You’ve heard of digital marketing consulting.
You may even have a vague idea of what it entails. But for many, “consultant” is thrown around as an umbrella term for anything and everything.
However, a digital marketing consultant is particularly important in today’s online landscape, which is growing increasingly complex and competitive. To get the most from your efforts, it’s often in your best interest to work with experts who can provide detailed personalized analysis and fully tailored strategy development, helping elevate you above competitors as you work to stand apart.
So in this article, John Lincoln will answer all your questions about what a digital marketing consultant is, how it works and why many businesses need one.
What We’ll Cover:
- What Is A Digital Marketing Consultant?
- Core Services Offered By Digital Marketing Consultants
- How a consultant determines a marketing strategy
- Digital marketing consulting custom projects:
- When you should hire a digital marketing consultant
- Where (& how) to find a digital marketing consultant
What Is a Digital Marketing Consultant?
So, what is an online marketing consultant?
By definition, digital marketing is “the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.”
Web marketing consultant services are aimed at targeting consumers in the right ways to get the best results for business needs. This is very different from advertising. Digital marketing consultants work with businesses of all kinds and sizes and determine how best to engage and convert clients and prospective ones.
It’s also important to understand what makes digital marketing consulting different from other digital marketing solutions. With a digital marketing consultant, you get guidance on strategy and the right tactics to use to achieve your specific goals, while other digital marketing services entail implementing and executing those strategies.
So, what is a digital marketing consultant, and what does a digital marketing consultant do, exactly? If there’s one thing a consultant needs to understand, it’s this: all projects are different.
This means that a successful consultant has to be able to wear many hats. They should have their hands on all the latest and greatest digital trends, from social media to SEO and PPC.
The day-to-day tasks of digital marketing consultants start with strategy development, where an online marketing consultant puts together an approach to digital marketing based on the client’s unique goals and business requirements. Once the strategy is determined, including all marketing channels to reach target audiences, campaign optimization is the next task, perfecting targeting, SEO, and other implementations.
To gauge how well campaigns are performing, digital marketing consulting will also entail performance analysis and reporting. Looking at key metrics based on your goals, including website traffic, ad views, click-through rates, and others, you can get a better feel for how your efforts are doing, potentially informing further optimization.
If you’re considering hiring a digital marketing consultant, it’s often best to go with outsourced digital marketing consultancy services. The right experts will have years of experience backing them, as they know the ins and outs of digital marketing and what it involves, often with expertise in various areas of marketing, from SEO and PPC to social, email, and more. Outsourcing gives you immediate access to this expertise, saving you the time and energy needed to identify the right professionals and bring them onto your in-house team.
Now, let’s take a somewhat deeper look into the different hats that an internet marketing consultant wears.
My Expert Opinion on Digital Marketing Consultants
There’s a lot that goes into digital marketing, especially with the number of platforms available today and the complexity of marketing strategies, from constantly developing SEO trends to advancements in AI marketing tools.
If you want to stay ahead, even as a small business, you’ll need to give your strategies the kind of attention and expertise that will help them flourish in the long term. If you don’t have the in-house expertise or can’t stay ahead of the ever-changing landscape, you may find your brand falling behind your competitors as you struggle to stay afloat online.
Here is where a skilled digital marketing consultant can help. The right consultant will have the kind of resources and skillsets required to inform your strategies and ensure you’re able to get and stay ahead in the long term.
The key is finding the right consultant based on your company’s specific requirements. Now, let’s dig deeper as we give some answers to questions like “What is a digital marketing consultant?” and “What does a digital marketing consultant do?” Knowing what to look for in these experts can help you narrow down your selection and build a healthy, long-lasting partnership.
Core Services Offered by Digital Marketing Consultants
When seeking digital marketing consulting services, there are multiple core solutions that the right expert can provide.
For instance, a reliable digital marketing consultant will be able to cover:
- SEO: Optimize your website with on-page and off-page SEO solutions, including local SEO to target audiences near a business’s physical locations.
- PPC: In addition to SEO, you can use paid media advertising to reach even more audiences on platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising networks.
- Social Media Marketing: Using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and others, you can connect with your target audiences through organic posting and advertising to grow your audience and maintain consistent engagement.
- Content Strategy: Another major component of any marketing campaign is content, including web pages, blog posts, and videos that help you optimize for SEO while carrying your audience down the sales funnel.
- Email Marketing: Businesses also benefit from using email to connect with audiences throughout the customer journey, from welcome emails and newsletters to personalized product recommendations that maximize customer retention after an initial sale.
- Conversion Rate Optimization: With regular monitoring and performance analysis, a consultant for digital marketing can determine what steps to take to continually optimize conversions and keep people moving to the bottom of the funnel.
- International SEO: A digital marketing consultant will know the ins and outs of International SEO, and should be able to address everything from optimizing website content for a variety of languages and multiple geographic areas to using Facebook global pages and going international on Amazon.
- Launching an App or Website: A digital marketing consultant can help form a strategy to ensure you see significant traffic or downloads – even on the very first day. They’ll likely focus on building and promoting through social media, creating landing pages and sending relevant traffic there, sending out press releases, crafting incentives, etc.
Consultant Approaches to Campaigns
What does a digital marketing consultant do when it comes to the actual consulting?
Generally, digital marketing consultancy services will involve the following main steps:
1. Initial Audits
Here, the digital marketing consultant will conduct an initial audit into your current marketing efforts to determine what’s working and what needs improvement, which will enable the consultant to develop a roadmap for your marketing strategy.
2. Gap Analysis
Next, an online marketing consultant looks for any gaps you can fill based on competitor analysis and a content gap analysis, which will help identify areas where you can succeed that competitors are overlooking, effectively differentiating you from others in your industry.
3. Strategy Formulation
A good digital marketing consultant will understand that every industry has its own set of needs to experience real sustained success.
For instance, a consultant for digital marketing should know that a B2B company will want to focus on using channels like LinkedIn and industry-related forums to connect with professionals, while an ecommerce brand will want to focus more on extensive PPC ad campaigns and highly optimized SEO for product pages on an ecommerce platform.
Meanwhile, businesses offering local services should build robust local SEO campaigns that connect with locals through “near me” keywords and geotargeting, attracting audiences in specific service areas.
Looking at your industry, competitors, goals, and audience, your internet marketing consultant will be able to develop a comprehensive strategy that helps you get and stay ahead, incorporating a mix of marketing channels and approaches and preparing them for execution.
4. Implementation
Once the strategy is figured out and there’s a specific plan in place for your marketing, digital marketing consulting services could conclude with implementation as you put that plan into action with the help of a full-sized marketing team. A company like Ignite Visibility will be able to ensure proper execution to help you get the most from consulting. Marketing platforms like HubSpot and Sprout Social can help set up, execute, and manage campaigns on all platforms.
5. Reporting and Performance Reviews
For the purpose of ongoing optimization, digital marketing consultants must also consistently monitor and report on campaign performance. Using solutions like Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Search Console, along with native analytics tools across platforms, consultants can figure out what approach to take to yield better results based on the goals in place.
Digital Marketing Consulting: Asking the Right Questions
When performing initial audits of a company, consultants must evaluate each business individually to create a personalized strategy.
To do so, they must ask a series of questions.
1. What are the goals of the business?
Your business goals inform the entire game plan; after all, how will you find success if you don’t even know what you’re looking for.
That said, there’s a difference between rookie and expert goals. Rookie goals, for example, look like this:
- I want more website traffic
- I want to rank #1 in Google
- I want more email subscribers
What marks them as rookie is that they’re poorly defined. A digital marketing consultant will come in, evaluate your current numbers and overall goals like above, and expand those goals to look something like this:
- They need 5,000 more website visitors a month
- They need to rank #1 for the keyword “refurbished iPhone”
- They need to collect 2 leads from each remarketing ad
See the difference? Setting real numbers will help achieve real results.
2. Where is the business in the product or service life cycle?
A life cycle describes the stages a product or service goes through from conception to the end of its run. Typically, it looks something like this:
- Introduction
- Growth
- Maturity
- Decline
By determining where a product or service is in its life cycle, digital marketing consultants can identify where the work initially needs to be focused. That could be building buzz for a product that’s being introduced or brainstorming ways to extend the life cycle of a service that’s declining.
3. Where does the business need to go to be profitable?
In order to be successful, every business needs a way to make a profit.
Based on the business model, a marketing consultant will identify ways to earn a profit and what steps the business needs to take to get there.
To earn a profit, a business has to make more than it spends, and a content marketing consultant can also help make decisions about current spending to make sure it isn’t hindering any potential profits.
4. How much funding or cash does the business have?
To make the most informed decisions about where marketing dollars should go, a digital marketing consultant needs to know exactly what they’re working with.
First of all, it will enable them to set a marketing budget. Then, based on the business goals and opportunity for profit, they can determine how much should be allocated to each area – from where they should advertise down to the tools used to track their efforts.
5. Where are the business customers online?
Digital marketing consultants can find out where your target audience hangs out because you can’t reach them if you can’t find them.
6. How do they like to interact with businesses online?
Not everyone likes to use the web in the same way. Web marketing consultants take this nuance into consideration.
7. What content and ads do they respond to the best?
These are grouped together for a good reason – they all come down to a deep understanding of a business’s target audience.
The process involves several steps, including:
- Analyzing the current customer base
- Analyzing the competition – who their customers are and who they’re targeting
- Analyzing the product’s value, features, and benefits
- Creating buyer personas based on demographics – age, gender, occupation, location, etc.
- Analyzing characteristics – personality, lifestyle, values
Based on who the target is, they can conduct subsequent research into the channels most used by that audience and demographic, and determine which content resonates most with them.
8. How expensive will it be to set up traffic generation through each marketing medium?
After it has been determined what the best channel is to use, they then have to look at it in terms of budget.
For example, if the target audience is mainly B2B professionals, they’ll likely consider LinkedIn as an appropriate channel.
However, advertising on LinkedIn tends to be more expensive than other social channels. A consultant will know this and be able to make budget recommendations accordingly.
9. What is the cost per conversion?
Cost per conversion is the average marketing cost of each new customer.
Cost per conversion = total number of clicks/total number of conversions.
To properly assess, a consultant will look at the average amount being spent per click, the average profit margin, and the number of people who actually buy something after clicking
This is a process that will need to be implemented throughout the marketing campaign to ensure a profit is being made. If at any point it the CPC rises, your consultant should be aware of it and adjust accordingly.
10. What is the return on advertising?
Return on ad spend (ROAS) measures the overall effectiveness of a digital advertising campaign.
A digital marketing consultant needs to be able to calculate a company’s current ROAS(if they’re already advertising) and keep tabs on it in the future.
Average ROAS will vary by industry, which is why it’s important to have a consultant that evaluates not only your ROAS, but can compare it against industry averages.
This number will help inform future budgets and the overall direction of a marketing strategy.
LEARN MORE: What is ROAS? A Guide and Formula to Calculate Return on Ad Spend
11. How long will it take to become reliable?
Once a digital marketing consultant begins to form a direction and choose channels for a particular strategy, they have to look to reliability.
They have to be able to tell a client what their projections are, and how long they’ll take to achieve.
To do that, they have to have consistent, reliable information. Sure, it’s great to see sales increase for a month, but to truly nurture a successful business, you need to be able to rely on those numbers consistently going up.
This will take some time. The foundation has to be set, along with reliable metrics and analytics.
12. How large can it be scaled at the current price point?
Fact: To make more money online, you have to be willing to spend more.
A digital marketing consultant is able to evaluate your current budget and scale it in a way to get the most returns.
For example, content marketing. Good consultants know that producing more quality content will yield bigger returns, and can work within your budget to make it happen.
If the budget allows for more writers and designers, great. If not, they can allocate the job elsewhere, or look at ways to repurpose existing content into videos, slideshows, and infographics to keep the content consistent.
13. How much overall profitability does the business see?
At any stage in the strategy development or deployment, a consultant must be able to measure profitability in order to determine the best business practices.
To do so requires analyzing a myriad of factors: production costs, gross profit, daily operations, etc. to ensure that any measures going forward will increase, not take away from, any existing profit.
When to Hire a Digital Marketing Consultant
In the beginning, most companies try to take on digital marketing themselves.
But there comes a time when all companies can benefit from hiring a digital marketing consultant.
How do you know when it’s time for you to take the leap?
The clearest sign is when you are ready to grow your business with clearly-defined goals and objections but you aren’t quite sure what step to take next.
Consider:
- If you’re not experiencing growth or change, regardless of the different strategies you’ve tried to implement
- If your team is already stretched thin. Even the best employee can’t produce a good quality work product if they are hitting their limits.
- If your team just doesn’t know where to go next. Digital marketing campaigns require a certain level of expertise. A lot of time and frustration can be saved by going directly to a professional consultant.
Ultimately, hiring an online marketing consultant can give you the kinds of measurable benefits you need to flourish online, including:
- Increased traffic to your website as you attract more high-intent audiences who are more likely to convert
- Higher conversion rates from targeting prospective customers who are truly interested in and actively in the market for your offerings
- Higher overall return on investment (ROI) thanks to campaigns that effectively drive more sales, helping you maximize profitability and get the most from your marketing spend
There are plenty of case studies out there that demonstrate the effectiveness of reliable digital marketing consulting services.
For example, Ignite Visibility’s internet marketing consultants helped a home services brand grow its organic traffic by 1848% with local SEO. This particular company needed to pivot ahead of algorithm shifts and increasing competition that saturated local SEO. With the help of our consultants, the company was able to develop a tailored strategy using geo-targeted service pages, meta descriptions, and Google Business Profile optimization to boost SEO performance. The results were a significant growth in organic traffic from new users, along with a more than 700% increase in click-to-call actions, a 646% surge in estimate forms, and a whopping 1696% rise in total sessions.
Ignite Visibility’s digital marketing consultants also lent expertise to a leading franchise behind multiple brands, working to maintain optimal performance for all of its brands and boosting growth for regions seeing little of it. Our experts put together a strategy consisting of paid search and paid social, local SEO, precise targeting for each location, video marketing, and custom landing pages. The results included a 1,009% increase in return on ad spend (ROAS), 82% more phone calls, over 442% more organic traffic, and a 154% rise in conversions.
To get results like these, campaigns require consistent monitoring based on the key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics that correspond to your specific objectives, both short- and long-term.
Some of these potential KPIs and metrics include:
- Organic and paid website traffic
- Clicks
- Views
- Brand mentions
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Customer lifetime value (CLTV)
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Return on investment (ROI)
- Conversion rates
- Search rankings
- Churn rate
Where (& How) to Find Digital Marketing Consultant Services
Some business owners may think that it’s difficult to find a digital marketing consultant, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Securing a good one is a different story.
Many online marketing consulting services can be secured from freelancers or remote consultants. Those in search of individual consultants can find them on sites like Upwork and Fiverr.
Larger companies with more money to spend can go for a digital marketing consulting firm.
Enlisting the help of a team of consultants from a reputable digital marketing consulting firm may be necessary for companies that wish to scale at a faster rate.
After all, it’s a person who can build a bridge between businesses and customers using online platforms. It may be even more beneficial to have more than one consultant to come up with new ideas to push the company forward.
And remember: good consultants won’t come cheap, but they will get results. To make sure you’re enlisting, I highly recommend my article on hiring a qualified SEO consultant.
You may no longer be wondering, “What is a digital marketing consultant?” But if you want to know how to find a web marketing consultant worthy of your investment, there are some solid steps you can take.
As it turns out, that’s a pretty straightforward process, too…
Just follow this quick guide, step by step:
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- Decide what services you want, then research those services. This could mean launching a blog, publishing a series of white papers, enhancing your social media reach and so much more.
- Gather some companies from the results and research/compare their services. Make sure they’re in your budget and up to your standards. It’s better to get it right the first time. While the cheapest option isn’t always the best, it’s still really important to stay within your budget for this task.
- See what tech they use. How can they help you? Will this tech help you reach your goals? Will you have to learn any new platforms? If you do, will they train you?
- Check out the portfolio of all the companies you have lined up. Does their experience and expertise line up with what you’re looking for? There are a lot of consultants and freelancers out there who claim to offer all sorts of services but, unless you decide to go with a larger firm, you’ll probably get better results from someone who specializes in one or two aspects of digital marketing. Make sure this person knows their stuff. If your goal is to grow your Instagram following, be sure to pick a consultant that can show you tangible evidence of their other clients’ Instagram growth. Be very specific when you ask for examples of their work.
- Really dive into their client roster. Who do they normally work with? If you’re a small start-up, try to find someone who specializes in businesses like yours. The tips and tricks for marketing a small business can vary from those used to see success with bigger businesses. You’ll want a consultant who understands that. Do you like what you see? If you don’t, it’s not worth your time. Analyze measurable results wherever possible.
- Read reviews and confirm credentials. This is a good practice for any decision you make, and it rings true for digital marketing consulting services, too. Anyone can tell you that they’re great at something but if they have multiple reviews backing up their confidence, it’s more likely that they will deliver the results you’re looking for. Don’t be afraid to check out their own social media platforms. What are their followers saying? Who are they connected to?
- Question their work process and find out how involved they’ll expect you to be in the project. If you want to be hands-on, will they allow you to be involved? If you want to completely hand the process over, will they be able to do their job without your constant input?
- Hop on a call. Give their customer service a test run, and figure out if your values align. A video chat might be even more effective, depending on your preferences. Take time on your call to feel this person out. Do they feel like someone you could trust with your business? Do you get the feeling that they are trustworthy and knowledgeable about your industry? Hiring a digital marketing consultant is a big decision. It’s important that you feel connected to this person, their business, and their proposed strategy.
Once you’ve done some research and had some calls, sit down, look at your notes, and compare the consultants you’ve reached out to.
Deciding to hire a digital marketing consultant is not a decision that needs to be made overnight. Feel free to sit with your research until you feel comfortable making the decision.
As you conduct your research into the best digital marketing consultant, there are certain key questions to ask that can help narrow down your selection, such as:
- What is a digital marketing consultant’s area of expertise?
- How do you measure the success of digital marketing consultancy services?
- Have you worked with businesses like mine in my industry?
- Can you share success stories or testimonials from past clients like me?
- What sets your services apart from other consultants?
- How will you align digital marketing strategies with my goals?
- What are the specific services you offer?
- What tools do you use to develop and monitor strategies?
If you’re still not sure whether you should hire a digital marketing consultant or build an in-house team, here is a clear comparison of these solutions to help you make the right choice:
| Model | Pros | Cons |
| Digital Marketing Consultant |
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| In-House Team |
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The Future of Digital Marketing Consulting
So, what does the future of consulting look like?
First, consider the emerging trends that are going to impact this market, including AI integrations and machine learning for analytics. AI solutions will make it easier than ever to identify the best opportunities to build strategies, develop high-quality dynamic content, and give in-depth insights to instruct marketing campaigns for continual optimization.
Automation through AI and other tools will also continue to shape the future of consulting, simplifying processes to optimize the efficiency of marketing strategies at every level.
Consultants, using these tools and consistently innovative approaches, will be able to evolve their strategies to get and stay ahead of market trends and changing consumer behaviors. For example, today’s consumer spending tends to go toward essential purchases over luxury items, and many people also prefer to shop from brands that align with their values, whether those values apply to affordability, sustainability, or others.
Personalization is also crucial in today’s environment, as today’s consumers connect with brands that speak more directly to them.
Based on these changes and more to come, the future of consulting is looking bright as new tools become available to maximize efficiency and get real results. Adapting to consumer needs and wants will also help businesses stay on top of the competition as they connect with audiences, especially if they are able to provide tailored experiences that appeal to individual prospects.
Digital Marketing Consulting From Ignite Visibility
Want to get the best results from your marketing with the help of a dependable, experienced digital marketing consultant? Ignite Visibility is here for you as soon as you need us, with fully tailored consulting services that work to meet your specific requirements and goals for your business.
When you work with us, you’ll get:
- A comprehensive audit to evaluate your marketing performance
- Assistance with strategizing that can help you develop the right solution
- Integrations of SEO, PPC, content marketing, social media, email, and more
- Effective implementation of all marketing solutions with the help of seasoned marketing experts
- Continual monitoring and performance review to guide optimization
- And more!
Like how this sounds? Reach out to us today to find out how we can help your business thrive.
