Digital Marketing Consultant
Web Marketing: Definition, Meaning and How it applies to your business
You’ll learn the definion of Web Marketing and how it helps your business grow, the type of skills a good digital marketer has, and also some business considerations to make before you hire one.
For the last six years, here at Oltremare we’ve been actively planning, building, and implementing SEO on websites and landing pages for our clients. So, in this article, we’d like to share our insights on everything to do with SEO consultants, as well as give some helpful guidelines on how to hire a good consultant, how much they cost, or how to become one yourself.
What's a digital marketing consultant?
A digital marketing consultant helps businesses create promotional and advertising campaigns across all digital channels, with an aim to generate more leads and increase sales. Top consultants will have a deep understanding of marketing, advertising and data analytics, as well as staying up to date in modern technology.
How do they help your business grow?
A digital marketing consultant will grow your business through customized strategy and planning. This is huge, as studies show that marketers who plan campaigns ahead of time are three times more likely to have success.
Here are a few things a digital marketing consultant can do for you:
Drive Growth on Any Channel
A consultant will create a detailed, actionable strategy based on your specific business goals, budget, and timeline for results. First, they will need to take an objective look at your company’s strengths and weaknesses in order to gain insight about how you run your business, how effective your past marketing has been, and where you stand among the competition as a whole.
The next step is nailing down your ideal target audience, which usually entails creating buyer personas. The point is to figure out what marketing channels your ideal clients “hang out”on so you can better communicate with them. Armed with this info, a consultant can articulate the best strategies, platforms to target and set a list of tasks to help you grow the business. This analysis is especially helpful for a startup or brand new business to get right.
Manage your Budget more effectively
One of the hardest things to get right when planning an overall marketing strategy is prioritization. There’s a million options you can make to optimize your website, so what should be done first? What will make the biggest impact and will optimize your time and resources?
An experienced consultant will help you identify and prioritize the tasks based on best practices and tried techniques that will truly make a difference to your bottom line.
Track Useful KPIs
Key performance indicators allow marketers to gauge the success of any given campaign. Each arm of marketing has their own set of useful KPIs that can be tracked. Some give insight into how well you’re getting conversions, some how well you generate traffic, and others how engaged your clients are with your brand. However, the most important KPIs (and most useful) are directly tied to revenue. Here is a short list of the top universal KPIs that matter to a business:
- Number of leads
- Conversion rate
- Cost per lead
- Customer lifetime value
Improve customer experience
Digital consulting relies on knowing your clients better than they know themselves. When you take the time to understand your audiences’ problems and how they think, you’ll be able to meet them in the right place at the right time, with the right message.
Signs you need to hire a digital marketing consultant
- Sales are declining
- Your business isn’t getting new leads
- The competition is dominating online
- There’s not enough time in the day
- You have an outdated website
- You need to scale fast
- You don’t know if your marketing is paying off
- You lack the budget or expertise to hire in-house
What do digital marketing consultants do?
The goal of any marketing strategy is to drive results — but some strategies offer quick wins while others take time to work their magic. Which marketing strategies work better for the short term? Which strategies drive results in the long term?
A marketing consultant helps you create both short and long-term strategies to get the best results.
1. Develop Long and Short-term Marketing Strategies
The goal of any marketing strategy is to drive results — but some strategies offer quick wins while others take time to work their magic. Which marketing strategies work better for the short term? Which strategies drive results in the long term?
A marketing consultant helps you create both short and long-term strategies to get the best results.
Here are some short-term digital marketing strategies:
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
- Social media advertising
- Special Events
Here are some long-term digital marketing strategies:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Content marketing
- Web design
- Branding
2. Brand to Audience Alignment
Your brand is much more than a logo, your website and slogan.
You need to consider your unique offer, brand personality (yes, thats a thing), and even the way you want your customers to feel about you and your offerings.
Digital marketing helps improve your brand image as a whole, with the aim to attract people that share the same purpose as you do.
When you align your brand with your clients, you will see an increase in customer happiness, awareness, and loyalty.
3. SEO
Google processes over 40,000 searches per second every single day, with that number still growing. SEO is a branch of marketing aimed at increasing traffic to your website through capturing the interest of people that otherwise don’t know about your business.
When your site is optimized, you’ll rank higher on Google and more of your target audience is likely to find you.
The biggest downside of SEO is the length of time it takes to see results. The exact amount of time depends on many factors out of your control; not only does your site matter, but also the field you’re in and the competition you’re up against.
4. Content Marketing: Blogs, Social Media, Video and Email
When most people think of content marketing, their mind immediately goes to blogging. This is true, blogging is a big part of content marketing – but it actually entails a lot more. Email marketing, social media marketing, even videos are part of it. Essentially anything that presents information that educates, entertains or engages is part of content marketing.
5. Ads - PPC
Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, is yet another skill most digital marketing consultants can help with. Ads are a great way to get visibility and generate traffic fast, although you have to keep paying for it. PPC campaigns aren’t just for Google, but also social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and more.
A good digital consultant will help you maximize your ad spend and target your ideal audience with precision.
6. UX/UI Optimization
UX and UI optimization are both focused on the user experience. User Experience (UX) actively changes the user’s behavior, emotions, and attitude about your product. The aim is to make everything as smooth and user friendly as possible, with the least amount of friction. When done correctly, the website visitor will take the desired action.
User Interface (UI) optimization is anything that improves the look or structure of the website. It could be the navigation menus, layout, color scheme, or even the shape of buttons that will influence the way a user interacts with the website.
The reality is that most visitors will leave your website in the first few seconds if your site is ugly, confusing, hard to navigate, has vague messaging or no calls to action.
A website that has optimized UX and UI will help retain customers, keep them happy, and ultimately increase revenue.
7. Analytics & KPI Tracking
A digital marketing consultant uses data analytics to determine what topics and which type of content is the most interesting to your target audience. This will bring more engagement and traffic to your website and other digital channels.
These insights will allow you to build campaigns that create more trust and understanding with your audience, resulting in more leads and sales.
What do they need to get started?
After establishing your goals and proper KPIs to track, your digital marketing consultant will need access to the data you’ve built up over the years. This helps them see whats been working and what needs to be improved.
They will review your existing reports and data in Google Analytics and Search Console. It may be necessary to grant access to the backend of your social media accounts in order to see that data as well. Also, if you’ve had any research related to your business, such as audience research, branding research, or general market analysis, this will help as well.
Obviously you should only provide access to the things that are relevant to the job. The goal of this part is to share all the information relevant to your business so they can make the most informed strategic decisions in the fastest way.
Digital Marketing Consultant vs in-house
Its understandable if you’re having trouble deciding whether to hire an outside consultant or a dedicated in-house employee. Nobody knows your business as well as you do. In the end, its all about making the right decision that you’re most comfortable with.
In general, if you’re a small business and feel like you have the time and manpower to create an effective, multi-faceted digital marketing strategy, then yes you should do it in-house. Otherwise, if you feel like you don’t have the right expertise or time to do so, then hiring a consultant is ideal.
Business considerations before hiring a digital marketer
Digital marketing companies come in all types of sizes and shapes. Choosing one that works for you can be a bit overwhelming. However, here a few considerations to make before you hire a prospective digital marketing company to get a good fit.
1. Match Expertise
Does the consultant have experience in your industry? Ask to see some case studies or examples they’ve worked on in the past. If a consultant is dedicated to your industry, they will be able to get your campaign started quickly and efficiently.
2. Able to Deliver
How realistic are their promises? Is it possible to deliver them without using any spammy or blackhat techniques? Black hat marketing is very risky for your brand, if something sounds too good to be true it usually is.
3. Check your Budget
Like everything, you get what you pay for. Its important that your consultant stays within your budget and will help you prioritize what will have the biggest impact for your site. Keep in mind though, the more specialized a consultant the more they will charge.
4. Look for Reviews and Testimonials
In most cases, testimonials and reviews will give you a decent idea of what working with the company is like. You could also ask if they could speak to any previous clients to get a more candid opinion.
5. Do a trial run
Nearly all agencies and some consultants will require a contract to get started, start with their lowest time frame (3 to 6 months) and see if you like working with them.
Conclusion
Now that you have a sense of what digital marketing is, you’ll be able to figure out the best fit for your organization. Trust your intuition and make adjustments as you reach and exceed your marketing goals.