Digital Marketing Consulting: All You Need to Know [2024]

In this digital era, businesses irrespective of their size and niche are recognizing the importance of having strong online presence.

They now realize that digital marketing is effective when it comes to reaching out to their target audience, when compared to traditional marketing methods.

Yet, many companies find it confusing on whether they need digital marketing or how to leverage it for their respective business.

Or, they face difficulty in coming up with a digital marketing plan that fulfils their ROI requirements.

What they need is proper advice and a digital marketing consultant can help with that.

In this blog post, you will know what is digital marketing consulting, who is a digital marketing consultant, why you need them, where you can find them, and how you can become one.

What is Digital Marketing Consulting?

You may have heard of legal consulting, management consulting, and IT consulting.

These are services that help companies in getting legal advice, advice on managing a business, and how to use IT to fulfil business objectives, respectively.

In the same way, digital marketing consulting is a service that helps businesses on using digital marketing channels (such as search engines, social media sites, video-sharing platforms, email, podcasts, messaging apps, blogs and news portals, etc.) to build brand awareness, generate website traffic, generate leads/sales, or build brand reputation.

Even Hubspot in its 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Trends report, says that (B2B and B2C) businesses use social media, website/blog, email, content marketing and influencer marketing as their top marketing channels.

Professionals who provide this service are called digital marketing consultants and they have the expertise in fixing issues in your marketing campaigns or creating digital marketing solutions that match your requirements.

According to Neilson’s 2022 Global Annual Marketing Report, brand awareness and customer acquisition are two main goals businesses wants to achieve when they spend on digital marketing.

Through digital marketing consulting, you as a business owner will get clarity on how to use digital platforms in your marketing campaigns.

And, you can reach out to your inhouse marketing team or a marketing/advertising agency with a detailed plan to execute.

Who is a Digital Marketing Consultant?

In simple words, a digital marketing consultant is a domain expert who advises businesses on how to use digital platforms in their marketing efforts.

They are digital marketing experts with years of experience, strategy building skills, analytical skills, and up-to-date industry knowledge.

Many digital marketing consultants work as full-time professionals for marketing or advertising agencies where businesses can hire them for their expertise.

And, there are other professionals who work independently (as freelancers), which involves finding their own clients by promoting their own digital marketing consulting services.

Based on your requirements, a digital marketing consultant will come up with a solution or plan that help you to generate sales or build brand awareness for your business/product/service.

Why You Need to Hire a Digital Marketing Consultant?

A decade ago, digital marketing was mainly limited to SEO and Facebook.

Now the domain is expanded to incorporate various ‘niches’ such as content marketing, email marketing, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Twitter marketing, influencer marketing, YouTube marketing, WhatsApp marketing, affiliate marketing, drone-based marketing, referral marketing, and many more.

Even though most business owners realize the potential of digital marketing, they often get confused about which marketing channels to use, and there are others who are not familiar with the domain.

Without a proper understanding, a business owner will not be able to approach a marketing agency or setup an in-house marketing team.

You can’t blame them as they are more focused on their core business and they want an expert to advise them.

And that’s where a digital marketing consultant comes in. They can do the research, analysis, and strategy planning for you based on your requirements.

How a Digital Marketing Consultant Can Help You?

A digital marketing consultant can help you identify the most effective ways of promoting your product or service, using digital marketing channels.

They can develop a fully customized digital marketing strategy or campaign, suggest improvements to your existing strategies/campaigns, and identify opportunities to increase customer engagement.

Here are different ways a digital marketing consultant can help your business:

• Develop suitable digital marketing strategies based on your business model and competition.
• Evaluate your target audience to identify the social media channels that provide the best opportunities for customer engagement.
• Conduct detailed SEO audits for your website and ASO audits for your app. Also, they can assist you in launching your new website or app.
• Evaluate your marketing budget and its allocation on various marketing needs accordingly.
• Assist your in-house (or an outside agency’s) marketing team in executing your digital marketing plan.
• Helps your marketing team in optimizing in your existing digital marketing campaign.
• Helps in setting up an in-house marketing team or connecting with an agency who can fulfil your marketing requirements.
• Calculate your return on marketing/advertising spend and comparing it against industry averages.
• Create a detailed content plan (for your website blog, social media, and or suggest improvements in your current plan.  
• Helps in building your individual reputation as a personal brand in your niche.

Where You Can Find Digital Marketing Consultants?

As mentioned before in this blog, you can find digital marketing consultants working full-time in marketing/advertising agencies.

You can approach an agency that provides digital marketing consulting as a service. The agency will assign you a consultant to look into your marketing requirements.

And, there are consultants who provide consulting service on an independent or freelance basis. You can find them on freelancing platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer.com.

In my opinion, the most effective way of finding digital marketing consultants is through Linkedin.

You can find most of them very much active on this professional networking platform.

Some of them showcase their work portfolio, client testimonials in their Linkedin profile.

You can chat with them (or a video call on the same platform) to know more about them and their service.

There are many filter options (such as location, experience, industry, past company, current company, etc) you can utilize in your search for the right candidate. 

Most digital marketing consultants charge by an hourly rate and there are others who charge by a flat fee or bid on a project-by-project basis.

How to Become a Digital Marketing Consultant?

If you are looking to start a career in digital marketing consulting, first you have to gain years of hands-on experience (10+ years, in my opinion) by working on digital marketing projects in various industry sectors such as manufacturing, banking, education, retail, logistics, healthcare, etc.

You can work full-time in an advertising/marketing agency, startup, MNC, or by taking client projects on a freelance basis.

Gaining more hands-on experience can make you more credible as a digital marketing consultant.

According to Credo, 53.57% of digital marketing consultants who responded to their survey have more than 10 years of experience.

Along the way, you need to develop your skill set and these include your interpersonal skills, analytical skills, and technical skills (SEO, Google Ads, email marketing, etc.).

Make sure you update your domain knowledge time to time and be familiar with popular marketing tools such as Semrush, Canva, Hubspot, Ahrefs, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, etc.

There are so many resources available on Youtube as well as on Google that can help you update or refresh your niche skills.

Also, you check out platforms such as Linkedin Learning, Udemy, Edx.org, and Coursera offers wide variety of digital marketing courses with professional certifications.

When it comes to your building technical skills, you can adopt a T-shaped approach as it is very difficult to master all niches in digital marketing. [It’s like a software developer mastering all programming languages that exist on the web.]

According to this approach, you can have in-depth knowledge in one (or few) type of marketing (say SEO and Social Media Marketing) and sufficient experience in other areas (PPC ads, email, content marketing, affiliate marketing, etc.) as shown in the infographic below.

Whether you are a fresher or an expert in your digital marketing domain, you need to keep track of latest trends and developments happening in your industry.

If not, it will be difficult for you to stay competitive in your field.

Building a strong online presence for yourself is another aspect to consider if you want to stay competitive in your niche.

If you are an independent consultant or working as a freelancer, it is recommended that build your personal brand. This article can help you achieve that goal.

Final Thoughts

Hope this blog post gave you some clarity on digital marketing consulting.

Let me know your thoughts, opinions or doubts regarding the same in the comments section below.

Get in touch with me if you are looking for a digital marketing consultant to advice you on how to leverage digital marketing to build online presence for your business.