What Does a Marketing Consultant Do: A Comprehensive Guide

In today’s digital era, as businesses strive to stand out and thrive, the role of marketing consultants has gained immense significance.

But what exactly does a marketing consultant do?

This comprehensive guide sheds light on their responsibilities, essential skills required, and the digital expertise vital in today’s market landscape. It explores the typical tasks involved in this profession and outlines the path to becoming a successful marketing consultant.

Moreover, it highlights the advantages of enlisting a marketing consultant for your business, their work settings, and the average salary they command. Packed with answers to common queries, this article is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to enter or enhance their understanding of the marketing consultancy field.

For your link-building agency, VH-Info, understanding the ins and outs of a marketing consultant’s role and the value they bring to businesses can greatly enhance your services, providing insights and strategies to better assist SaaS companies in their marketing endeavors.

What Does a Marketing Consultant Do?

A marketing consultant typically performs a few key functions:

Strategic Planning – Marketing consultants help companies develop comprehensive marketing strategies and plans. This can involve analyzing the company’s products/services, customers, competition, and market trends to identify growth opportunities and challenges. Consultants then outline a strategy for positioning the company to capitalize on opportunities and address challenges.
Market Research – Consultants often conduct primary and secondary market research on behalf of clients. This helps provide data-driven insights and recommendations. It can involve focus groups, surveys, interviews, analyzing industry reports, etc.
Campaign Development – Based on the overarching strategy, consultants help craft and execute specific marketing campaigns across channels like digital marketing, print/TV ads, events, etc. This includes concepting creative ideas, project management, and tracking performance.
Analysis and Reporting – Marketing consultants use data and analytics to measure campaign/initiative performance and identify optimization opportunities. This allows them to provide key insights and recommendations in reports to clients.
Capability Building – Consultants help build clients’ internal marketing capabilities through training programs, workshops, guidelines, and frameworks. This enables the client organization to eventually manage core marketing functions on their own.

The day-to-day role varies by client, but focuses heavily on strategic advising, campaign execution, analytics, and enabling internal teams – all with the goal of driving business growth.

What Skills do you need to work as a Marketing Consultant?

Here are the key skills needed to succeed as a marketing consultant:

Strategic Thinking – Ability to analyze market drivers and synthesize data-backed marketing strategies and programs. Being able to connect business goals to marketing tactics is crucial.
Communication Skills – Excellent written and verbal communication skills to succinctly convey complex ideas to clients. This includes presentation abilities to sell ideas to leadership.
Project Management – Strong organizational skills to develop marketing plans, manage deliverable timelines, budgets, resources efficiently even when scope changes.
Analytical Skills – Quantitatively savvy to derive insights from market data, build models, track KPIs and identify optimization opportunities from marketing analytics reporting.
Leadership – Skills to direct client teams, provide counsel, manage stakeholders, align groups to goals and make tough decisions that drive outcomes.
Business Acumen – Deep understanding of how businesses operate, how value gets created and evaluating marketing ideas in the context of overall company objectives.
Creativity – Ability to come up with innovative positioning, messaging and campaign ideas that break through the clutter and achieve cut-through in the marketplace.

What Digital Skills are Required for a Marketing Consultant?

Here are the key digital skills required to succeed as a modern marketing consultant:

Website Analytics: Expertise in using tools like Google Analytics to analyze traffic, identify customer segments, attribute conversions, understand funnels and quantify marketing ROI.
Social Media Management: Knowledge of platforms like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn advertising capabilities to amplify campaigns. Staying updated as networks and offerings evolve quickly.
Digital Marketing Strategy: Develop integrated strategies across SEO, SEM, content marketing, email marketing, affiliate programs and digital partnerships.
Campaign Automation: Using tools like Pardot, Marketo or HubSpot to automate digital campaign workflows, manage complex lead nurturing tracks and analyze large datasets.
Marketing Attribution: Implementing attribution modeling to quantify the business impact generated by each digital marketing channel and campaign to optimize the mix.
Marketing Analytics: Using BI tools like Tableau and Google Data Studio to process CRM and marketing data to spot trends and derive databacked decisions through reporting and dashboards.
Data Management: Implementing marketing data architecture, ETL processes and governance to manage the large volumes of incoming customer data from diverse digital sources reliably.

Combined together, these skills empower consultants to optimize the digital marketing capabilities of their clients in a rapidly evolving landscape and pinpoint opportunities to maximize ROI efficiency from these high potential tools and channels.

What are the Typical Responsibilities of a Marketing Consultant?

Typical day-to-day responsibilities of a marketing consultant include:

Meeting with clients to understand their business goals, challenges, and current marketing efforts
Conducting market research through methods like interviews, surveys, focus groups, and data analysis
Performing analysis such as segmentation, targeting, positioning, and competitive analysis to inform strategy
Developing comprehensive marketing plans and guiding strategy across key areas like pricing, product marketing, marketing communications, distribution, and more
Creating specific campaign plans and programs for areas like digital marketing, events, content marketing, etc.
Supporting tactical execution of campaigns end-to-end, including managing projects, agencies, budgets, and timelines
Designing key performance indicators and reports to track progress across campaigns and plans
Identifying issues and opportunities for optimization based on campaign analysis and reporting
Presenting recommendations, findings, and deliverables to key client stakeholders
Building capabilities within client organizations by providing marketing toolkits, customized training, workshops, and frameworks
Becoming a strategic advisor to guide major marketing decisions and provide counsel to senior client leadership
Managing relationships with agencies, vendors, and other external partners

The job requires strong strategizing, analytical, project management and communication skills to understand business needs, deliver solutions, and drive growth.

How to Become a Marketing Consultant?

Here are the typical steps to become a marketing consultant:

Obtain a Relevant Degree – Most marketing consultants have a bachelor’s degree and some even pursue an MBA. All business-related degrees work – marketing, communications or advertising. Quantitative degrees also provide good support to be a data-driven marketer.
Gain Industry Experience – You need to build real-world marketing experience before you start consulting. Aim for 3-5 years at minimum. Working as an in-house marketer or at an advertising/marketing agency builds well-rounded experience.
Consider Getting Certified – Certifications like CPM (Certified Professional Marketer) or MCIP (Member of Chartered Institute of Marketing Professionals) can provide you additional credibility and capabilities.
Develop Specialized Skills – Hone skills in areas like brand strategy, digital marketing, analytics, product marketing and promotions. Build expertise in serving industry verticals like healthcare or technology as well. You’ll need to showcase depth.
Start Consulting – Begin consulting work at an established firm or independent consultancy to develop your skills under an experienced consultant. After gaining know-how for some years, you can start your own consultancy.
Build a Strong Network – Consciously nurture relationships within the marketing & business community since client leads & partnerships grow out of your network. Conferences and content creation aid in visibility.

What Are The Benefits Of Using a Marketing Consultant?

Here are some of the key benefits a business can get from using a marketing consultant:

Gain an Outside, Unbiased Perspective – An experienced consultant brings a high level of objectivity to the table since they are not immersed in the company’s day-to-day activities. This outside viewpoint often leads to innovative and breakthrough strategies.
Access Specialized Expertise – Marketing consultants are “full-time marketers” with expertise across many areas like branding, segmentation, digital marketing, etc. Small businesses often cannot afford to hire this level of specialized expertise in-house.
Accelerate Implementation and Results – Marketing projects can stall within client companies due to other priorities and resource constraints. A consultant can concentrate exclusively on strategizing and executing the marketing program to accelerate results.
Mitigate Risk – Seasoned consultants plan marketing initiatives based on proven frameworks and best practices learnings across other clients. This helps mitigate the risk of strategies not working and investments going waste.
Impart Capabilities – Over the course of the engagement, consultants train and impart marketing capabilities to the client’s staff through knowledge sharing. This builds self-sufficiency over time.

Where do Marketing Consultants Work?

The good thing is, if you’re a marketing consultant, you can help lots of different types of businesses.

They might need help with marketing in areas like:

Technology
Education
Healthcare
Media
Finance
Hospitality

That means you can pick the type of business you want to work with. Just like a digital marketing expert, you’ll need to decide which kind of industry and marketing methods you want to specialize in. After that, you can start searching for jobs where you can be a marketing consultant in those specific fields with marketing needs.

What is the Average Marketing Consultant Salary?

The average marketing consultant makes a lucrative annual salary, typically ranging between $80,000 to $150,000. Many factors impact their pay – experience level, firm type & size, client industry, and geographic location.

While entry level consultants may start nearer the lower end of this scale, those with over 10 years experience at top global consulting firms often command pay packages approaching $200,000 to $300,000.

The career offers the flexibility and compensation upside of running your own practice also.

Overall, marketing consulting pays very well for strategic thinkers who become trusted advisors guiding impactful business growth initiatives.

Steps to Becoming a Marketing Consultant

Becoming a successful marketing consultant takes time and effort.

Here are steps to guide you through the process:

Get the Right Education: To become a good marketing consultant, it’s important to learn proper marketing strategies. You can do this by getting a marketing or business degree from a college or by taking online courses and certifications. These programs teach you essential marketing techniques and keep you updated with the latest industry trends.
Gain Work Experience: Education is essential, but real-life work experience is invaluable. Consider internships or work programs while studying. After getting your degree, start working as a marketing, social media, or digital marketing coordinator. This allows you to learn while focusing on specific aspects of marketing.
Keep Learning: Marketing is always changing. Stay updated by following reputable organizations that share marketing news. Consider getting additional certifications to enhance your expertise and stay competitive in the field.
Specialize: Think about specializing in a particular area of marketing that interests you. This could be a specific industry or particular marketing services like social media or market analysis. Specializing can make you more appealing to clients looking for your expertise.
Choose Your Path: Decide if you want to work for a marketing firm or be an independent consultant. Working for a firm offers stability and resources, but you might have to follow set guidelines. Being independent gives you freedom but requires you to manage everything on your own.

By following these steps and staying dedicated, you can build a successful career as a marketing consultant.

Why do Companies Hire a Marketing Consultant?

If a company is having trouble with online marketing or growing their audience online, they might look for a digital marketing consultant. These consultants help by creating plans to grow the company both in the short and long term.

Companies hire marketing consultants for a few reasons. One is to help track important numbers like website visits or social media likes to see if their marketing plan is working well. They might also need training for their staff to understand digital marketing better.

Some companies hire consultants because they want to get better at connecting with their current customers and also want to reach new customers in different places.

These consultants bring special skills and experience that the company might not have. They also give a fresh view of the company’s problems and can help them improve and grow in new directions.

What Can a Marketing Consultant Do For Your Business?

A consultant can help your small business in two main ways:

They can do marketing work for your business.
They can teach you how to do it yourself or give you advice regularly.

A Marketing Consultant assists in creating marketing campaigns regularly or for specific tasks. They’ll discuss plans and strategies with you while they’re happening to suggest ways to improve your tactics.

Some marketing consultants also do market research. This means they check out other companies selling similar things. They might look at prices, check company profiles online, or even ask customers about what they need.

FAQ’s:

Who is a Marketing Consultant?

A marketing consultant is like a helpful guide for companies who wants to do better in their marketing.

They’re experts in different parts of marketing, like figuring out what customers want, making the company look good, and using data to make smart decisions.

These consultants look at a company from the outside and make plans to make it better. They help with online stuff, events, making content, and more.

By using their special skills, they make the company’s marketing work better and teach the company how to do it themselves.

Basically, they’re like a supercharger for a company’s marketing, making it way more effective because they know a lot of different things about how to do it right.

How a Marketing Consultant Can Help?

Here are some key ways a marketing consultant can help a business:

Identify Opportunities – By analyzing the market context, company offering and customer needs, the consultant can identify new opportunities to reach and better serve target customer groups. This outside-in perspective provides fresh insights into growth possibilities.
Create Strategic Marketing Plans – The consultant formulates structured marketing strategies spanning key areas including positioning, product mix, pricing, promotion and place backed by market research. This blueprint aligns marketing with wider business goals.
Execute Campaigns – The consultant takes end-to-end ownership across brainstorming compelling ideas, copywriting, project planning, budgeting as well as tactically managing agencies or internal teams to execute integrated marketing campaigns across multiple channels.
Setup Tracking – They institute processes leveraging analytics tools to continually measure campaign effectiveness through defined metrics. This allows for optimization and accountability for return on marketing investment.
Build Marketing Assets – The consultant creates marketing deliverables like brand guidelines, content templates, email workflows, data models and dashboard reporting structures that continue enabling the team over time even after consulting engagement ends.

Is a Marketing Consultant a Good Job?

Yes, marketing consultant can be a highly rewarding career choice. It pays well to start, with average salaries ranging from $80k to $150k, going up to $200k+ for experienced consultants.

More so, it provides the flexibility to specialize, work across interesting industries, take on entrepreneurial projects and progress quickly to leadership roles.

For strategic thinkers who become trusted advisors guiding business success, the constantly evolving nature of marketing also makes it an engaging career full of continuous learning. The ability to see ideas impact growth and empower organizations provides great job satisfaction.

Do You Need Assistance With Marketing Consultancy?

Yes, an experienced marketing consultant can be very helpful for taking your business growth to the next level.

They bring a fresh viewpoint and know-how from different industries, which helps them find new chances and make smart plans using data.

Their work leads to better outcomes from your marketing spending by reaching more people, getting them involved, and turning them into customers.

When you bring in a consultant, it’s like adding rocket fuel to your marketing efforts because they have special skills, concentrate only on marketing tasks, and share their knowledge.

If your business is looking to expand in the market or your team is stretched thin, a consultant can give that extra push for better results.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a marketing consultant plays a crucial role in helping businesses achieve their marketing goals and drive growth.

With a combination of marketing expertise, digital skills, and a deep understanding of consumer behavior, they are able to develop effective strategies and campaigns that resonate with the target audience.

Whether it’s optimizing websites for search engines, creating compelling content, analyzing campaign data, or providing valuable insights and recommendations, a marketing consultant brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table.

If you’re looking to take your business to the next level and need guidance from a marketing expert, consider hiring a marketing consultant. They can help you navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape, reach your target audience, and achieve measurable results.

Whether you’re a small business owner or a marketing professional looking to enhance your skills, a marketing consultant can provide valuable assistance and support. Don’t hesitate to reach out and explore the benefits of working with a marketing consultant.