Digital marketing consultants have become essential tools for businesses who want to stay competitive in today's highly connected world. They provide expert guidance on specific technologies such as paid marketing, social media, content marketing, SEO, email marketing, and more. As the old proverb says, Knowledge is power. And these days, information can be found just about everywhere. Digital consultants are experts in today's cutting edge technologies and bring fresh perspectives to every project. As such, they can help you create innovative solutions that will transform your company's or your clients' performance.

What is a digital marketing consultant?

A digital marketing consultant has expertise in all aspects of digital marketing, including Seo Strategy and optimisation, social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, display advertising, conversion rate optimisation, analytics, paid search, website design, development, and online reputation management. They provide advice and, in some cases, execute this advice across your clients' and brand's marketing channels.

Below are 13 reasons why you should hire a digital marketing consultant:

Digital Marketing Consultants are Specialist

In some cases, you may need a specific area of your marketing efforts to be worked on, or you want to optimise your marketing strategy. You may have your social media working fine but lacking in the SEO department. Hiring a digital consultant with this skill allows you to quickly find and optimise the weak parts of your digital marketing strategy. Rather than spending time trying to figure it out, a digital marketing consultant can take a look and advise the best practices and implementations to get to your goals quicker. (You can learn from them too to apply to your next campaigns or clients). Thanks to their experience with other clients, they can apply their learnings to your current situation and get a head start.

It's Cheaper to Hire a Digital Marketing Consultant

Digital Marketing consultants can be hired in various ways, from hourly to daily rates or project-based. Rather than going through the usual interview process and potentially paying a recruiter, time is saved by getting a specialist in and paying for the job at hand. Plus, you are not paying a salary or providing company benefits. You pay for what you need. Marketing budget sorted. You'll Save Time and Money Elsewhere Too.

Training, researching, testing are all time-consuming parts of digital marketing, and you are probably doing that now. However, thanks to the number of campaigns most digital consultants have worked on, they have the knowledge and learnings to help you hit the ground running. Granted, it's not a one size fits all, but a consultant knows how to set things up to gain quicker learnings and quickly apply them to your digital marketing efforts.

Also, any good digital consultant will have their suite of tools that they use. These tools can be expensive for you to subscribe to every time. By bringing in a digital marketing consultant, they bring an arsenal of tools that have worked for them and helped achieve campaign and client goals. You get access to the outputs of these tools without having to pay for them. (There may be some exceptions in some cases due to tool licencing. However, a consultant will make that cost clear)

There are No Ongoing Expenses

You pay for what you briefed. This is great for handling your allocated budget and balancing your P&L - by allocating a budget to a digital consultant, you are in control. You do not have to worry about medical, employee benefits, overheads, and the usual things about staff hiring. The consultant is briefed on the job and focuses only on that. Once complete, they leave. (unless you want them involved on other projects) - regardless, once you know their rates, you can easily assign your marketing budget to them and keep on top of it.

They Are Focused On One Project at a Time

This is the usual case with most projects. Say, for instance, you just landed a client asking for a lead generation campaign, but you don't have anyone internal to help on that. You hire a digital consultant for the job, and that's all they work on. Your team cracks on with the usual stuff and works in conjunction with the consultant, who is focused on that one project. They are hired to bring their skill set to that project and deliver and not spread thin across day to day requests. They are briefed and deliver.

In an instant, you have upgraded your digital department or created one. I do this at VHDigital with a number of clients, and it can be done with most consultants. By hiring a digital marketing expert, you automatically upgrade the digital marketing services you can offer to clients. Your digital marketing team grows overnight.

You can even grow existing clients by upselling new services to them that you didn't offer before. Most consultants will allow you to create an email address for them at the company, so it looks like they are a member of the digital marketing team and not outsourced, and if agreed that they are client-facing, the client sees that you have a specialist on your team and is willing to trust you with more work and ultimately more budget.

This usually works best with retainers. You can hire consultants on a defined retainer and get them involved where needed.

I have worked with several agencies where they had a digital department overnight by hiring me. I would be invited to pitches, client meetings and more. I brought my specialist skills to the table and helped the clients, and the agency grow.

Digital Consultants Are Skilled and Experienced. No Training Required.

You may have a team of talented marketers already, but they may not have the right skills or experience or resources required to handle a specific task at hand. To upgrade your digital marketing service yourself, you'd have to learn the latest tools and best practices. Hiring an expert gets you the same result without a large time or monetary investment. There are many things to learn about the best practices for digital marketing. And with the learning curves involved, you're ultimately losing both money and productivity when they're trying to navigate their way through the complexities involved in digital marketing.

Digital Consultants Are Equipped with excellent Tools.

There are plenty of online resources for free digital marketing tools and services. However, features are typically limited. To achieve your business goals, using digital media means you will need to invest in full-featured software and other technology. Once you've done so, you need to learn to use them and apply these techniques to your own particular business or industry; it will take some time. A digital marketing consultant has access to these solutions, tools, and services – from digital analytics to web design to social media marketing and more. They know how to effectively use the tools and software, which increases your chances of achieving your goals faster.

Digital Consultants Implement known Strategies, So You See Results Faster. 

For example, A primary goal of digital marketing is for your company or client to be found when someone searches for them online. Improving your search engine rankings involves improving your website's search ranking. Suppose your current marketing team is unfamiliar with search engine optimisation, content creation, and website optimisation. In that case, it will take longer to find out the techniques used to rank higher and then even longer to apply them. By working with a digital marketing consultant, your business can conserve resources and improve efficiency. They are in the best position to strategically implement digital marketing tactics to prove to your customers that you are the right company to do business with. Their expertise can provide guidance and ensure that you see results quickly. They can affordably provide the targeted marketing campaigns you need through their network of third-party experts, who already have all of the necessary software, technology and experience in place to get you started quickly. You Can Get New Ideas

In digital marketing, it's important to note that not all tactics will be equally effective for your company. Some tactics can offer disappointing results, while others will perform well. A good consultant will give you "new" ideas on what marketing methods will generate more revenue. A good consultant will assess your current practices and suggest more effective ones. Your consultant will determine what your customers think of your current efforts and help you develop the best marketing strategies based on the customers' responses. Providing a fresh perspective on some of the things your team is currently doing will bring new ideas and energy to your group. In short, a fresh pair of eyes.

Digital Consultants Have Teams Behind Them.

Over the years of working with various clients and their projects, consultants sometimes bring in a team they have worked with and can help even more.  Say, for instance, a consultant takes a look at your paid search setup and makes recommendations where you can change it and optimise it. You may want them to do this. A consultant would rely on specialists in their team to build for you. This works across all disciplines. In most cases, a consultant would offer advice and recommendations. However, when it comes to the execution, they will bring in their team who have already been vetted and used on previous campaigns. So there is no worry about capabilities. Also, you don't have to interview or find these skills. The consultant has these resources already. 

Digital Consultants Can Help You Focus on Business Growth

You're busy, and you've got a lot to deal with in your business. If you're trying to learn digital marketing, you're taking time away from your own business. Hiring a digital marketing consultant to help you develop, implement and manage your digital marketing strategies and campaigns means that you can focus on growing your business, nurturing and developing your team and deepening relationships with your customers. 

Working with experts means that they are focused exclusively on your business goals while your time is spent doing what you do best – running your business. Online marketing often means hiring people outright to run the campaigns for you. On top of that, it will require some of your attention because you'll be working with a team in-house. It will take time and resources to get the team and campaign up and running. 

By bringing in a marketing consultant, you are saving time and having them hit the ground running. You only need to provide a brief. Let them know the task or campaign goals, and away they go. You can get back to working on your business whilst the campaign work is left in capable hands.

In many cases, I have taken over client relationships and helped teams deliver on briefs. From this, the agency could apply these methods to future activity. So it was a win-win, they hired me to help in campaigns, but at the same time, their team gained more knowledge for any future work or to enhance existing client work.

Stay on top of the latest tech and developments.

Research is essential before launching any campaign. You need to learn about new technologies and what's available to you. Digital Marketing consultants spend a lot of time ensuring they are ahead of the game and in the know. They keep up to date on the latest digital marketing trends and, in most cases, have been able to apply and gain insight from past campaigns. By hiring a digital marketing consultant, you gain access to the latest methods, technologies and processes for your business or clients.  

Want to hire me for the job?  You probably gathered by now that I'm a digital consultant. ;-) I work across a number of disciplines in digital : paid advertising, content marketing, social media, ecommerce, email marketing, automations, SEO, web builds, web audits and more all through VHDigital.

VHDigital is broken down into two packages. The first is VHDigital, my full Digital Consultancy. This is for large projects. It includes white labelling me as a member of your team, overseeing any of your business or client's activity, or working on a specific project.  Think of it as your head of digital in a box.