Companies with established marketing teams may be too deep in the weeds to realize where their weakness lie. Consequently, they risk losing market share to competitors who regularly recruit outside help to spot marketing inefficiencies and improve existing processes.
To grow your business, consider hiring a digital marketing agency or consultant who can enhance your current marketing initiatives or build and execute a complete marketing strategy from scratch. Not convinced? Below are five reasons why you should retain a digital marketing expert.
- Consultants audit and improve current and former campaigns
In-house marketers are not always honest to themselves. When critiquing their performance, they may overlook important details that are the root failures of a certain strategy. Because they are so involved in fulfilling day-to-day responsibilities, they might not have enough energy or time to step back and take a look at how each campaign and their overall marketing strategy impacts the organization long-term.
To improve existing marketing initiatives, recruit a marketing consultant who can ask hard questions about your digital marketing strategy. Consultants are advantageous because they offer a third-party perspective on what is good and bad about the marketing tactics you pursue and their execution. Have the consultant audit the work that has been done and the processes your marketing team takes to complete certain tasks. A good digital marketing consultant can point out flaws that affect your marketing team’s efficiency and provide suggestions to speed up productivity. Furthermore, consultants with deep experience in your industry can offer specialized expertise and help you better communicate with customers to achieve more of your goals.
- Consultants can train marketers on staff
Many small businesses have a modest marketing team made up of less than a handful of people. With such limited resources, it can be hard to train each of your marketing associates to develop certain skills that would best help your business.
In this instance, marketing consultants are key to long-term success. Many are available to coach and train your junior marketing associates. With the support of an experienced marketing consultant, your staff marketers may develop new skills and reinforce old ones that will allow them to take a more data- and process-driven approach to marketing your business.
- Consultants apply marketing best practices
Digital marketing consultants have an intimate understanding of how site architecture impacts SEO, which designs typically lead to more audience engagement and conversions, and how much businesses should spend to acquire different types of customers.
By referencing studies and firsthand experience, marketing consultants can help you:
- Build a higher-converting website that is SEO friendly
- Develop a mobile experience that works on a majority of smartphones
- Improve your email marketing
- Plan your holiday promotion calendar and campaigns
- Save money on your Google AdWords and paid social media campaigns
Typically, consultants employ a systematic process for optimizing your marketing strategy to ensure you squeeze the most value out of your marketing dollar.
- Consultants can relieve you of marketing duties
Many business owners take on the burden of managing operations, overseeing finances and leading marketing too. When they juggle so many different responsibilities, stress levels rise and things fall through the cracks. Instead, they can defer marketing leadership and decision-making to consultants who offer full-service packages. That way, you get to free up more of your own time to focus on aspects of the business you find more fulfilling.
- Consultants save you money
Counterintuitively, even an expensive marketing consultant can save you money.
While the hourly fee or monthly retainer may cause a bit of sticker shock, good consultants create more value than they charge. And because you only retain them for a few hours each week or month, you reduce your overhead. Although many companies are inclined to make a full-time hire instead of outsourcing work to a consultant, they forget that the cost of a full-time employee is nearly double his or her salary when you factor in fringe benefits, hiring costs and training.
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