What does a Digital Marketing Consultant Do?

Digital marketing is an umbrella term that’s used to describe various forms of marketing 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 offer 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 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.  (pewresearch)

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 range of online marketing methods, from social media 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.

What is the role of a digital marketing consultant?

The basic definition of a digital marketing consultant is someone who is a highly skilled professional with specialist training in online marketing, who knows how to target consumers in the right ways to see the results that a business needs.

There’s a common misconception in terms of what a marketing consultant does, a lot of people presume that they deal with every aspect of advertising, but that’s not the case.

If you already have ideas for your marketing, then you would contact an advertising agency to make those ideas a reality.

What a marketing consultant does is work with businesses, from startups to large corporations, to determine how best to engage existing clients and prospective ones. A marketing consultant uses the company’s existing business model to consider what market potential there is, and then creates a marketing strategy that should work successfully for the brand, allowing them to achieve their goals.

In terms of what exactly a marketing consultant focuses on, that depends on the business and its needs.

Below are some of the more typical responsibilities that marketing consultants can take on:

• Find new opportunities for the business to engage with existing customers and attract new ones.

• Perform an evaluation of existing marketing, such as social media, SEO, and email marketing, for instance, and use that to create more effective marketing methods.

• Improve company branding so that it resonates better with customers and prospective customers.

• Improve client engagement and communication, a great tool for this is social media campaigns that can involve various social media platforms. (paid and organic)

• Coordinate platforms for content, such as a blog and website landing pages, using SEO to ensure that all content is search engine friendly and ranks the pages and site highly in Google and other search engines.

• Manage marketing campaigns run via email, social media, mobile marketing, and local marketing.

• Use analytics to monitor success and ensure that optimal results are achieved. At the bare minimum, this would include Google Analytics, Google search console, and Heat map user tracking and recording.

The role of a marketing consultant is quite a diverse one, as they offer help in many different areas of marketing and business. They advise, plan, and research, to ensure that a business is utilizing online marketing to reach their best customers/leads on the right platforms.

What skills are required to be a good marketing consultant?

Just like in every role, to be successful, there are certain things that a digital marketing consultant must have to succeed. Being a digital marketing consultant means understanding how the internet is a crucial marketing tool and how to use it effectively to market a brand.

It’s about knowing how each social media platform and digital channel connect with each other and how these connections can be used to effectively market a business. With that in mind, the question remains – what specific skills does a successful marketing consultant need?

An important part of being a marketing consultant is being able to analyze data and use analytics to determine how well a company’s marketing is going and to make actionable recommendations. To make this easier, a hybrid of technical and creative problem-solving skills are invaluable.

It’s also vital that digital marketing consultants are goals focused. This means knowing not only how to set achievable goals but also how to successfully measure success when it comes to meeting them. Businesses are always looking for results, which is why being able to set realistic goals is so important.

If a marketing consultant sets unrealistic goals, they won’t be able to meet them, which will leave their clients dissatisfied with the service that they have received. This is why setting S.M.A.R.T. goals is important.

When it comes to understanding strategy and tactics, the first thing that a marketing consultant needs to understand is that the two are not the same.

A strategy is the plan of action to reach a certain
goal, while tactics is a specific action that is part of the strategy.

To be a good marketing consultant, understanding this is crucial. 

Give a person a coloring book and they can color between the lines (tactics).

But without lines (the strategy), it’s just a big mess.

To be a sought-after marketing consultant, it’s important to be a good listener. This is because to get a proper insight into a business, its’ needs, and any problems that it is having; it’s crucial to be able to listen to what is being said beyond the words. A good marketing consultant knows that listening and empathizing with the business’s problems is a vital skill.

Even businesses that are direct competitors will have unique differences that are not easy to spot right away. Only by spending the time to thoroughly understand a business can this be discovered.

An important part of the role of a marketing consultant is to collect data, organize that data, pull out insights, and come up with recommendations for the company that balances each area of marketing and prioritizes the most important aspects.

Lastly, to be successful, a marketing consultant needs to have leadership skills and be professional in the way that they work. When a marketing consultant is hired, the company expects them to be confident and professional in how they go about their work. No one wants to work with a marketing consultant that doesn’t approach their work in a professional and confident way, as this suggests that they have a lack of adequate knowledge and experience for the job.

Who needs the help of a digital marketing consultant & why?

There’s no doubt about it, digital marketing consultants can be incredibly useful for certain companies, but the question is how do you know when you need their help and why?

Let’s start with who needs the help of a marketing consultant. This is something we have already discussed above – the people who require the help of marketing consultants are business owners. Marketing consultants can help businesses of all shapes and sizes, from small startups to huge corporations; it’s just a case of finding the right strategy and tactics for each individual business’s needs.

Businesses that can benefit from working with a marketing consultant are companies that…

• Want to expand and grow their customer base.

• Need to set strong, well-defined online marketing goals.

• Want a strong marketing plan that focuses on both short-term and long-term goals.

• Need assistance measuring key analytics to improve chances of success.

• Want to improve relationships with customers and prospective customers.

• Want to expand into new markets to connect with new customers.

• Want to intimately understand how their competition is marketing themselves online
  in relation to their own positioning. (Competitive Intelligence)

For businesses, the help of a digital marketing consultant can allow them to expand their business and move into new markets, improving their success and boosting their revenue. For businesses that don’t have the skills and knowledge to deal with their own digital marketing needs, working with a digital consultant can help them to ensure that they have a strong strategy in place with goals that are achievable to meet and will aid their progress in terms of meeting their long-term goals.

The internet is a crucial marketing tool in today’s technology-focused world, which is why it’s so important that businesses understand how a marketing consultant can help them to achieve their goals and take their business where they want it to go.

There you have it, a guide to what a digital marketing consultant does and how they can help businesses to achieve their goals.

In today’s internet-obsessed world, online marketing has become a crucial tool for businesses, which is why the role of marketing consultants has never been more important. With many business owners not knowing how to effectively deal with their digital marketing needs themselves, marketing consulting is an incredibly important role.

Digital marketing can allow a business to engage more effectively with their customers, as well as reaching out to new prospective customers more easily, making it a popular marketing choice for companies of all shapes and sizes.

Last but not least, a digital marketing consultant spends an immense amount of time developing their craft so you can focus on what you love and are great at doing.