taking a templates approach<\/a>, which has been the theme of a few of my recent articles, or if it’s going to take an approach where you’re going to want to be doing a lot of informational long-tail content.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhatever it is, you need to figure out what these sorts of strategies are before you then look at the 100 strategies or so that are available and decide for yourself, which three to five you want to focus on in the next six to 12 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Questions to ask when hiring a digital marketing consultant<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Now, in the case where you don’t want to take my advice and you want to go ahead and hire a digital marketing consultant, here are a few of the key questions that I would ask if I were hiring them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. The first question is I would specifically ask them what were their before and after results from working with their last three to five clients, what is their average outcome is what you’re looking for here. If they’re just telling you things like, oh, well I got this client to go from a hundred page views to 200 page views, that is nothing. You could have done that yourself completely for free with just your time. And so in the case where they can’t clearly deliver clear results where they’re saying things like, well, I increase the weekly 30 to 60 through focusing on a Yelp based review strategy or something like that, well then it’s not going to be worth your time to work with that digital marketing consultant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. The second thing to ask them is how do they think about digital marketing? What are some of the clear tactics or strategies that they like to deploy? The reason why we want to this question is because in the case where they are a one-trick pony, well, you need to make sure that that trick is going to work in your space, but also you want to make sure that you have an upper limit as to how long you’re going to be working with that digital marketing consultant before moving on to either another one or taking things in-house for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3. The third question to ask is what their actual availability is and how many clients they are actively managing at any point in time. The reason why in general, I’m not a huge fan of hiring a digital marketing consultant is because their incentives are always misaligned with yours. Sure they will try to get you results, but they won’t actually care as much as if you were to bring that sort of work in-house. And so ultimately this is going to be something that you want to understand in terms of their client load, because in the case where they’ve got 25 clients, but it’s a one-man shop. Well, that means that you’re competing with 24 other customers of theirs for their time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so what you might end up with is a shoddy quality in terms of work product. So it’s really important that if you do hire a consultant, that they are super intentional about the sorts of clients that they take on. Now usually if a digital marketing consultant caps the number of clients that they take, it means that their retainers are going to be higher as well because they focus more on quality as opposed to quantity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s a concentrate Octo that you have to work through, which is whether or not this person aligns well with the values of what you want your business to champion as well from a digital marketing front. Those are just some of the core questions that I would ask a digital marketing consultant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When hiring a digital marketing agency<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
In the case where you’re looking to hire an agency, I would be even more diligent. Make sure that you interview at least three to five consultants or agencies, regardless of which direction you go. The reason why is because you have to get a sense of who is more organized. And then who is more actually on top of their stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A lot of times digital marketing agencies are all over the place. Their quality is all over the place as well. There’s really no easy way to tell who is good from bad until you’ve actually had the experience of working with somebody really good or somebody really, really bad. And so it’s really important for you to get your lay of the land before you make a final decision. The reason why that’s also helpful is because you can then negotiate between the different consultancies or agencies for the best rate that’s going to work for your budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big Takeaways<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
So just to recap for today, my number one piece of advice for you today is don’t hire a digital marketing consultancy if you don’t understand the fundamentals of SEO or just some general basic digital marketing strategies. Instead, just go on YouTube, and watch a bunch of free videos about these different tactics so you can get a better understanding of these fundamentals before you start exploring, bringing somebody on your team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reason why you want to do this is because that way you actually have enough baseline knowledge to effectively manage the consultant or agency that you hire. And then in the case where you do decide to hire somebody, go through the questions that I went over in this article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you liked this article, be sure to\u00a0check out my YouTube channel<\/a>\u00a0to get new videos every single week. I\u2019ll help take you from zero to self-starter as you grow your business, get more customers, and hone your business acumen. Also, feel free to share this with anybody that you think might benefit from learning if hiring a digital marketing consultant is right for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n