How and why your business will benefit from a marketing consultant
The acceleration of media expansion over the last 15 years, primarily in the form of social media, online and digital marketing, has increased marketing and communications opportunities for businesses and presented challenges in equal measure. At a time when TV advertising was a preserve of the wealthiest brands, traditional marketing techniques, such as print advertising, PR, trade shows and foot soldiers direct selling to potential clients, have given way to a more complex and sophisticated marketing landscape. Today, social and digital marketing is predominant, but it’s incredibly saturated too. Now businesses need to balance the values of traditional media marketing with a range of channels including social media and social media marketing, online and digital marketing, influencer campaigns, SEO and blogs, e-mail marketing, Google Ads and marketplace platforms like Amazon. Not to mention the plethora of campaigns within each media genre!
Managing behavioural change
And then there’s behavioural change. A little over a decade ago, businesses looking for products and services, and consumers searching for the same, reached out to brands and businesses by phone or email, at trade shows, in shops or by engaging directly with sales people. Not anymore. Businesses and consumers now search online, undertake research of their own and make purchasing decisions without making an enquiry until they’re almost at the point of purchase. Whether B2b or B2c, it’s generally accepted that people are more than 80% along the decision making process by the time they engage with a brand or business they want to buy from.
The marketing challenges you face
This combination has several impacts on how businesses need to approach marketing. First, it presents challenges on budgets. Unless you have access to a significant depth of resources to cover all bases, businesses need to create a strategy that reaches a defined audience in the most cost efficient way. This means selecting a mix of techniques and tactics that will achieve multiple marketing aims, such as brand awareness, engagement, lead generation and sales. Next is expertise. Resourcing a marketing department with experts that have all the skills required, never mind the investments you need to make on frontline campaigns, is a challenge. From copywriting to content creation, design, online marketing and digital marketing specialists, the skills required to implement marketing campaigns in a multimedia universe are wide ranging. Third are tools and resources. With so many marketing channels to manage, your business needs the tools and resources to create, implement, evaluate and evolve your campaigns. Last is competition. Marketing is about what you do, but it’s also about competing with businesses that offer comparable products and alternative solutions. Your customers have a choice, and part of the challenge is competing for the hearts, minds and money of customers, as you’re just one of many brands that will inevitably present options for them to consider. In the end it’s about how they perceive you, identify with you and relate to your brand, and then it comes down to quality and price too. You have to be in it to win it!
With so much at stake, what are your options?
Appointing an agency with the depth and range of skills and resources is one way, and of course we offer that at Feel Marketing. This option will give you all you need to be effective. However, with so many recent impacts on businesses, such as Covid, rising business costs, inflation and high interest rates, working with a consultant could be your best option. For businesses that have a small marketing team, or no marketing team, a consultant can bring many benefits. And in response to this need, Feel Marketing now offers its expertise on a consultancy basis to complement its full service offering.
A new consultancy solution
As opposed to managing your marketing campaigns from strategy to implementation and evaluation to evolution, Feel can now partner your business on a consultancy basis. This brings a wide range of benefits including:
Expertise and perspective: Working as a consultant, we bring a wealth of expertise, and an external perspective, to identify and solve complex marketing challenges. With over 23+ years of specialised knowledge, we can help your business develop more effective marketing strategies, leading to better targeting and an improved ROI based on your budget availability.
Objectivity: We can review your current approach and evaluate your existing strategy to see how and where this can be improved and refined. We can work directly with business owners and/or with your marketing person or team to see how your strategy and plan can be developed and improved. This can involve conducting an audit of marketing activities, and providing an unbiased assessment and actionable recommendations to enhance performance. This objectivity can lead to more innovative and effective marketing solutions.
Cost effectiveness and flexibility: As an alternative to investing in a full-time marketing team, or our fully retained services, partnering your business on a consultancy basis is very cost effective. Essentially we offer direction, advice and recommendations, and ways to increase your marketing effectiveness. This can cover a specific area or a wider remit including PR, social media, advertising, digital marketing, Google Ads…and more. Then you have the option to manage your marketing in-house while we discuss and meet regularly in person, or virtually, to keep you on track and evolve together. If there are areas you’d like to defer to us, we can undertake these on a project basis, thus expanding your skills resource as and when required.
This approach is particularly beneficial for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that may not have the resources to maintain a large in-house team. By leveraging our services on a consultancy basis, your business can access top-tier marketing expertise without the overhead costs. We deliver these services on a fixed hourly rate, that can be capped each month, to help you manage our contribution within your means.
Networks: As an agency with over two decades of experience, we bring valuable networks and industry connections. These relationships can open doors to new opportunities, partnerships, and collaborations with key media contacts and outlets, influencers and synergic brands to deliver significant strategic advantages.
Tools and resources: Lastly, over many years we have invested in the latest tools and technologies that enhance marketing effectiveness. You can benefit from these to help you implement, evaluate and evolve your campaigns. This can include recommending tools to streamline your in-house approach by integrating advanced marketing automation, analytics, and CRM systems, ensuring that marketing efforts are data-driven and aligned with best practices. This technological edge can improve operational efficiency, enhance customer engagement, and ultimately drive growth.
Want to know more?
If your business recognises the importance of marketing efficiency and acknowledges that there’s scope to improve your approach and achieve better results, reach out to us to see how we can help.
Contact us on 01372 635 638, email us or complete and submit the form below: