Want to hire a marketing consulting agency? Check out in this text what a consultancy is and its benefits for digital marketing.
Are you a business owner, or are you thinking about pursuing a career in entrepreneurship, but are scared of the digital world? Know that there are professionals specialized in making your business grow and get more and more online presence.
These experts are digital marketing professionals and usually work in marketing agencies, providing services as a freelancer or follow-ups through consultancies.
In this text, we will explore marketing consulting, discover its role in digital marketing, its benefits for small entrepreneurs, and how it differs from conventional marketing agencies. Keep with us!
What does a marketing consultancy do?
It’s no secret that medium and large companies are looking for marketing experts to manage their entire advertising campaign, track results, and boost sales and digital visibility.
Or do you think, for example, that Alexandre Tadeu da Costa, founder of Cacau Show, is daily following sponsored ads and insights from Instagram? No! Brands such as Cacau Show (BR), Apple (US), and Twinings Of London (UK) have a team dedicated to their digital presence.
Anyone who thinks that only big companies can enjoy an excellent, creative and successful online presence is also wrong. With a marketing consultancy, you can achieve good sales results and invest in the growth of your business without this limiting thinking that there is no room for your brand on Google.
We have separated 6 topics to help you understand what a real marketing consultancy is and its biggest benefits, check it out:
- Find your ideal audience
A marketing consultancy helps you find the desired financial health, sell more and build a network of increasingly satisfied and close leads and customers.
A consultant does an analytical “scan” of your business to find strengths and weaknesses. One of the first steps to understanding a marketing consultancy is understanding what it does with its audience. That’s right, your audience.
If you don’t have one, the consultancy helps you map them. One of the primary functions is to find the ideal audience for what you are selling. It may seem trivial, but in practice, it makes all the difference. Imagine, for example, a small entrepreneur in the niche of cakes and sweets: it doesn’t make sense for her to talk to groups of diabetics, does it?
If she doesn’t consider the importance of talking to a target audience, that is, who actually consumes sweets and loves cakes, the chances of failing in her project are high. And how does the marketing consultancy do it?
The responsible team searches for people who, in some way, could be interested in your business; elaborates on a semi-fictional customer known as a “persona” and deposits in this character all the expectations of a potential consumer in relation to your brand.
In other words, a marketing consultancy brings together strategies that make the most familiar audience approach and become interested in your business. Imagine a pet supply store directing its content to those who don’t have a pet, or a sporting goods store looking to connect with people who don’t like physical activity? Difficult, right? In addition to not growing, this generates a bounce rate, which is a big problem in the world of digital marketing.
- Help in building values
A very common mistake among small entrepreneurs is to start selling before building the purpose of their business. Obviously, in the current Brazilian scenario, many people decided to open their own businesses as a way to circumvent the financial crisis and the high unemployment rate.
This is not a negative thing, on the contrary, many Brazilians are exploring their gifts and valuing skills. With the boom of Individual Microentrepreneurs (MEIs) in the pandemic, in 2020, many businesses emerged and others were reborn – some to ensure their own survival, so the need to have money was much greater than asking “what is the meaning of my business for my consumer? ”
But to generate effective sales, the right thing to do is to sell to the customer not just a product, but a purpose. Marketing consultancy makes your business born, but with human values that will make sense to your consumer. And how do they do it? The marketing consulting team will build, together with you, the goals of your business and what it offers the world, something far beyond services or products.
This is super important to generate brand value and, consequently, generate even more value for the product you want to sell. Many customers seek to identify with their favorite companies and this identification is only possible when you convey to them your vision of the world, growth, and values.
- Create a striking visual identity
Not everyone is good with visual identity, or with design. And this is not a problem, but it can be an obstacle to the natural growth of your business. Don’t get me wrong, we appreciate your effort. So, if one of your desires is to further improve your company’s identity, know that this is another function of a marketing consultancy.
In digital marketing, it is necessary to define strategies to achieve good results, one of these strategies being captivating the target audience, all through visual sense and interest. How do they do it? Building a visual identity that relates to your values; your genuine personality; your product is shown as something innovative; colors and fonts are used to make the user not forget about you.
A logo alone cannot reflect the company’s values, and the absence of content standardization does not have the sales impact we want. A marketing consultancy helps to define the color palette; phrases that dialogue with the public; what style of content will be used; how the product fits into that identity, among others.
This entire process is strategically built and involves persuasion techniques, neuromarketing, and market trends research, so don’t disregard a consultancy when you feel you need it.
- Discover problems and failures
It is hard to start a business with good sales performance and customer retention. It’s an almost impossible mission, and buying followers on the networks and only valuing your product will not help you at all.
Furthermore, it’s thinking about the difficulties, which are not a few, that a marketing consultancy puts all the cards on the table and shows where you are getting it right and where you are wrong. Another task for the consultancy is the discovery of problems and failures.
These obstacles can be operational, such as a bad website, a bad landing page, bounce rate, and lack of plans for when the problem arises. Other difficulties can naturally arise such as bad content, your brand not connecting with the customer, the number of abandoned carts has grown in recent months, or they have barely received a new lead registration.
A marketing consultancy exists to make sure these flaws are found and properly corrected. Another issue that unfortunately exists, but for a good cause, is the fast growth of a business. With the considerable advancement of a small company, the service channels begin to become overloaded, some messages go unnoticed and, consequently, the arriving audience does not find the promised quality, much less a good experience.
Digital marketing has found a super positive scenario in recent years and good business has managed to grow quickly with digital access. The marketing consultancy helps to manage this growth, delivering results periodically that accompany the development and the need for new demands.
- Content production
Have you ever come across hilarious and creative content on Instagram or an emotional story that made you happy, nostalgic, or confident? In the end, did you find that it was a super famous company, like Coca-Cola, for example? Know that every sensation you felt was strategically built by a marketing agency or marketing consultancy to make you connect with that company.
And it’s not wrong, after all, a lot of people need a funny, warm, or self-care message sometimes. And that says how much your company can enrich and actually change people’s day or lives.
The production of strategic content is another function performed by the marketing consultancy, because, after knowing your audience, developing a striking identity, and studying the strengths of your business, the marketing team produces a series of valuable content for the organic growth of your company.
In other words, your brand conquers the necessary audience in a completely natural way. But don’t get it wrong: a marketing consultancy works hard to make these contents actually get engagement. This content production or content marketing can follow a line of informative, interactive, audiovisual, or reading materials, as in this article within this blog, for example.
There are several platforms to promote the content produced, and it is also the responsibility of the consultancy to find which networks are most promising and which content you need to invest in.
Want to delve deeper into this subject? Here at Karis Blog, you will find an exclusive post about content marketing: what it is, how it works, and how to use it. I suggest you do this reading, but stay here with me, I will still teach you a lot about marketing consulting.
- Metrics and results analysis
Many entrepreneurs are excellent negotiators, but they don’t master the digital language enough, to understand how metrics actually work. And what are metrics? They are data that quantitatively measure the success of the execution of a certain activity. They are useful to help you understand what worked and what didn’t work in your company.
Not following it up is like walking in the dark without a flashlight. You may even know the room, the hallway, and the house, but you can’t see anything at all. The risk of tripping and falling over a chair is great. Now, can you imagine stumbling daily on failures within your company that are possible to correct?
Metrics represent the flashlight, the company corresponds to the house. So, the dark is what happens daily in your business that you don’t see, that is, the number of new followers, new customers, or leads; conversion rate; bounce rate; KPIs; ROI; the life cycle of a customer, and many others.
One of the functions of the marketing consultancy is to help you analyze this data, carry out new tests, compare results and produce reports. Over time, you’ll understand how metrics work, and you’ll never walk around the house without a flashlight again.
According to a survey conducted by Social Media Trends, in 2019, 25% of Brazilian businesses did not analyze metrics in their marketing strategies. This lack of attention can put the company at risk. After all, for any execution, some type of investment is used. The ideal is that the result exceeds the amount invested and, to reach these numbers, you must study data and results.
Discover the benefits of contracting Marketing Consulting
In the previous topic, we discussed a number of factors that alone reveal several benefits of a marketing consultancy. But we want to intensify these benefits with the next 5 items listed below:
- Make your business grow in the digital market
A marketing consultancy is specialized in making your company grow, and with that, gaining even more profit, visibility, and prestige. Some businesses are consolidated in the physical sector, that is, in addition to traditional, they have built a point and good customer loyalty in person.
But what about internet sales? We need to understand that the digital world differs from the physical world in some aspects such as wide access, wide competition, and an even greater reach of customers. While the physical store is restricted to that neighborhood, region, or city, the digital version of the business, or e-commerce, includes a greater number of people.
With the new habit, conventionally called “New Normal”, guaranteed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of consumers in the digital market tripled, that is, for some physical stores, the way out was to migrate to digital. They’re not wrong, are they? But if it was already difficult to build face-to-face marketing, digital marketing is even more challenging.
As one of its benefits, marketing consultancy is able to make companies that previously existed only in person, or that are starting from scratch, start on the “right foot” in the digital market, retaining this consumer/user who is highly demanding and with several accesses within reach of a click.
One of the first steps for anyone who is building a good image in digital is the development and execution of a website. Here at Karis, within our services, we include not only the elaboration but also the monitoring of this page, which is fundamental.
- Organized paid traffic and its results
The marketing consultancy’s work is carried out in stages: after finding the ideal audience, building an identity, and studying the points that favor the company, some actions are put into practice with defined objectives and one of them is the use of paid traffic. It is one, among all other strategies.
To sell on the internet, your business inevitably needs paid traffic, that is, ad campaigns linked to search engines, social networks, and email marketing through direct mail, for example.
Organic traffic brings sustainability and growth in the long and medium term, but when “time is tight” and we need quick exits, it is necessary to turn to paid traffic.
What many do not know is that, for an ad to achieve a good position on Google, the most sought-after search engine, you must first go through the “Google Quality standard” established by Google itself, where the quality of the ad is studied. It is evaluated: the photograph of the product; price objectivity; quality in the description; quality and functionality of the website; how each keyword is received and inserted extensions.
If your ad doesn’t match the “google model” of quality, it will not rank well. If you do not get the first pages of Google, you will hardly get a good sales performance.
It is in this problem that the marketing consultancy comes up with the solution, after all, it controls paid traffic, providing your brand with results and performance. And make no mistake: it’s not just big companies that get the first page of Google. Good traffic management can help your brand sell a lot through Google Ads or Facebook Ads, for example.
- Turn your business into a brand
Have you ever heard of branding? A consulting job helps your business or company to gain brand awareness. A branding represents all the connection points within your company. For example, it is through it that values are aligned with the purpose, making the meaning of your company present in the content produced or in the logo that is created.
In other words, branding makes your company become a brand, with your business becoming a reference, as is the case with the mermaid of the Starbucks brand. For some, going to Starbucks is just the need to have a coffee, for others, going to Starbucks is going to Starbucks, that is, the person is going to the brand, even though they know they can find coffee in any other coffee shop. Starbucks’ branding enhances this relationship between customer and brand, so the coffee there can be more expensive than in other coffee shops.
With branding, your company enters the lives of many consumers as a reference, a desire, or an experience. This evolution makes it possible to generate value for the brand and, consequently, generate a new perspective for growth.
- Customer loyalty
A challenge faced by many companies when entering digital marketing, or when looking for a marketing agency or consultancy is customer loyalty. This happens because it is very easy for the user/consumer to change the product, or abandon the cart without causing embarrassment. All it takes is a Google Shopping search to find dozens of other entrepreneurs.
But one factor, in particular, makes this user/consumer interested in a particular brand or company: a good experience. Marketing consulting jobs provide the necessary support to make your business retain customers, whether through discount coupons, use of newsletters, gifts, or personalized communication.
Customer loyalty is a strategy that generates fewer costs for the company, after all, it is impossible to build a new customer conversion strategy without an investment. In this case, keeping the customer who already knows you around and, possibly, encouraging them to buy again, is a low investment growth strategy.
- Lead nurturing
In addition to the loyal customer, that is, those who have already purchased and even evaluated your business, another important group that a company needs to have are leads. This class corresponds to users who identify with your company, align themselves with it, are part of your target audience, but are always adrift at the top of the sales funnel, that is, they never actually make a purchase.
However, leads are extremely important to grow your organic traffic: they consume your content, get rich with your information production, and get attached to the way your company or brand is positioned socially and culturally in the market.
From lead to prospect, it’s as quick as a flash. The prospect class corresponds to the middle of the funnel. They are potential customers, but they are undecided about the purchase. When a prospect decides to close the deal, he becomes a customer. Therefore, leads, even if they are far from the bottom of the sales funnel, can turn into future customers, which is why their nutrition is so necessary. And a consultancy understands this well.
Marketing consultancy X marketing agency: understand the difference between them
In digital marketing, you will find two segments that work with the development of the image and growth of your business: marketing agencies and consulting. But do you know what the difference between them is?
For some groups, this difference may seem very obvious, but it is not so clear for some people.
- Marketing Agency
A marketing agency is usually responsible for creating and executing content for social networks, creating a logo, building and maintaining a website, in addition to providing the material necessary for the company to have content and a design that helps convert new sales and retain customers who are already with it.
Generally, agencies already receive a job demand from the company itself, that is, the business itself studied its problems, related to advertising, and defined which path it wants to take and what its escalation goals are.
In other words, the services provided by Marketing agencies are more operational, that is, they are responsible for putting their “hands-on” and making all the material run, whether on the networks, website, or blog.
- Marketing Consulting
Consulting is a deeper and more subjective work than what is offered and operated in marketing agencies. A company hires a marketing consultant, and he will be responsible for analyzing data, finding problems, building an identity for the company, and providing close help, that is, the company and consultant go together.
The consultancy today works with two aspects. A horizontal view focuses on customers from different segments within the overall marketing approach, and the vertical view is specialized in one type of segment, such as law, medicine, and professors, among others.
In both aspects, a marketing consultancy works together with the entrepreneur in the search for solutions through data analysis, case studies, research, and performance tests. In consulting, a project is first defined, and this same project is prepared jointly with the company. In short, it is an even more complete service and with more practical assistance than an agency.
In terms of advantage, a consultancy takes care of the client’s budget, that is, it monitors the performance of the goals to understand if what was outlined at the beginning is bringing real results. While a marketing agency is limited to managing content and social networks, the consultancy analyzes the best strategies to apply content on networks and manage them.
In some cases, agencies do not comply with what was agreed, hampering the organic development of the company and hampering its performance in the digital field, while a consulting job provides a broad and general view, and also takes part in the responsibility of the results.
Not sure which service to hire? Contact us. At Karis, we want to see your success, and just like you, we want to make your business take off.
