Digital Marketing Strategy Consulting Benefits and Challenges

2022.05.30 07:17 PM By Joshua Taddeo, Principal Consultant

If you want to carry out a successful digital marketing plan, your first step is to execute and analyze different actions, know where every marketing technique fits in your strategy, and map out real-life scenarios. Fortunately, a digital marketing consultancy can help you do just that. What else can these consultants do for your organization? For businesses looking to implement new projects in your organization, restructure their digital capabilities, or launch a new initiative to maximize and optimize their performance, it's time for you to hire digital marketing strategy consulting services. A digital marketing consulting firm will help you organize ideas and concepts, carry out strategies, and put the different stages of your project into motion, from the initial brainstorming to its execution. There are some digital marketing strategy consulting benefits and challenges that we'll cover in this article.

The Marketing Consulting Model

Fundamentally, the consulting model is interconnected with the business plan on several levels. Firstly, market research is a key stage for understanding the marketplace and the consumer. Setting the right prospects and collecting useful insights is the cornerstone of launching the brand and designing the digital marketing strategy. Contributions of marketing to the organizational structure and infrastructure are crucial in a digital-first world. Furthermore, the businesses are moving to customer-centric models, which requires building an effective customer analysis and connecting the online journey of the customer with the customer relationship data.

Benefits of Marketing Consulting Services

In an age where smart social media marketing can make or break your business, no longer can business owners afford to miss out on such marketing opportunities. It is essential that businesses of all sizes equip themselves with the help of a marketing consultant, an expert if you will, who understands the nuances of traditional print, social media, and word-of-mouth marketing. While hiring a marketing consultant can be a significant investment, it is an investment that will yield dividends in the long run. Let's take a look at what we mean.

Get Instant Expertise & Experience

When you hire a marketing consultant, you can work with someone who understands the market. They know what your clients or audience members want to hear in regards to your product. They are an expert in catering literature to grasp the attention of these individuals. They are natural leaders in their field.

Businesses are always searching for highly specialized opinions and expert assistance not just to accomplish the task but also to provide a competitive edge in the market. Consulting services are always required to add value to the brand and marketing activities and not just to compliment it. The main benefit of marketing consultants is their ability to provide an expert vision and prevent marketing mistakes.

The expansion of the marketing consultancy role has been subject to different prospective and offerings. Agencies provided the services based on their calibers and customized the services based on the client's needs. However, the complexity of digital marketing created a major demand for advisors in all the digital channels as well as platforms. Gradually, a new generation of marketing consultants started to join the force as freelance experts or sub-contractors. As a result, marketing consulting has been a specialized role conducted by highly experienced experts in certain marketing channels such as social media or even technically specialized consultants in a platform such as HubSpot, MailChimp, or Google Search Ads.

Achieve Seamless Integration

Developing a smart marketing plan does not just happen overnight. It is important to have a seamless transition when you do decide to proceed with a full-scale marketing effort. A marketing consultant ensures this smooth transition and that those daily activities, such as updating Facebook posts or blogging, are manageable for your company.

Obtain True Objectivity

Sometimes, it is difficult to see the errors of your ways when you have been marketing your business in a certain way for a long time. Whether your business has relied on print flyers or newspaper ads, it may be difficult for you to realize why these marketing methods no longer work. A marketing consultant offers a fresh perspective and is not afraid to tell you what needs to be improved.

External Perspective

A marketing consultant utilizes his or her education and experience to analyze the ways in which your marketing efforts can be taken to the next level. This external perspective is invaluable as your business determines where it wants to be in the next decade or two.

Furthermore, marketing consulting is an external resource that brings new opinions to the table of stakeholders. The third-party intervention can provide new interpretations of the situation and the marketing problems. An experienced consultant has the ability to demonstrate accurate research and provide an extensive hypothesis. Basically, being an external resource allows the marketing consultant to investigate more and expand the analysis.

Avoid Trial And Error

Learning from trial and error can sometimes come at an extreme cost for a small business. In regards to social media marketing, your business can not afford to miss out on the incredible opportunities that exist for gaining new customers, building an international client base, or building a solid reputation for your business.

Scale Up

You may also require the assistance of a marketing consultant to assist you in determining hiring needs for your business. It may be the case that you do need to hire a marketing specialist or staff of professionals to meet the objectives of your marketing goals. A marketing consultant can help you determine the number of employees that you may need to hire and may even be able to play a role in recruiting efforts.

Transforming the marketing role in business is the core value behind the consultation process. Primarily, the concept of marketing transformation is commonly connected to the process of digital transformation in business. Yet, it is very important to take into perspective the role of marketing transformation in revamping the marketing department. Marketing consulting is one of the most effective approaches to evaluating and planning a marketing transformation. Eventually, the consulting here could include several tasks such as marketing automation plan, marketing structure, marketing tech stack assessment, data analysis framework, and most importantly, coaching and training.

While hiring a marketing agency or marketing professional requires setting specific responsibilities and budgets in advance, consultants are more like strategic partners, and their key role is to investigate ongoing challenges. Traditionally, the marketing department requires new hires to catch up with new technologies and to fulfill different tasks. Consultants provide more capabilities in testing marketing technology and defining the accurate direction without the need for experiential journeys.

As a result, marketing consulting allows a customizable approach without the need to sign a full commitment or spend a budget on uncertain tracks. The customized scale is another major benefit of marketing consulting services for all types of companies. While medium size companies have an established brand and marketing approach, startups are looking for experts to help in setting up the marketing strategy and the brand. Marketing consulting services can engage with different types of companies and brands based on their scale, budget, and market size. However, well-known consulting firms are more into big accounts but independent, and freelancer marketing consultants are usually flexible and able to provide customized services.

Save Money

Ultimately, hiring a marketing consultant will help your business to save money. Your business will be able to take advantage of a whole new client base that exists on a global scale. A marketing consultant may help your business develop a new website, create online literature or create online listings that boost the profitability of your business. Marketing ROI and Return on Ad Spend ROAS are definitely crucial factors in assessing the marketing performance. There are always complicated challenges in turning every aspect of marketing activity into straightforward ROI calculations. The marketing consultants are commonly involved in designing accurate and reliable metrics to track performance across all the marketing channels.

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The main benefit of hiring a marketing consultant to design the reports and dashboards is that they are external resources with a set of solid standards in tracking and analysis. Accordingly, the consultants can help in solving the common conflict between marketing departments and senior management. Additionally, a key role of the marketing consulting is to audit the paid channels and provide recommendations on the channels mix as well as the optimization process of digital advertising platforms such as Google Search Ads, Facebook Ads, Display, Programmatic, and other paid social media channels.

Keep Track of Your Competitors

A thorough understanding of the opponent is a must for a fair fight. Practical competition analysis provides information about your competitors' strengths and weaknesses. By studying the industry and determining your competitive edge, digital marketing consulting services assist you in achieving business success. On a local, national, or worldwide level, you can compete. It will be easier to beat your opponents if you know more about them. Analyzing your competitors' content marketing, social media presence, and SEO techniques can provide valuable insight into your industry's marketing image while also revealing shortcomings in your digital approach.

Showcase Your Brand to the Right Audience

You must focus on the type of material suitable to your type of business and be easy to deliver to your target demographic among the vast array of standard information. A digital marketing consultant service can help you do that. Companies generally choose more than one sort of content from an extensive range of options, such as blogs, videos, images, infographics, advertising, plugins, and animations, to present their presence in the digital world. You will then be familiar with their interests and the type of material that might appeal to them. The appropriate distribution methods after a digital marketing consulting agency assist you in gathering essential data on your target group.

Measure your Ad Campaign Progress

A digital marketing consulting service can help you determine the purpose of your ad campaign. The purpose of a website that sells advertising or contacts could be to increase traffic or database size. This results in an increase in sales for numerous websites. After they have helped you settle on your goal, you may decide on the metrics you'll like to use to determine when it's been met. The number of ad views indicates how many times your ad is displayed to website visitors each day, week, or month. This figure is frequently substantially more significant than the number of persons who have clicked on your advertisement. Compare one ad to another; this is a great indicator to use.

What Digital Marketing Consulting Services Can Do for Your Business

A digital marketing consultancy creates digital marketing plans, defines the strategies you need to position yourself on the market to grow and then execute them, and considers the necessary channels to communicate them to reach your target audience successfully. They'll also go into critical aspects for developing any enterprise, such as:

Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy serves as a roadmap for all the campaigns you'll launch, making sure your company will be successful online. It includes the specific business goals you want to achieve, your available resources, a timeline for analysis and results, marketing channels, and KPIs. The strategy also details the key messages to be used, the audience segments to be targeted, and the mix of channels and tactics to reach them. Depending on your arrangement, your digital marketing consultant will be responsible for: Planning a fitting approach for your company based on your industry, target audience, and current digital marketing effectiveness and activities.

Identify priority objectives for your company (e.g., getting more traffic, generating more leads, and increasing conversions). Exploring select online marketing channels and platforms to start (e.g., Google Adwords, Facebook ads, and SEO). Regularly checking of data analytics to get results relevant to your company's priority objectives and recommend the next steps. Updating online campaigns for retargeting and optimizing leads to increase conversions.

Branding

Branding goes beyond your logo, tagline or slogan, color schemes, and fonts. There's also your brand identity. This includes your unique selling proposition, personality, and the feelings you want your target customers to feel about you and your products. The digital marketing consultant aims to improve the overall brand image with creative online marketing campaigns that, hopefully, effectively results in conversions and leads. To achieve this, you and your digital marketing consultant should follow and align on the points below:

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Brand purpose: Know your products and services like the back of your hand and the 'why' behind them.

Target audience: Define your customer and understand them through their digital footprint and behavior.

Competitor and market landscape: Scope the critical players in your industry, identifying what they do differently and how to angle your approach.

Unique selling points: Understand what makes your brand, product, or service unique.

Brand voice: Know how best to communicate with your target audience using a consistent and cohesive voice so your brand will be 'seen' the same way across different platforms.

Brand recognition: digitally engage with your customers in many ways and be consistent in how you speak to them.

Following a compelling digital brand strategy with the above points, your company should be able to enjoy an overall increase in brand awareness, loyalty, and advocacy.

Content Planning

To start, the digital marketing consultant creates a content calendar to document and guide efforts based on the company's overall content marketing strategy. This calendar provides focus and direction for your company's content creation that will later prove valuable and relevant as you grow. There are different content calendar templates that you can explore, such as Trello, Asana, Airtable, or just a simple Excel file.

Using a content calendar ensures a smoother process of identifying the right type of content to produce, topics and subtopics to be covered, frequency and timeline of publishing, selecting channels to feature the content, team member allocation for specific content, and progress updates, and the like.

The digital marketing consultant should manage your workflow process and answer the following questions about the content strategy:

Who's the target audience for your content?

How does your content answer your target audience's specific problems?

What to highlight to differentiate your products and services from competitors?

Which content types work best to achieve your digital marketing priorities?

Which marketing channels work best for your content?

How to better allocate and manage human resources to address all content planning needs?

Project Management

Project management involves combining various skills, techniques, and knowledge to complete specific tasks and project requirements. Whether the digital marketing consultant you'll hire will be working with your team or not, he or she must be equipped with this skill to ensure your marketing campaigns are launched on time.

Storytelling

Establishing an emotional connection with your consumer increases trust between you and your customers by connecting with them on a personal level. When brands tell a story, consumers listen. Ask yourself: Would you read a story of how a consumer benefited from a product or a list of its benefits?

Storytelling can be shown in different types and formats. But, before that, to write a compelling brand story, a digital marketing consultant focuses on these aspects:

Know the core brand identity and create a brand narrative or signature story.

Provide clarity to the 'why' of your company.

Find and understand what makes your target audience tick.

Optimize the impact of different content formats, types, and styles.

Utilize the strengths of different online platforms for specific content formats or types.

Create consistency in the look and feel of your content.

SEO

Digital marketing consultants stay up-to-date on the latest SEO best practices and trends. With around 3.5 billion searches worldwide made on Google every day, optimizing content for search engines has never been more critical. SEO, or search engine optimization, is a primary online marketing method aimed at increasing quality traffic to your website through organic search results. When your content's optimized, your rank in search engine results will be higher and more visible to your target audience. SEO requires some patience to see results, and your digital marketing consultant must ensure you achieve the results you want to achieve.

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Publishing relevant content that stays true to your brand story while providing industry-related news to give your audience an update. Build an SEO strategy around topics that are relevant to your industry and company, and make sure to update the content regularly. Doing keyword research to optimize relevant SEO keywords with high traffic potential on your content. Building links across your content to make it worthy of sharing. Familiarizing how the ranking algorithm goes and maximizing click-through rate (CTR) with your titles, URLs, and descriptions.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Digital marketing consultants must be savvy about the different PPC ad programs offered on Google and social media channels. They should also know how to maximize your ad spend in promoting your products or services to your target customers. PPC advertising is done for a diverse set of industries. It's also used if you want to generate traffic to your websites faster, like through Google AdWords or Facebook.

Analytics and Evaluation

By reviewing and analyzing your data analytics, a digital marketing consultant can determine quantitatively the types of content and the specific topics which bring in more traffic to your website, social media accounts, and other digital channels. A digital marketing consultant can also use data analytics to understand your target audience's behavior and preferences. You can then leverage these insights to create campaigns that'll help you build more trusting relationships with your customers, get more leads, and generate sales.

Why Hire A Digital Marketing Consulting Firm

In the digital world, the full stack consultant is considerably rare. However, there are always consultants who are strong in specific areas based on their demonstrable experiences and skills. Consequently, it is important for businesses to select a consultant based on their priorities and strategic objectives. Digital marketing consultancy combines a long list of fields due to the complexity of the digital world. Therefore, it is important to define some of the most important categories to consider.

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Market Research: Conduct market research to identify the opportunities, competitive analysis, customer persona analysis, and digital media trends

Brand Consulting: Provide guidelines for the branding strategy, positioning, brand image, and marketing message

Marketing Strategy Consulting: Develop and implement a marketing strategy based on the objectives and allocated budget and resources

Marketing Management Consulting: Study the marketing process and provide recommendations for the structure, recruitment, roles, and process

UX Design and CRO analysis: Run website analysis in order to study the customer's online journey and develop an optimization plan

SEO Consulting: Provide SEO Audit, SEO analysis, keyword research, and optimization plan

Social Media Consulting: Define the social media strategy, optimize the channels, setup paid social strategy, and campaign plan

Google Ads Consulting: Conduct PPC audit, performance analysis, technical integration, and optimization plan

Content Marketing Strategist: Provide content strategy and implement the content calendar, inbound marketing, and email workflows

Marketing Technology Consulting: Analyze the marketing technology needs and give direction to configure automation tools and AdTech

Marketing Analytics Consulting: Develop the marketing analytics strategy, integrate the marketing data, provide a data analysis framework, and design marketing dashboards

Companies with established in-house digital teams may be too deep in the weeds to realize where their weakness lies. It might be the lack of improving marketing technology or moving around the strategy gaps instead of taking intensive actions and rebuilding their approach. Consequently, businesses are aware of the risky situation that might occur by losing opportunities in market share or losing the brand positioning due to the lack of effective marketing reach or inefficient performance control. Therefore, searching for a professional digital marketing consultant is an addition to the in-house teams and digital agencies.

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Although in-house teams and agencies can help businesses to execute and track the digital marketing plan, the consultants can always provide the best help in building an effective strategy and offer enhanced research on the gaps. Also, while the hourly fee could be higher than a regular agency, professional consultants create more value than they charge. In addition, companies can only retain them for a few hours each week or month; they reduce the overhead cost. Schedule a consultation call with Universal Creative Solutions and learn more about how we can help your business!