What Should a Digital Marketing Consultant Do for Your Business?
By Natasha Gayle | SEO Specialist, BGD Digital Marketing
July 12, 2022
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Plain and simple, a digital marketing consultant should help your business grow! They should know how to keep you on track with your goals; help you dream bigger; highlight who you are as a unique, diverse brand and business; optimize every opportunity you have to grow; and keep your brand relevant within your industry and to your target audience.
You are the hero of your story and a digital marketing consultant is your guide…much like Sisu was to Raya in The Last Dragon, Grandma Tala was to Moana in Moana, and Luke and Leia were to Rey in Star Wars. You have been presented with an opportunity, an idea, or a great adventure, with the passion and skills needed to make it a success. Your guide equips and encourages you with practical tips and tools to achieve your goals along the way.
But you want to find the right guide and understand how they are helping, or not helping, your business, which is what we’ll talk about below.
What to Know About the World of Digital Marketing for Business
It’s back to the basics as you begin your search for a digital marketing consultant, or evaluate the one you already have. Understanding the core behind the practice will help you identify what your digital marketing consultant is doing, or not doing, for your business.
What do digital marketing consultants do?
Digital marketing consultants help in the strategy, planning, and execution of a few areas of marketing (i.e. social media, graphic and website design, content marketing, SEO, etc.).
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is a means in which to market and advertise your business online to reach a specific audience that needs your goods and services.
How to Identify the Right Digital Marketing Consultant for Your Business
There are a few characteristics to look for in a digital marketing consultant as far as what they should do for your business, and some red flags to watch out for, too.
Top 4 Characteristics of a Great Digital Marketing Consultant
They listen to you
They ask the right questions
They think about your business 5 and 10 years from now
They consider your capacity
Top 3 Red Flags Signaling You Have a Poor Digital Marketing Consultant
1. THEY DON’T PUT YOU THROUGH ANY KIND OF STRATEGIC BUILD PROCESS
At BGD Digital Marketing, we have this incorporated into all three of our digital marketing programs because it’s so important. A strategic build process helps us get to know you, your business, your target demographic, and your business’s goals and values - which we apply and incorporate into our digital marketing strategy for your business.
If someone is not taking the time to learn about you and your business before they offer you services, that’s a huge red flag. What they are saying is that out of their experience, they know all they need to know about your business. That’s not sustainable.
A good digital marketing consultant asks you who you are, what’s important to you, where you’ve been, and where you’re going. Out of our expertise as brand strategists, we identify what’s good in our clients’ business and bring that to life in our marketing strategies to show their audience who they are and how they relate to them.
2. THEY DON’T MEET YOU FACE TO FACE
When I say this, I don’t mean an in-person, I-can-feel-your-breath-on-my-face type of meeting. I understand in the world of 2022, we are scattered across the globe and it’s not always practical to meet in-person. But even a Zoom call would be acceptable and a way for you and your digital marketing consultant to have a face-to-face encounter.
If they are not willing to meet you face to face before providing services, that’s a red flag.
A brand is a business representation of a core value and a core trait.
If you’re interacting with someone for the first time, you want to know who they are, what are their characteristics, what makes them happy, and what makes them successful. You want to get to know that person.
When you have a brand strategist or digital marketing consultant, they need to get to know the heart and soul of your business - and they do that by getting to know you. That’s what creates brand success and sustainability. And you can always do this more effectively by meeting face to face.
3. THEY PUSH YOU BEYOND YOUR CAPACITY
If you say you’ve never done any social media posting before and your digital marketing consultant tells you they want you posting 4 reels a day on Instagram and 3 TikToks a day, that is beyond your capacity just starting off.
Your marketing consultant should be asking you what you like doing and what you are capable of doing. They should not be recommending a strategy that will require you to hire several more people to accomplish.
Why Does BGD Digital Marketing Offer Digital Marketing Consulting?
Just like your business was started because you had an amazing idea or gift you wanted to share with the world, BGD was started because our founder understood and realized her gift and how she could help businesses grow.
One of the greatest things BGD has been able to witness through our marketing consulting program is being able to simplify and streamline processes for the businesses we work with.
The business owners we meet with often feel overwhelmed, overworked, and confused about which way they should go. Through our marketing consulting program, we’re able to simplify and streamline their processes and all of a sudden they have more hours in the day. We are able to instantly give them access to more capacity that they didn’t know they had.
Western Gallery is one client we have worked with through our consulting program that is a great example of this. We streamlined their process so they can have more exhibitions for their artwork. Exhibitions they are really passionate about.
New Western Talent is one showcase they do for emerging artists. They were able to put together a showcase of women artists, which is a huge disparity in the art community. They could do this because they had more capacity due to our streamlined marketing processes.
We were able to help them unlock their creativity because they had more time and because of that they were able to build up women artists in an industry that had long been devaluing their work.
That’s the power of streamlining processes through digital marketing consulting and helping a company do what they’ve set out to do - changing the world one exhibition or product at a time.
