result, looking for a skilled digital marketing consultant is a good addition to in-house teams and digital agencies.

While in-house teams and agencies can assist firms in executing and tracking their digital marketing strategy, consultants can always provide the finest assistance in developing an effective strategy, conducting increased research on gaps, and providing marketing technology consultation. While the hourly rate may be more than that of a traditional agency, competent consultants add more value than they charge. Furthermore, because businesses can only retain them for a few hours per week or month, they cut overhead costs.

According to input from various recruiters and freelance websites, the majority of business owners rely on digital marketing to increase their company's profitability and market share. While there are many digital marketers who can design and maintain their SEO and social media, the outcomes are usually unsatisfactory, and the competition is increasing.

Business owners are actively looking for solution providers who are market specialists to assist them on strategy and conversion metrics. Contrary to popular belief, even a high-priced freelance marketing consultant can help you save money by reducing the costs of unproductive initiatives and sponsored advertising.

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