A marketing strategy consultant's job is to help companies implement the most effective marketing strategies to reach their target audience and hit their growth goals. These experts can help with market research, implementation, targeting, competitor analysis, and messaging.

What does a strategy consultant do?

A marketing strategy consultant works with the business owner, chief marketing officer (CMO), or head of marketing to diagnose problems, identify solutions, and provide an unbiased prospective.

They could do any number of things including:

• Meet with the client to learn about their business objectives
• Conduct research on existing marketing operations, the product, the ideal customers, the current marketing technology stack, and the current digital marketing trends of the day
• Identify issues and areas for improvement
• Create a digital marketing plan with solutions and specific strategies
• Create reports and presentations

Those are specific actions the consultant would be taking but there are several general areas of marketing that consultants can help you with including: 

• Brand and customer strategy
• Pricing optimization
• B2B go-to-market strategy
• Customer experience
• Sales management
• Digital marketing

What skills does a strategy consultant need?

A marketing strategy consultant needs several basic skills to be successful including - interpersonal soft skills, analytics, creative thinking, and a dedication to your business. Let's talk about each one in greater detail.

People skills

Marketing consultants need to have advanced interpersonal skills since they interface with a variety of teams. Depending on the size of the company, they could interface with just the marketing team or also people on the product, dev, and operations side of the business. 

Analytics

A lot of the success in marketing is due to the correct use of data. A digital marketing consultant is going to spend most of their time analyzing data and then creating recommendations and a marketing plan from that data. They need to know marketing tools and platforms like the back of their hand and be experienced in Google Sheets or Excel.

Creating thinking

Creativity is a must-have skill for any independent consultant. Your strategic planning freelancer needs to come up with creative ways to market the business to be able to engage with potential clients and build customer loyalty with the existing customer base. 

Creativity is the backbone of any marketing effort including paid marketing campaigns, email marketing, and any kind of customer acquisition.

Dedication to the business

Your marketing strategy consultant is going to spend many hours researching your business and your ideal customers. They will need to really get into the weeds of your value prop, your position in the market, and your competitors.

And it's going to take many long hours of research before they come up with a plan, and even then they won't see any results from it until after you implement it. So patience, dedication, and an entrepreneurial mindset (to get stuff done) are key here.

X Questions to ask your consultant before you hire them

• How much marketing analytics experience do you have?
• Which marketing techniques do you use to gather customer insights?
• Which industries are you most experienced in? 
• Which analytics tools do you use?
• Do you have experience in specific channels (online advertising, SEO, content marketing)
• How big are your typical clients? (1-10 employees? 20-50 employees? >100?)
• How soon can we expect a growth strategy and would you also help with the implementation?
• How many projects are you currently working on?
• How much management experience do you have?

How to hire the best strategy consultant for your business

Want to hire the best marketing strategy consultant for your business? Here is a step-by-step process.

1. Identify your goals

First, identify your goals. What do you feel is not working for your business? Is there a specific challenge? Are you planning to do a complete digital transformation to your business? Or is everything working great and you are expanding and want to get the best strategy moving forward?

2. Write the job description

Next, decide on your specific requirements. What's your budget? How many hours will you want to hire your freelance consultant for? Would they be advising your marketing team on specific marketing campaigns, implementing marketing initiatives themselves, or creating a plan from scratch?

Put everything in writing and compare your description to what you find online for your niche. 

3. Advertise online

Once you publish your job ad it's time to share it on social media platforms, online groups, and Slack channels. You can even sponsor online newsletters or pay for placement on job boards.

The challenge here is that all of these places require a lot of sifting through applications, and you will probably get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of applicants.

4. Ask your network

An easier way to find the right digital marketing consultant is by asking your professional network. You could even reach out to your customer base (if you're in B2B) and see if they know any good candidates. You'd be surprised how much people want to refer their friends.

5. Use Mayple

The best way to hire the right talent is to work with Mayple. Our platform has over 600+ marketing experts that are vetted by our team, and matched to your business based on their proven experience in your niche and a successful track record. 

Bonus: our experts can not only create the marketing plan for you but also run your marketing campaigns, work directly with your marketing team, and help convert your potential clients into raving fans.