Anyone ever hired a Marketing Consultant?

I have recently set up my own Marketing Consulting business and I often have to make a lot of phone calls to get my clients. Most of the clients are interested in various products that I offer.

Marketing Plans, Marketing Reports and Marketing Audits.

However, I want to relate this work to the Internet Marketing sector and want to ask if anyone has ever considered hiring a Marketing Consultant to oversee their work?

My main speciality is writing strategic marketing reports and the demand for them is really high.

How many of you have hired a marketing consultant in the past?

Regards

Naz

 

How long have you been a marketing consultant? What schooling have you completed and what degree's do you have to show for it?

 

I have been a consultant for a year and I have a BA(HONS) In Marketing from a British University.

Thanks!

 

Most successful and ones I would want to personally work with have been in their field of choice for at least 14 to 15 years.

Wish you the best of luck.

 

With the passion and flair I bring into my work most clients remain happy with my work. I am currently getting my website developed.

Thanks for your opinion.

 

Ok then, I have some basic questions for you:

1. Which type of marketing do you recommend for me: institutional marketing to build my image -- or direct marketing to generate inquiries from prospective clients?

2. Which marketing method is better for me, selling-based marketing or Education-Based Marketing?

3. How will you direct my marketing only to prospective clients so I don't waste money reaching the wrong people?

4. What college courses have you taken in marketing?

5. Have you ever owned and marketed your own business?

6. Have you yourself ever hired a marketing consultant or p.r. firm?

7. Have you ever worked in sales?

8. What's the longest time you've worked with any one client?

9. How will I measure your marketing success?

10. How soon can I expect your marketing program to attract inquiries from prospective clients?

11. How soon will those inquiries turn into new clients?

12. If your marketing program doesn't work, what do you think would be the most likely reasons?


I have been doing this for almost 5 years and these are just some of the basic questions I have been asked. Do you have any response to these?

 

Thanks for the questions, I love answering them!

 

1 and 2 were the most important questions, the answer there is actually without question, is Education-Based Marketing.

Here's why: Clients are tired of selling and sales pressure. They've learned they can't always trust a salesperson. So if you choose selling-based marketing, you shoot yourself in the foot in two ways. First, you're not giving clients what they want. And second, you hurt your credibility when you take on the role of a salesperson.

Most of the marketing we see today is selling-based marketing, designed to sell a product or service. And you know what happens when we see an ad in the newspaper -- we turn the page. When we see a commercial on TV, we either hit the mute button, change the channel or go to the refrigerator.

I once saw a comic in the Sunday Funnies. A man was watching the Super Bowl on TV and he got up to leave the room. The voice on the TV said "Hold it! I paid $1,000,000 for this commercial. Now you sit down and watch it."

One reason lawyers get such a poor response from their marketing is because they're not giving prospects what they want. Prospects want information and advice, which is the foundation of Education-Based Marketing. And until lawyers realize what consumers want -- and give it to them -- attorneys will continue to get a poor response to their marketing.

So, which marketing method is better for you? Education-Based Marketing because it gives your prospective clients what they want: information and advice. And because it doesn't hurt your credibility by casting you in the role of a salesperson.

Consider this, lawyers often ask how many other attorneys a consultant has worked for in the same business or profession. Yet, another question is much more important. I suggest you ask which type of marketing the consultant uses more often, selling-based marketing or Education-Based Marketing. You see, a marketing consultant can apply his type of marketing to any area of the law. But if the consultant typically uses selling-based marketing, you can expect him to suggest that you use selling-based marketing, too.

In my case, I work exclusively with Education-Based Marketing because it consistently brings my clients the results they want. And, as you might imagine, the marketing program I design for one client will have similar components to the program I design for another. Not because the clients are similar -- but because I use similar methods for both.

 

I work as a marketing / PR consultant, but I've also hired both for past employers (from corporate clients to major nonprofit organizations). Keep in mind with the audience you're talking to here that they're not generally going to have the same needs as the offline clients you may be targeting now.

If you want to appeal to an online marketing, you'd better be up on your basic Internet marketing (not always the same strategies as offline), and you'd better be able to offer something that others aren't, because it's a heavily competitive market. My personal specialty is in online PR. While there's far less competition there right now, it has it's own problems (such as the little competition there is often coming from underqualified folks who charge extremely low rate, without clients always knowing the difference, and more importantly trying to get online entrepreneurs to not only understand what PR is, but how it can help them beyond more traditional IM efforts).

I got into consulting just a few years after college and have been doing rather well, so it can certainly be done young. But you'd better be willing and able to work your ass off, sacrifice quite a bit of a typical personal life for someone your age, and spend enormous amounts of time networking and building your reputation. Have a unique angle and show that you know your stuff. The clients start naturally coming in, and you won't be wasting so much time on things like cold calling.

EDIT: And John has some excellent points there. I can tell you from experience, that you'll do much better not only for yoru clients, but for yourself, if you quit the hard selling and go more for the soft sell. Education marketing is precisely that... give away information for free... it demonstrates your knowledge, builds your reputation as an authority source, and leads to quite a bit of work in the long run.

 

Hey Jh I think you would be very welcomed at the forum in my sig.

 

lol Thanks. I'll give it a look. I'm always looking for new communities worth joining.

 

My marketing consultant charged me 45 an hour. But she was more concerned with my seo. Online marketing consultants see the importance of marketing through seo. Still it was a successful plan.

 

A real online marketing professional better be doing a hell of a lot more than SEO. Otherwise, you're really just working with an SEO consultant... big difference.

 

Me too, Thats why I just decided to start My own Marketing forum

 

Tell us what it is.

 

Oh - yea sorry, I wasnt sure if anyone was interested

http://www.onlinemarketingknowledge.com

If anyone is interested