Where can Consultancy fit in your Digital Marketing Plan?

Carrying out a successful digital marketing plan can be an onerous process unless you’ve done it before. This can hold you and your team back from using the resources available. There is a need to analyse current efforts and maximising the efficiency of these efforts. Bringing in an external consultant who has that specific expertise can act as a stopgap, a trainer or just even a fresh mindset, and they can be exactly what your business needs to create a detailed and smart digital marketing plan.

Where can Consulting help your business?

By looking examining the areas below we aim to help every small to medium business decide whether a digital marketing consultant is a necessity for them.

Planning & Organisation

Right from the outset planning and organisation is an extremely important area of focus. It’s no good starting a Google Ads campaign, working on Search Engine Optimisation or even posting on social media without an aim or knowing  what this effort is doing for the businesses short and long term goals. This aim would then be followed by an appropriate plan of action.

“A good plan is like a roadmap: it shows the final destination and usually the best way to get there.” – H. Stanley Judd

A marketing consultant can help with that. Having the knowledge and experience of someone who worked with a variety of businesses in  similar situations can really provide tangible results. This can be the area where a consultant can bring new ideas. They’ve been there and done it all before.

Social Media

Social media can be a minefield! With all the different modes and channels, from Facebook to LinkedIn and YouTube or wondering if Pinterest should be added to the mix in your social media toolbox. It has to be approached tentatively, and this can be too slow a process for some people who may get excited by the idea of a “viral post”.

Social Media should have long term goals, just as much as any other digital marketing effort. This means that your posts should be scheduled consistently, maybe even having a person dedicated to interacting with other profiles on the company’s page – these interactions can, at the very least, give current and potential customers the peace of mind that the business is available and talking (with a human voice). A marketing consultant knows this, and doesn’t just work to create promising posts, but instead sees the value of the exercise and helps plan and execute the necessary activities.

Search

Search Engine Optimisation can be a very complicated and confusing part of a Digital Marketing Plan. It is largely based on trial and error and long-term plans. It needs consistent efforts that have clear aims. Whether that is through targeting more niche search terms or trying to rank high on popular terms, or both, all these aims need to be thought through and effort needs to be put in the organisation of all the individual parts of the SEO including blogging, keyword research, page redesign and tracking.

For an experienced marketing consultant this is all second nature but it may not come as easily to a more inexperienced inhouse staff member who may have not created a plan for tackling SEO before.

Website

A website can be managed at a potentially small scale with regular updates, and checks of the most popular pages. However, to tie in not only SEO but every area of the digital marketing process, a well performing website amplifies the results of every other area. Whether that is increasing the speed that the site loads or improving the placement of a button on the page so that they are more clearly seen. There are an infinite number of ways to change a website on a small scale to improve its performance.

A consultant can view the website in one sit-down and know what your potential customer desires subconsciously. This viewpoint can bring immeasurable amounts of improved success to your website and business. Minor changes here and there can make all the difference, which is why it is so important that you don’t settle with a website for years on end without updating. Subtle changes can make your website feel timeless and can give you the peace of mind that your website is not causing any problem for your customers trying to contact or purchase from you.

Advertising

Advertising online can take many different forms, with Social and Search ads taking priority. But there are also display ads, banner ads, native ads, and more to consider. With all these avenues to explore, it can be a very busy place to navigate. However, with proper guidance you and your business can arrive at a place when you feel comfortable and find what fits best for your overall marketing plan and budget.

Search advertising (through Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc…) is becoming more and more subtle as consumers become more wary of obvious advertising. Many of these online forms of advertising can be very targeted and cheap, and search can be especially useful as you are being shown to searchers who already have intent. However, it is so important to keep on top of what your Cost per Acquisition is and therefore use the resources available wisely always knowing where every cent of your money goes. An experienced consultant automatically knows this is key.

Email

Some say Email is dying, and spam email certainly is. But newsletters and direct contact are some of the few methods where customers can hear directly from you, and it is such a customisable marketing form. You can use images, videos, links, infographics, discounts, and you can track open rates, click rates and get right down to the nitty gritty in your analytics.

This form of marketing has been expanding and becoming more and more interesting as time goes on. Customers are expecting a sales email, however when you give your customer something of value, you can be their go to source of information. Our consultants have worked with a range of softwares that can improve email performance, and they know what will work for your business.

Data Analytics

This area of marketing is where you find out whether a campaign is working or not and what could be done better. As digital marketing becomes increasingly complicated, the need for proper tracing has become a necessity. Tracking could be Implemented at site level, or you can set up tracking at any stage afterwards using (usually) free tools.

Every consultant dealing with driving traffic to a website will be very aware of this and will advise that tracking(?) is now a necessity for any website. How else do you know if a campaign is working unless you know where your customers are coming from.

 

If you are looking to learn more about how consultancy can help you and how your business can benefit from a consultancy program, get in touch with us today.