Marketing Consulting Services
Marketing Consulting that Identifies, Hones, and Prisms Communication Tactfully Across Technology and Customer Conversion Experiences
Defining the Marketing Consultant’s Role and Importance
Given the era in which we live, where answers to any question we could ask are at our fingertips via search engines and social media, many organizations incorrectly deem the skills of a marketing consultant defunct. After all, why pay a marketing consultant for answers to your marketing questions and problems when Google offers similar information for ‘free’?
Because skilled marketing consultants offer superior judgment to these technologies, including more customized advice specific to a brand’s marketing initiatives.
What Does a Marketing Consultant Do?
The easiest way to understand the scope and role of marketing consultants is to define their roles in relation to comparable marketing positions: e.g., marketing specialists, managers, directors, VPs, and fractional CMOs. Generally speaking, the marketing consultant governs behind the scenes for an existing marketing department, and works closely with the department’s leadership on implementing new strategies and pinpointing the most immediate fixes that need to take place to hit the company’s sales targets.
The Marketing Consultant as a ‘Behind-the-Scenes’ Brain
Great, but isn’t that the responsibility of whoever is in charge of the marketing department? No, not exactly. Given the fact that marketing has become too important and all-encompassing of a business function to leave solely to the marketing department, outside perspectives with expertise in modern marketing tools and best practices can change the entire trajectory of a company for the better, and in the right direction with a single, subtle shift.
A corollary goal of every business that has ever been formed is to be in business forever, which makes for a long journey, and shifting the compass a single degree in the wrong direction at the beginning of that journey is the difference between sinking in the ocean and making it ashore after 10,000 miles into the voyage.
If that sounds like too little work to justify hiring an additional marketing employee in the form of a consultant, consider the Pareto Principle outlined below.
The Pareto Principle in the Marketing Context: 20% of Marketing Labor Generates 80% of Results
While the Pareto Principle was coined to describe economic conditions, the concept also applies to organizations. Proven many times over in a variety of managerial contexts, the Pareto Principle demonstrates how traditional measures of productivity (like hours worked) mean nothing if a leader steers his or her department in the wrong direction, which wastes hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Hiring a marketing consultant shows that an organization is willing to subordinate the clock to the compass and focus only on what will drive results. Additionally, while we’re on the topic of principles that start with the letter P, we may as well mention the equally relevant Peter Principle, which states that employees are employed and sometimes promoted to the level of their individual incompetence.
This Peter Principle process oftentimes signifies a) fixation on problems in which CMOs and marketing directors become stuck without a fresh pair of eyes from an external source, such as a marketing consultant. Much like Stephen Covey states in his landmark work, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, truly successful leaders focus on what’s important, not what’s urgent or time-wasting. This concept is what skews the Pareto Principle from a 20-80% to a 5-95%, freeing up more time to double down on the effect.
All wordsmiths know the power of storytelling, and effective branding and positioning is perhaps the most important element of any preliminary marketing plan, regardless of the emphasis placed on digital or traditional mediums. Unlike other aspects of SEO, this storytelling and brand identity development process should be executed offline before implementing it via the proper tools, platforms, and technologies.
Why?
For example, just as the goal of hiring an SEO (search engine optimization) service is to position your brand above other competitors in search engine results pages (SERPs), effective branding requires you to position your brand differently from the competition. After all and with all other variables isolated, why would Google have an incentive to improve their searchers’ experience by placing a me-too brand above a dozen others just like it? Moreover, today’s digital landscape presents unique challenges to even the most skilled marketing VPs and CMOs; sometimes a fresh set of eyes can help with the tricky aspects of weaving the right narrative into the technical mediums and platforms of today’s marketplace.
For example, when trying to achieve what Avis had with their We Try Harder message, the online, keyword-driven aspects of demand generation become tricky: how can a brand position itself uniquely with a keyword-agnostic tagline, term, or phrase when ranking organically at the top of page 1 on Google means complying with an existing set of keywords for which consumers are already searching? This example, among many others, is a good example of a highly complex process that cannot be solved without specific expertise, therefore justifying the need for a marketing consultant.
WordWoven’s Marketing Consulting Portfolio
James is the Founder, Owner, and CEO of WordWoven. Working as the Vice President of Marketing in his previous role with Go Solar Group, James brings over a decade of branding, SEO, content marketing, and organic lead generation skills to the table. As a member of the Forbes Communication Council since Feb. 2020, James is also a published fiction author, poet, and short story writer.
His work has been published under client bylines on some of the world’s most prestigious platforms, including Entrepreneur, Inc., and Forbes. While he isn’t the most experienced or widely acknowledged marketing consultant, his exemplary performance track record ranks him among the elite in marketing consultant expertise, across a range of industries and marketing disciplines.
Hire James O’Connor as a Marketing Consultant to Spearhead Your Growth, Or See the Results He’s Produced for Other Brands by Visiting WordWoven’s Performance Portfolio.
How Much Do Marketing Consultants Charge?
According to tornmarketing.com, marketing consultant prices vary drastically from $65 – $300 per hour. Most of WordWoven’s pricing by the below consultant categories falls under that price range, and toward the lower end. Given how efficiently we work and our client-first credo, the WordWoven team has made the below pricing models possible and profitable for each party.
Our Marketing Consultant Services and Pricing
At the outset of this section, we’ll clarify how our consulting services differ from our other services: each of our writing services and marketing services, which are separate from our consulting packages, involve our labor according to an organization’s stipulations and requests, whereas our consulting services are almost entirely based on the implementation of management and or dissemination of managerial activity, something over which our clients grant us control in the below processes. Thus, in our consulting projects, we’ll function more like a thermometer than a thermostat (by gauging the temperature and conditions) than we would in completing skilled labor via any of our services.
As marketing consultants increasingly fulfill greater roles in cross-functional, interdepartmental management initiatives given their unique and widely unleveraged vantage points, the rarity and demand for marketing consultants who can meet the demands of this phenomenon increase.
Service 1: Sales Training and Consulting: $65/Hour
Train your sales teams and mid-funnel lead development personnel with rigorously tested, data-driven approaches to effective persuasion that work for any industry, brand, product, or service. Simply provide us with your existing materials, and we’ll patch up from there, or create new materials and programs for you from scratch.
Related Service(s)
Technical / Instructional Writing
Service 2: Fractional CMO: $70/Hour
Temporary contracts for agreed upon deliverables (at the point of contract) for departments without existing leadership or departments in need of interim marketing leadership.
Service 3: Freelance Marketing Consultant: $70/Hour
Hire our founder independently and on the terms of your organization’s standardized consulting contract upon our completion of the preliminary audit and complimentary consultation.
Service 4: Digital/Internet Marketing Consulting: $80/Hour
Let WordWoven inventory your initial digital marketing assets, campaigns, keywords, CRM attribution infrastructure, demand generation technology, and more. Unlike our SEO or PPC services, this option involves oversight and conceptual intervention for your existing SEO and pay-per-click staff.
Related Service(s)
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Service 5: Content Marketing Consulting: $50/Hour
This option involves oversight and management of social media processes and strategies, the creation of a content roadmap with necessary keywords to target, traditional public relations efforts, branding, non-internet communication initiatives, and competitor comparison research that defines and bolsters the positional strategy for your brand.
Related Service(s)
Service 7: Branding, Writing & Editing Consulting: $45 / Hour
If your marketing or creative team needs training in content development processes, or help in the creation and storytelling of any branding or persuasive strategy, this is the right option for you. Some examples include training bloggers, writers, editors, and managers to more effectively review and contribute to the written content development process.
Related Services
Marketing Consulting that Performs in a Word-based World
View the performance screenshots below and click the ‘WordWoven’s Results’ button beneath them to see what our writing and content expertise accomplishes. From 5-figure percentage increases in marketing KPIs like SEO-based website lead generation to sales-qualified opportunity increases from inbound marketing campaigns.
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James O'Connor is the Owner and Principal SEO, Digital Marketing, and Content Consultant of WordWoven. As a 4-year Forbes Communication Council inductee with 8 years of marketing management experience up to VP of Digital Marketing and agency CEO levels, he wields 11 years of total SEO and digital inbound marketing experience with lead generation, content writing, and performance marketing emphases. He's best known for building and leading marketing teams through complex industries and customer acquisition funnels, as well as generating 15 to 50x digital marketing and lead development KPI increases.