5 Things to Consider Before Hiring a Marketing Consultant
It seems you can't turn around on the Internet (virtually speaking) without bumping into a marketing consultant. They're in your email inbox and Instagram DMs, claiming that they'll help with your SEO, your paid digital ad strategy, the about page on your company website, etc.
The problem? Many of them — if not most of them — are a sham. Before you hire a marketing consultant, consider these five strategic steps in evaluating and screening their bona fides and qualifications.
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When you're considering hiring a marketing consultant, it's tempting to simply state "we need more customers" and leave it at that. However, to get the most out of any marketing work, it's important to be more specific and granular with your goals. The more detail you can give your consultant, the higher your chances of meeting those goals with the consultant's help.
Look at specific metrics that will help measure progress to your goals, as well. If you're focused on revenue, consider tracking things like the lifetime value of a client and the cost per acquisition of a new client. If you're laser-focused on improving your digital ad campaigns, look at conversion rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates for your landing pages.
These metrics, together with your overall goals, will help you evaluate any marketing consultant you're considering. If they can speak intelligently about smart, proven strategies to boost those metrics, they might be a good fit.
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A written request for proposals is a great idea. It saves you and potential consultants time and gives them a firm document to refer to when preparing their proposal. Explain your goals, objectives, business model, targeted audience, what you've already tried and what results you've achieved.
If they aren't willing to put in the effort to read your document and submit a written proposal in response to it, they're a bad fit.
Once you've received their written proposal, review it carefully and jot down any questions you have. Then schedule time for an in-person, video or telephone interview so you can explore their qualifications and experience in more detail.
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Criteria should be based on your business goals and the specific objectives you'd like the consultant you hire to help you meet. For example, have they worked with similarly situated clients to reach the kinds of goals you've set?
Verify with the consultant who will be doing the actual work. Many consultants operate on a freelance basis and subcontract with other freelancers for specific tasks. You'll want to approve those subcontractors if that's the case. Others might operate on a pseudo-agency basis. In either case, you want to find out the breadth and extent of the experience each member of the consultant's team might have.
Ask for references, preferably from businesses like yours (same field, size, revenue level). Then follow up with those references to learn their perspective on what it was like working with the consultant and how well they met the client's expectations.
An interview will also allow the consultant to ask you questions. Experienced consultants know that the key to positioning themselves as an expert and learning whether the job is a good fit for their skills or not is mostly a matter of asking the right questions and listening carefully to the answers
Note carefully which questions they ask. Experienced marketing consultants are more interested in getting information from you, the potential client, and will ask great questions right off the top, such as:
These questions will tell you how engaged and insightful the consultant is. If they're asking the right questions, they're more likely to be the right fit for your needs.
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After your interview, ask yourself: Did you just learn anything from the consultant? Truly skilled consultants aren't afraid to share their expertise. They know that the value of what they do is in the execution and in the results they bring.
So giving you new information isn't a threat to them at all — quite the contrary. Sharing information is how they demonstrate their authority and skill level. If they're truly good at what they do, then you should immediately learn from them, even during the interview.
Fees and costs can be the elephant in the room, especially at the beginning of a new professional relationship. You don't need to pin them down to a specific price, and in fact, that might be difficult to do early on in the process. What you need before you hire a consultant is an idea of how close their pricing expectations align with yours.
Get comfortable with asking about the consultant's fees and how they structure costs as soon as you can reasonably do so. Their response might be vague and fuzzy, but they should be able to give you an estimate or range. That should tell you whether the consultant is a good fit.
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As part of the pricing discussion, you'll need to hammer out a detailed scope. After all, it's impossible to evaluate the fairness and fit of a quoted price unless you know what you'll get in return for it. Working out a basic scope helps you evaluate competing quotes or offers from different marketing consultants on an apples-to-apples basis.
Use your consultant to help you with this. They're the expert, after all, and it's difficult for you as the client to know with specificity what particular tasks need to be done and how often. Use their basic recommendations to nail down a list of deliverables and tasks. Get very specific about how they will help you so that you can determine if it will yield a good return on your investment.
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