A marketing consultant is a strange type of animal to a lot of people, even to many small business owners. Some small business owners are not always sure what a marketing consultant does, or what to do with them, even after they hire them.
1. A Marketing Consultant Sees Your Business Challenges From an Outside Perspective
If the person you have hired to consult on your small business marketing has any actual business experience (which they should), they will understand what you are trying to accomplish. They will understand your market and what other competitors are doing differently than you are. You can use that outside perspective to help you see new opportunities.
2. A Web Marketing Consultant Has Outside Resources and Access to Information That You May Not Have
Sure, the Internet is the great equalizer when it comes to information: We can now all be sprayed in the face with that fire hose equally. Your web marketing consultant can make sure that the time it takes for you to learn the important things about your business is reduced down to an amount that is worth it for you. They can usually find things faster, and know more about the all the varied resources that exist on the Internet. And when it comes to actually working on the Internet and getting things done there? You need help.
3. You Can’t Possibly Do it All Yourself
What is your time worth? Hiring a professional to do marketing projects for you such as building and maintaining your website, writing blog posts, shooting and editing videos and putting them up on the Internet, writing and distributing newsletters and mass emails, all can be done more cost effectively than it ever could if you had to learn how to do these things and then spend the time to do them yourself.
4. The Nature of Small Business Marketing is “Everything All At Once – All The Time”
Running a full time marketing department in your small business is not always feasible. It’s good to have an outside consultant who you can call on from time to time to handle the overflow – and then go away. In fact, even if you have a full time marketing department, it’s good to have an outside marketing guy on a temporary basis to use when your marketing department gets overwhelmed.
5. Sometimes, Special Marketing Projects Are Best Handled By Someone Outside Your Company
Competitor research, experimental projects where you want to test their feasibility without upsetting your existing organizational structure, and other special marketing projects are all best handled by someone outside your company who reports only to you, and to no one else. Sometimes these special projects are the only way for you and your business to get ahead.
6. It’s Good To Shake Things Up Every Once in a While
The world is constantly changing. Your employees can fall into ruts. You and your business can stagnate, and fail to see new opportunities as they arise. A marketing consultant can provide services such as a SWOT Analysis, or a refreshed Business or Marketing Plan that wakes everyone up and re-energizes them on their jobs.
If you’ve never hired one, you may not have seen the rejuvenation and increased income that can result for your business from hiring a seasoned marketing consultant who knows what he is doing.
You can use The Stanfield Agency as your out-sourced marketing agency, or you can simply hire Allen Stanfield as your marketing consultant. We can scale up, or scale down, to your needs.
