As a small business owner, you understand the need to make every dollar count. Therefore, you want to take care of every task you can in-house to reduce your costs. The problem is, sometimes this tendency can actually cost you money in the long run.
Marketing is one place where outside help can save you time and money. But unfortunately, 76% of small business owners have difficulty creating a sound marketing strategy; This can leave you bleeding money as you struggle to reach your target customers.
Small business consulting can help you overcome this deficiency, though. So how can hiring digital marketing consultants help you? Here are five major areas where hiring the right consultants can strengthen your business and make your money count.
What is Small Business Consulting?
You are still in charge of how your business runs when you hire a digital marketing consultant. Their job is to advise you on how to strengthen your strategy.
When you hire a small business consultant, you’re relying on their expertise to help you learn how to implement needed strategies yourself. They’ll set you up with the tools you need.
A marketing consultant is a short-term expense that can provide the research and focus needed to get your marketing on the right path. They will also train your team to use the tools moving forward. This means you’ll have the knowledge to continue building your marketing strategy as you move forward.
5 Ways Digital Marketing Consultants Can Help You
A marketing consultant will take the time to understand the methods and strategies you have in place already. Then, they use this information to determine what is and is not working for you.
Depending on what stage you’re at, the consultant can help you:
- Create a brand identity
- Build a marketing strategy
- Create campaigns and promotions
- Automate processes
- Monitor the effectiveness of your strategies
Marketing strategy consulting firms know the tools that work best in digital marketing. They keep up with proven strategies and ongoing trends in marketing to help you figure out what will work best for your brand.
➊ Create a Brand Identity
Chances are you already have some branding material in place. You may not know how to tie that into a content strategy for your business though. The truth is, a branding identity is about more than logos.
To create an effective branding identity, you need to determine the personality of your business. A marketing consultant can help you determine good descriptive keywords and taglines to implement in all your marketing.
These business keywords are essential to help people recognize your company throughout all your content. These keywords need to go into:
- Website and blog content
- Social media campaigns
- Graphics and presentations
- All marketing literature (brochures, flyers, business cards, etc.)
➋ Build a Marketing Strategy
You may think you have a marketing strategy in place, but do you really? Do you understand what your marketing goals are? Do you understand who you’re trying to reach?
If you’re not sure about the answers to these questions, a marketing consultant can help you get a better grasp. Small business consultants can help create a strategy based on proven and established marketing methods. They also understand the trends that affect marketing strategies.
Armed with this knowledge, a marketing consultant can point you to the tools you need to build your strategy; This is especially important when it comes to understanding your target customers.
Target marketing involves breaking up the different demographics, such as:
- Gender
- Age
- Occupation
- Income level
- Interests
There are many factors you can use to break down your audience. This information is used to determine which leads will respond to your company’s goals and products.
Creating this target marketing strategy helps you build effective lead magnets; This leads to the vital aspect of marketing campaigns.
➌ Creating Marketing Campaigns and Promotions
Marketing campaigns are the most diverse area that a marketing consultant can help with. When you take advantage of business consulting services, you get people who can help you tailor your campaigns to the audience you need to reach.
The first step is determining what tools to use to reach your audience. Digital marketing consultants can help you determine how to incorporate these tools:
- Website promotions
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Advertisements on sites, newspapers, radio, etc.
- Business literature
A consultant can also help you locate some marketing areas you might not think of. For example, ideas such as company sponsorships or marketing partnerships are some areas you might ignore.
Help Plan Content
Once you know where to market, the next step is determining what content to use in these campaigns. Again, a digital marketing consultant can help you plan the content strategy.
One aspect of this is the original content your company shares. A consultant can help you plan effective blog and guest blog material to increase your company’s notice online. They can also help you strengthen the content you already have to create evergreen content for reuse.
The content plan also includes locating industry-relevant content from other sources. A consultant can help you establish credibility by sourcing content that fits in with your message for you to share and show your expertise.
Graphics, presentations, and interactive content also fit into this plan. A consultant can help you source and create compelling graphics to help your content stand out.
Creating a Clear Call to Action
Part of an effective marketing campaign is creating clear and compelling call to action (CTA) prompts. With each piece of content shared, you need to lead people to a specific action.
This includes sending them to landing pages, product pages, review sites, etc. With the help of a marketing consultant, you can figure out the best CTA for the content you share.
It’s essential always to lead new customers on a path; This keeps them interacting and helps them make purchase decisions.
The CTA can also include requests for reviews and testimonials. These reviews help you create brand recognition and show your business credibility.
Create a Social Media Campaign
One of the places small businesses struggle with the most is social media. Using social media effectively means understanding which platforms will work for you. It also means knowing what content will work best for each platform.
A business consulting service can help you figure out the strongest platforms for you. It’s best to stick with two or three platforms that fit your business goals. Thus, making it easier to focus your content.
Strengthen SEO and PPC strategies
Remember the business keywords we discussed? These keywords are useful for SEO as well.
If you’re not sure how to optimize your content so people can find it, a consultant can help you with this. SEO is vital to helping you get found. People rarely look past the first page of content when conducting searches.
Understanding the keywords that will get you noticed will help you move up in the ranks. It will also help you create effective pay-per-click campaigns, so you’re reaching the right leads. You can build your SEO ranking and generate more leads with the right tools.
➍ Automating Marketing Processes
There are many ways you can automate your marketing. The trick is to know when and how to do it.
Businesses often fall into two extremes. Some won’t automate anything, creating more work for themselves. Others try to automate everything, cutting down on the effectiveness of their campaigns.
If you’re not sure about automating, a marketing consultant can point you in the right direction. For instance, a consultant can help you with the tools to automate your email campaigns.
It’s crucial to build an email list. If you don’t know how to use this list, the email campaign can become time-consuming or ineffective.
A consultant can help you source and use automation processes for the different aspects of marketing, including social media automation, content sourcing and sharing, and other processes.
➎ Monitoring Marketing Strategies
Research and analytics are daunting factors in marketing. Unfortunately, 46% of small businesses don’t know how to monitor their marketing efforts. If you don’t know how to monitor your efforts, you won’t know how to create an effective strategy.
Digital marketing consultants can help you with market research, including competition research, to help you know how to reach your audience. A consultant can also help you test content and CTAs to know what gets more attention.
A consultant can also help you put analytics tools in place—This includes training your team to understand and use the analytics reports both in-house and on social media sites.
Let's Recap...
Is It Time to Hire a Business Consultant?
Creating a marketing strategy seems like a daunting task, but you can simplify the process. By implementing small business consulting, you can get all the tools and resources necessary to get the job done.
It’s unnecessary to waste money throwing it at campaigns you don’t have a clear plan for. If you’d like help getting started with an effective marketing strategy, contact us for a free consultation.
