Benefits of hiring a consultant
Consultants offer more than just their knowledge.
The term consultant has been thrown around for some time, but have you ever wondered what a marketing consultant actually does and whether you should hire one? Reasons why you should hire a consultant.
In simple terms, a digital marketing consultant builds a strategy on how to bridge your businesses offering with the online world. Helping you to sell your products and services, whilst advising you the best way to reach your customers.
The most obvious offering is their specialised knowledge. Consultants are considered to have extensive knowledge and experience in a particular industry or field and are hired to solve a problem. From a digital strategy consultant perspective, some examples of why they are hired are; to help a business get online for the first time, improve client acquisition, build a retention strategy, and analyse your conversion funnel.
So, what else do consultants offer?
- Impartial set of eyes — A consultant will have fresh eyes on the problem. They are not emotionally affected and can see the problem from a different point of view. They are also not beholden to a company’s culture or way of thinking, or affected by the sunk cost fallacy where they may not want to change their way of working as they have always done it this way or they have invested too much time into it.
- Challenge your comfort — Have you been doing the same marketing strategy over and over again? Do you feel that your marketing campaign results could be improved? Maybe your motivation has plateaued. Do you need a push to get something done, similar to a fitness instructor to pushes you to exercise a few times a week? Consultants will challenge you to achieve greater things.
- Provide resources — When employing a consultant, you not only get access to their knowledge but also their resources. This could be in the form of service recommendations such as a copywriter that they trust, or a platform/tool that they would use to solve a problem. Some consultants also offer training, coaching, and access to additional content that you would not normally have access to.
- Offer validation — Some businesses are on the right path and know exactly what to do next, but they may want to validate their assumptions. Validation may be needed before moving forward, and by staying where you are and not acting on it, can result in losing customers and costing you more in the long run.
- Providing certainty in an uncertain world — Even when businesses have been using a strategy for a while, they may suddenly face an uncertain world. This could be launching a new product, entering a new market, overcoming bad press, or the market changing suddenly and you need to adapt quickly.
I understand that a consultant tends to be expensive, or more expensive (per hour) than hiring an in-house marketing person. But, you only pay for the hours and work that they do. They challenge your pre-conceived thinking, provide additional resources, and encouragement to keep you moving forward, something that an in-house marketeer may not be able to provide. But still being an extension of your team.
What problems have you found that your internal team has struggled with?
