Finding great digital marketing consultants is actually tougher than it seems. Sure, there is a lot of people who claim to be social media experts, but does having an Instagram account with even tens of thousands of followers really proves their value? Can they really replicate great results when working with a professional company that does not operate on memes and fashion pics?
And having a tailored digital marketing strategy really matters.
- 72% of 256 marketing, sales, and business professionals surveyed by Ascend2 say that creating content relevant for the brand is the most effective SEO tactic.
- 75% of people don’t go past the first page of search results — you can get your website to the first page with the right organic SEO strategy.
- 81% of customers have been convinced by a brand's video to purchase the brand’s product/service.
- Email marketing is 40 times more successful than social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter when it comes to acquiring new customers.
- A/B testing of email marketing campaigns improves email conversion rates by 49%.
- According to a 2019 DMA report, each dollar spent on email marketing makes approximately 42 dollars in return.
All these stats prove that building the right digital marketing strategy is not a job for everyone. It must be planned out by a person with the right experience, specific skillset, and adaptive mind. Being able to work with data matters, too — as an analysis done right can lead to improved cost-efficiency of your marketing and rise in sales at the same time.
If you really want to make sure your online marketing is on top and you invest your money correctly, you need to hire a digital marketing consultant who is a true professional.
How can a digital marketing consultant exactly help your business?
The main job of digital marketing consultants is to build a unified marketing strategy for your brand. They usually don’t create the content themselves — they rather point other people in the right direction. For example, they might work together with video artists to write a scenario for a product ad, or run a meeting with data scientists to figure out what data is exactly needed to build a well-targeted campaign.
Digital marketing consultants can work with your company as a whole or focus only on a specific product. They also calculate the budget needed for each campaign and present it to relevant decision-making figures in the organization. All this strategy is, of course, developed based on data and not simple assumptions for the best results. With the right tools, digital marketing consultants can continuously update your brand’s online marketing by leveraging the power of real-time data analysis.
In the end, digital marketing consultants are the people between your business and your customers. They have to understand the latter to build out a strategy for the former.
What are the main areas digital marketing consultants work on?
A digital marketing strategy should cover involvement in multiple channels for the best results. We highlight the most important areas of a digital marketing consultant’s work below, alongside a set of tools that are most commonly used in such work — as the effective use of the right tech stack often leads to more effective campaigns.
- SEO
Search engine optimization is crucial for every business that wants to achieve great results online. Google processes around 3.5 billion searches per day which results in approximately 1.2 trillion searches per year. However, nearly 91% of all pages get no organic traffic via Google at all. Don’t be like this 91% — invest in great SEO strategy with the help of digital marketing consultants.
Useful tools for optimizing the SEO strategy include Keywordtool.io, Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, SEMRush, and Ahrefs’ set of SEO tools.
- Content
Content comes in a variety of forms, including keyword-rich website copy that directly impacts SEO, but it’s also about all the images and words you promote your business with across the internet. Digital marketing consultants might create some content themselves (using tools like Canva), but they usually cooperate with professional copywriters and designers for the best quality. This means they also create the briefs to be followed, which include, among other things, the right keywords discovered with tools like the aforementioned Google Keyword Planner or Keywordtool.io.
- Social media
With over 90% of American Millennials using social media, presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other top platforms is still crucial for businesses. Of course, the exact channel you should focus on will depend on your customer group and product specification. And making this choice is one of the things a digital marketing consultant can help you with when starting planning out a social media strategy for your brand.
Tools useful for monitoring and optimization of the brand’s social media strategy include Brandwatch, Brand24, Agorapulse, and Hootsuite.
- Ads
Google Ads? Facebook Ads? Instagram Ads? Or maybe even ads on Reddit? And should we actually invest in standard PPC (Pay Per Click)? If so, what’s the reasonable CPC (Cost Per Click)? And, finally, how to finish up the campaign with the right remarketing? Digital marketing consultants are there to help you figure out answers to these questions.
Digital marketing consultants can improve and automate their ad marketing with the right tools, such as Qwaya, AdEspresso, AdStage, or Driftrock.
- Email marketing
Email marketing can be incredibly successful if done right. However, there is a thin line between what’s interesting and what’s right away kicked out to spam by a user. Digital marketing consultants can help you build the perfect email marketing strategy that really sells. Tools often used for developing and optimizing such strategy include MailChimp, SendPulse, Mailjet, and Zoho Campaigns.
- Automation
There are multiple tools that can help you reduce costs by automation while still providing amazing results. They are often introduced to companies by those freelance digital marketing consultants who are hired only to build the initial digital marketing plan. The list of top marketing automation tools include Marketo, HubSpot, Exponea, and Sugar Market.
- Mobile marketing
A term that actually covers multiple different areas of marketing, such as in-game ads, SMS marketing, location-based marketing, QR codes marketing, and even push notification strategy. As over 50% of internet traffic already comes from mobiles, this area of marketing is crucial to start heavily investing in in the next few years.
Some great tools used by digital marketing consultants for optimizing mobile marketing strategy are Buffer, SocialCaptain, and SlickText.
- Analytics
Where is your brand now? What have your past campaigns managed to achieve? What data can be used to build the perfect ads campaign? Digital marketing consultants must be data masters to get your company on the right track in online marketing.
Some of the most commonly used tools for digital marketing analytics are Google Analytics, Oribi, KissMetrics, Piwik, and Cyfe.
- Video marketing
According to a HubSpot report, 54% of consumers want to see more videos from a brand they support. Video is also the type of marketing content that is consumed the most thoroughly — over 62% of consumers pay close attention to video while over 70% skim content like infographics, blogs, or online long-form content. This means that to keep your marketing strategy truly future-proof, you should invest in a digital marketing consultant with previous experience in working with video marketing.
And while the more high-end and costly videos usually have to be made by video professionals, digital marketing consultants can also work on the audiovisual content for your brand using tools like Biteable, Hippo Video, and Wideo.
- Influencer marketing
Promoting your brand via online celebrities is the best way to reach a significant share of consumers, especially the young ones. As the choice of influencers should be based not only on their number of followers but also on factors like their area of expertise or demographics, you should hire a digital marketing consultant already knowledgeable in the world of influencers for the best results.
Tools used for the optimization of influencer marketing include Klear, Upfluence, and HypeAuditor.
What skills are most important for digital marketing consultants?
The skills that proves the value of a digital marketing consultant includes:
- Adaptability
Both to the constantly changing market situation as well as to how every business needs a different approach than other ones.
- Data analytics skills
To be able to prepare a great strategy that is based not on simple assumptions but data-proven facts about the customer group.
- Creativity
New channels for online marketing emerge all the time. Maybe it’s time to invest in podcasts? Maybe in webinars? Or maybe a completely new social media platform that seems to be all set to become the new big thing in a few months? Digital media consultants must be up-to-date with all the trends to help you win with your competitors.
How to assess the previous experience of digital marketing consultants?
Digital marketing consultants often provide their portfolio or a set of case studies that present their previous work. However, you should not base their experience only on what you see in these documents that are supposed to prove how great they are.
To learn more about your potential hires, you can head to their LinkedIn. Review it to get information about additional work of theirs that did not appear in the portfolio. Look for both the campaigns that proved to be successful as well as the ones that went unnoticed.
Certificates? Sure, there are some. But nothing proves the value of a digital marketing consultant as their previous work.
The importance of the company fit
The more tailored to your specific company profile a digital marketing consultant is, the better results they can achieve for your business. How does it work? Consider the following three areas…
- Industry fit
While most digital marketing consultants are generalists, many are actually specialized in specific markets. Look at the consultant’s previous experience and try to find companies from your industry. This kind of perfect fit guarantees your digital marketing consultant already has experience with your target group and understands the market’s specification.
- Product fit
Once again, looking at the consultant’s previous work is crucial here. Look for products/services that are similar to yours, for example in terms of the type of product (web/mobile/physical), important features of the product, etc. Product fit gives you similar advantages to industry fit — understanding of the target group and know-how of the best ways to approach them.
- Company culture fit
This area, on the other hand, influences how well a digital marketing consultant cooperates with people within your company (e.g. designers). Sharing the same values is important for successful collaboration, so review your candidate in terms of their preferred style of management, experience with agile teams, focus on local/global, attitude towards diverse and inclusive work environments, and other values of your business that you consider important.
How to hire the right digital marketing consultant fast?
Having trouble finding a digital marketing consultant that really fits your company well? We understand that the hiring process can take long and be troubling for a fast-paced business. That’s why, at Ideamotive, we maintain a network of top IT professionals looking for new projects to work on.
After you get in touch with us, we connect you only with these digital marketing consultants that match your company profile, product specification, and any other requirements you might have. And we can help you with more than just finding the experts providing perfect digital marketing consulting services — our network includes all types of IT professionals, from expert web developers to mobile designers to data scientists.
Get in touch with us today to start hiring amazing talents.
