5 Things You Should Know about Marketing Consulting Firms

Developing your own marketing campaign can be costly and time consuming—far more than you initially expect. It can also be more confusing than you expect. Who do you target? Which of the dozens of marketing strategies should you choose? How do you track your results? Marketing is a complex area of business and it takes real expertise to be able to do it well so you see positive results.

Each company needs a unique marketing campaign that is tailored to its business goals. So simply going online to find a decent marketing campaign to copy can be useless and even devastating to your company’s profitability and productivity. That’s why it might be best to look into marketing consulting firms to do the work for you. But before you engage one of these marketing consulting firms, here are five things you should know.

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1. Field of Expertise

Because marketing is a vast area, you need to understand what your marketing needs are before you commit to any one agency. All marketing consulting firms will have their own unique fields of expertise, so you need to find one that excels at the type of marketing you’re looking to implement. If you’re looking to delve into TV or radio marketing or you’re looking to market online, you’ll come up with drastically different agency options. Understanding your goals will help you find the right agency for you.

2. Industry

Every industry has its unique traits. Marketing techniques that work for one industry can be completely useless for another. That’s why it’s important to find marketing consulting firms that specialize in the industry you’re in. Industry-specific firms are more knowledgeable in your field than agencies that claim to focus on any and all types of businesses. In the end, these types of agencies won’t have the in-depth understanding and familiarity of your industry you need for an effective marketing campaign. They won’t be able to tailor your campaign specifically to your company.

3. Commitment

Not every agency is the same. Some focus on providing you with part-time, short-term service while others are in it for the long haul. Of course, the time commitment you choose to get out of your consulting firm will affect the fees you’re going to be charged, but marketing isn’t a quick and easy fix to revenue issues—it’s a long-term commitment. It takes time to get the campaign out into the world to see results, so you need to keep the time commitment in mind when you’re looking at prices—don’t just focus on the dollar signs or you might end up with a rush job that isn’t as successful as it could have been.

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4. Communication

Marketing consulting firms are experts at what they do. After all, that’s why companies engage them. It’s important to trust their advice and guidance—they have information and knowledge about marketing that you don’t. They understand what works and what doesn’t.

However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t speak up if you’re uncertain about a strategy that the agency wants to implement. The key to a successful consulting relationship is great communication. Your consulting professionals should be discussing all strategies with you ahead of time and discussing their benefits and weaknesses with you. They are simply consultants—you are the one who ultimately makes the decisions. So make sure you take customer service and communication into account.

5. Creativity

Marketing consulting firms should have creative people on staff. If, during your search, you see that a consultant is always using the same website design and the same strategies for each client he works for, chances are he’s not creative (or he’s just lazy). So, you can expect that he won’t put any creativity into your marketing campaign either. Instead, he’ll use a cookie cutter campaign for every client, and that simply doesn’t meet your unique needs. Creativity is a must in marketing.

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