What Your Marketing Team Wished You Knew Before Hiring a Marketing Consultant
Scale. Growth. Innovation. That’s what the CEO is asking for, and all eyes are on the marketing department. Your marketing team has reached its capacity, they have done everything they know how to do, and now they need to learn new skills. So you plan to buy them a teacher, not just any teacher, one that customizes the lesson to your business: a marketing consultant.
I have worked in a marketing agency and worked as a contracted consultant and junior account manager. I have been an employee that works with several different marketing consultants. There are vital factors that can make working with a marketing consultant successful, as I have learned from being on both sides.
At the high-level, there are a few big questions you will want to answer as you start to interview and do research. Trey Robinson, CEO of Story Amplify, a growth marketing agency in Austin, Texas, and my mentor, always advised that a marketing consultant should be chosen based on these questions:
- Do they make the team better?
- Do they fill gaps?
- Are they a culture fit?
Of course, finding the truthful answers to these questions may be difficult, but they should be a guiding point in the hiring process. After you answer those questions, here’s what you can do to ensure your marketing consultant and your team achieve all of the CEO’s initiatives.
Get a Statement of Work
A statement of work is a list of exactly what services the consultant is promising to complete. Bonus points if you get a timeline that estimates when you will start to see the results of the consultant’s work. For example, are they going to create a newsletter for your email list? How often? When will they start?
There’s a job description for all your full-time employees, so why should that be missing for your marketing consultant? When you first meet your consultant, you should list out what you need help with and give them a rundown on what you are doing now and what you have done. At the end of that meeting, the action item for the consultant should be to develop a statement of work (SOW) for your review.
If there is a vague goal written like, “Will increase the open rate of the monthly newsletter by 20%”, request a breakdown of how they plan to achieve that.
Communicate with Your Team
Would you marry a man without explaining to your kids who he is and what he is to them? Don’t just bring home a step-dad/mom to your marketing team. Please make sure they are on the same page as to what the marketing consultant is there to accomplish. This will help your team communicate better and learn more efficiently from the consultant. If everyone is scared that the new consultant is there to replace them, how much learning and work will get done?
Observe How the Marketing Consultant Learns (or Doesn’t)
A consultant should improve processes. Within the first 30 days, they need to have a solid understanding of what is working well, what could be improved, and what each team member’s tasks are.
To improve your marketing team’s process, they have to understand what is wrong. And if the consultant gets it wrong, then they might do more damage than good to your business and team.
(The last two points are provided by Christina Boothe, Marketing Manager at Story Amplify.)
Hire an Over-communicator
An organization should expect their marketing consultant (especially if it’s an agency) to over-communicate deadlines, expectations, and asks. 50% of the job is doing the work, and the other half is communicating it.
Wide Variety of Expertise
This can be more difficult for an individual consultant, who may know strategy on a lot of stuff (which is super important), but if you’re hiring an agency, it’s helpful to know you have a team that can fill all the gaps you need them to fill. Not just one… unless you’re a big enough company that you can hire one agency for every weakness you have.
Ultimately, hiring a marketing consultant should be handled with care. Find that person will add value to the company as well as your marketing team.
