Marketing Consultant

When a Marketing Consultant can help your company grow

Posted on in Small Business Tips

Marketing – whether digital or traditional – is something every company needs to consider at some time. And the start of the year is a great time to resolve to make a start on that strategy to grow more awareness of your organisation and what it does. If you’ve ever considered employing the services of a Marketing Consultant, we hope this post will help provide you with further information, including the benefits of employing the services of a Marketing Consultant.

Start-ups often forego the Marketing strategy option due to lack of time and funds, and it can be a real wasted opportunity.

However, once your organisation is a little more established – and you’re looking at ways to increase your client base, raise awareness and generally become a bigger fish than you already are – it’s time to take a close look at your marketing strategy.

Of course in small firms, unless you’re lucky enough to have someone who already has expertise in this area, it’s hard to know where to start. You could, of course, take on a member of staff to undertake the role, but do you have a clear understanding of just what that role may entail? Employing the services of a marketing consultant is a great option.

Employing the services of a marketing consultant is a great option

Why? Well for a start, they will not come with all the costs of a member of staff –  recruitment, holidays, national insurance, payroll and HR issues. Second, because you will only require them on a freelance basis, you will be able to afford the kind of expertise you couldn’t pay for if they were a salaried full-time employee.

Taking on a marketing consultant also leaves you (or the person who may have been nominated to look into creating a marketing strategy) free to spend their time doing what they do best, whether that is running the business, looking after sales, or sourcing and developing product.

So how do you decide whether to outsource your marketing requirements or deal with them in-house?

Outsource or resource?

Perhaps you already have your marketing strategy in place. You need to decide whether to then take the whole thing in-house or outsource. So think about whether you have time to learn the skills necessary to implement the strategy – along with the time to implement them. If you do – fabulous – get busy.

However, maybe you have the time but no knowledge – in that case you really need to consider what funds you have to spend, so that you can learn how it all works – with a view to bringing the job in-house at that point.

Finally, if you have neither time nor knowledge, then you’ll really want to look at outsourcing to a marketing consultant.

Within this you have three options:

  • You can decide to utilise a marketing consultant for the foreseeable future either on an adhoc or retained basis; or
  • You can aim to bring the job back in-house once you have learned more about what it entails – perhaps with a bit of backup from your consultant from time to time; or
  • You could take on a graduate or part-time employee to work alongside and take direction from a marketing consultant, with yourself as the main point of contact.

A common scenario in smaller organisations is that you have neither the time nor the funds to invest in your marketing strategy at this moment in time. This is one of the most familiar scenarios for growing businesses! In this case you need to decide whether you can adopt a wait and see approach to see how the company grows on its own or seriously consider an investment in marketing, which can repay you in company growth.

Benefits

There are some obvious benefits to employing the services of a Marketing Consultant such as knowledge, expertise and experience, but those you might not automatically think of include:

  • An objective evaluation of your existing activities and recommendation of suitable new marketing activities
  • A flexible and cost effective alternative to your headcount commitment
  • A risk-free solution freeing up the Directors and employees time to concentrate on other areas of the business
  • A reliable and responsible point of contact for customers, clients, partners and suppliers as required
  • Knowledge of, and adherence to, data legislation requirements, best practice and membership of the ICO (Information Commissioners Office)
  • Extensive list of networking contacts

If you would like to have an informal chat about your marketing requirements, please call Alison Page on tel: 07963 002065 or email: hello@alisonpagemarketing.co.uk. You can of course browse our website to see what our existing clients have to say about our work.