‘Why would I need a marketing consultant?’. This is the question that I get asked a lot when I meet people for the first time.
The truth is, some companies won’t need to outsource their marketing as they have an experienced and skilled team with enough members (and budget) to manage their marketing output. However, many companies – and in particular owner-managed businesses – don’t have the luxury of an endless budget for hiring heaps of fully qualified team members for every aspect of the marketing process.
In my experience, many business owners start out doing the marketing and then suddenly their business grows and they don’t have the time so an existing employee is ushered into the role of ‘marketing assistant’ alongside their current role. The business has some visibility from this, but it’s not consistent and it’s not necessarily targeted.
Why may you need a marketing consultant?
In my experience, it may be one, two or all of these…
- Simply, you have no marketing function in-house
This can happen for many reasons – perhaps you are a recent start up who has business foundations in place and now looking to start marketing your products or services? Maybe you are managing the marketing alongside your ‘proper’ role, or has post-pandemic meant changes within your business?
- Your current efforts aren’t converting…you don’t think
You and your team seem to be putting a lot of time, effort and money into your marketing activity but it doesn’t seem to be converting into sales, or even enquiries.
BUT are you analysing data surrounding your marketing output? Are you tracking website visitors or researching social media numbers?
A great man once said ‘you can’t manage what you don’t measure’. If you’re not regularly getting insightful data then you can’t do more of what’s working, and less of what isn’t.
- You’re just doing what you’ve always done
You put some adverts in a directory many years ago and you’re still running them now.
Marketing changes, trends change. Customers can change. You need to adapt to these changes and ensure your message still resonates.
- There’s no consistency, or plan
You have no clear plan or schedule to follow so you put some posts out, write a few blogs, perhaps even send an email or two and they work great, but there’s no follow up activity and you don’t post anything else for another month or two.
- You’re using the scattergun approach
You sign up to all of the social media platforms, you send some direct mail and make some calls. Nothing is targeted, you’re all over the place throwing paint out and hoping it sticks. [Refer back to point 2]
- You’re ‘marketing wo/men down’
Has your work force depleted and you haven’t been able to replace them with the right team? Are finances tight and you don’t have the budget to hire full time members of your team at the moment?
- You have the ideas but need a sounding board, or someone to execute them
You have plenty of ideas to get you seen but you just don’t have the time, knowledge or inclination, to execute them in a well rounded campaign.
Perhaps you know what you want to achieve but you’re not quite sure how to get there in the most effective way?
Do any of these resonate with you? Why not give me a call, or drop me a line, and let’s see how we could work together to get you into the spotlight!
