Small Business Marketing Consultant

Most often, small businesses are making the Important- Unimportant.
And the Unimportant- Important.

Meaning they are focusing on the wrong problem.

It’s not their fault.

Because all the information in the world is not going to make a difference if you are still operating from a blind spot. 

No matter how big or small your budget is, every business deserves to grow, gain recognition, and have top-quality services.
That’s where a small business marketing consultant comes in.

These professionals will support your company to uncover its blind spots so that you can make more money in less time.

Who are these consultants, and how can they help your company thrive?

What’s a Small Business Marketing Consultant?

A small business marketing consultant is a marketing specialist that helps small businesses thrive. They identify gaps and opportunities holding the companies back from optimizing and maximizing their goals and KPIs.

It doesn’t matter your company’s goal – a marketing consultant will guide you through every step until you achieve it. Some examples include how you can 5’x the value of your company while cutting 80% of your expenses, and increasing your Lead Flow by 5’x.

What Does a Business Marketing Consultant Do?

A small business marketing consultant takes action in different areas. Although it would be impossible to describe every service they offer, here are the main objectives and processes they follow.

1) Setting SMART Goals

A great small business marketing consultant will set goals and objectives for your company. Only then can you track whether you’re under or overachieving.

The acronym SMART stands for being clever, but also goals that are:

• Specific: General objectives might be too broad to act upon them. A general goal may be “to boost the company’s annual profit,” while one that is specific and smart looks like this: “grow the number of customers by implementing social media marketing and offering discounts.”
• Measurable: Quantifying a goal makes it easier to track progress and success. Following the previous example, a measurable goal may be “get 50 new customers every month from January to May.”
• Achievable: Reality checks are vital to business success. Not only will unattainable goals decrease your motivation, but they will slow down your progress.
• Relevant: Why are you setting this goal? It may be for financial reasons, or maybe you want to build brand awareness.
• Time-Bound: What’s your time horizon? Following the previous example, “get 50 new customers every month from January to May” is time-bound. The company has to meet this goal for five months in a row.

2) Creating Brand Awareness

One of the main obstacles that hold small businesses back is their lack of brand awareness. Think of Nike or Apple. They’re reliable and respected brands. If you were to survey people on the street whether they’re familiar with them, most participants would be.

Now, why don’t people on the street know your company? To be realistic, the vast majority of companies can’t compete with giants like Nike or Apple, but you get the idea. Awareness and a reputation are a must for your brand.

A marketing consultant will work on this key aspect to bring more value and revenue to your firm. According to Adobe, 70% of customers buy more from brands they trust. But there’s more to it: These customers are more likely to recommend a trustworthy company to friends and family, leading to more growth.

On the other side of the spectrum, customers abandon brands for several reasons. These reasons include poor quality, tracking personal data, or not listening to customers. A good marketing consultant will know what to do and avoid to make your company thrive.

3) Marketing Strategies

Most business owners don’t have a strong grasp of their key metrics.

This leaves them running their businesses on emotion, and having a big to-do list, but if you ask them what the 2-3 critical numbers that drive their business are, they’re like a deer in the headlights.

The critical numbers are:

1. Monthly traffic: The number of unique visits your website gets in a month  (How many people are you getting in front of?)
2. Email opt-in rate: The percentage of visitors who join your email list (How many new people are you adding to your community every week?
3. List conversion rate: The percentage of emails you send that actually result in a sale of your product or service (out of those, how many are turning into a sale)

The key is to find out where you are, then improve. Always improve.

Be that as it may, business marketing consultants will identify what you’re lacking and help you implement it. Here are the most common critical numbers to keep track of:

• SEO: Search Engine Optimization stands for the process of improving your website to appear in search engine results. If someone searches for keywords in your niche, your website will appear.
• PPC: Pay-Per-Click refers to pop-up advertising that charges you a small commission every time someone clicks on the ad to visit your website.
• Email marketing: Once people purchase a product or give you their email, you can add them to your company’s database and send out tailored messages for each type of segmented customer.
• Social media marketing: It consists of creating a strong presence online and building brand awareness.
• Inbound marketing: This strategy focuses on customers who are already interested in your service and have filled out a form or given you their email address.

4) Finding Your Value Preposition

What does your company have that others don’t? What can you offer customers? Marketing consultants will help you uncover your blind spots so that you can find your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and value.

Sometimes companies are afraid of saying what they’re great at. Or struggle to identify what it is.
This modesty or lack of confidence leads to missed opportunities and missed revenue. 

On the other hand, sharing your USPs with potential customers shows them your business has a unique system, process, or framework that you then can trademark. This builds more know, like, and trust, which leads to more sales as it shows your customers that you know what you are doing. 

What Benefits Can You Expect?

It depends on the marketing consultant you hire as they vary based on experience.

The Truth is that the greatest consultants are the ones that have made the most mistakes. So that you are paying for the value of their expertise so that you don’t make the same ones. 

Each person and agent is unique. Mia Hewett, for one, is one small business marketing consultant focused on helping you achieve your personal and business potential.

Thanks to Mia’s expertise in being a successful entrepreneur for over 36 years, you’ll learn key strategies and experience extraordinary results in 8 weeks or less.  You’ll learn how to:

• Process your emotions, so they don’t come in your way to success. Many people underestimate the power emotions have over us. Learning to understand, accept, and process them healthily will make a great difference in your company and culture.
• Make the right decisions as an entrepreneur. When you run a business, it can be easy to get stuck in the small details and forget the bigger picture. A marketing consultant will help you analyze data and understand what are the critical drives while understanding where to optimize and maximize returns.
• Acknowledge accomplishments. Even when your company doesn’t exceed the planned KPIs, it’s good to acknowledge what worked by acknowledging the gifts and lessons so that you continue executing and implementing, staying in momentum. 
• Recognize what you did wrong. On the other side of the spectrum, some companies fail to recognize their mistakes.
  By uncovering your blind spots you will be able to quickly uncover what’s working, what’s not working, and what is missing that would have it work.  Awareness is the first step toward achieving new results- faster. 
• Create an aiming point and direction. To quantum leap your results, you first want to become clear on what the end is in mind. Meaning, what specific results do you want to achieve from your company? Based on where you want to be in 5 or 10 years? Then you want to reverse engineer this process by setting short and long-term goals turning this into a living, breathing, vivid vision everyone in your company lives into. 
• Find your value and mission. Generalizations kill clarity.  Every business has blind spots that are keeping them from clearing showing why they are the best and only choice.  A consultant will support you in uncovering your unique competitor advantage so that you market it effectively and make more money in less time.  

Hiring an Agency VS Hiring a Consultant

One question that often arises is: Why don’t I just hire a marketing agency?

Marketing agencies usually focus on larger companies. They provide professional services oriented to implementing plans. You hire their services and tell them what you need (e.g.: improve SEO), and they deliver.

Consultants, on the other hand, provide customized plans along with tailored and honest guidance. They get to know you one-on-one and give you the right advice, at the right time, in the right moments you need it most by uncovering your blind spots, identifying the gaps, and uncovering the opportunities that matter the most.

It’s like putting your company into the consultant’s hands and asking: What can I do to boost my profits? What can we do better? It’s a more personal service.

Consultants tend to get more specialized in one niche, as they’re one person attending multiple businesses. If they had to understand every type of company, they wouldn’t be able to do their job. So consultants are more tailored to your needs, but agencies can also specialize in topics like SEO or finances (and with great results too).

Summary

Most small businesses are making the Important- Unimportant.
And the Unimportant- Important.

Meaning they are focusing on the wrong problem.

It’s not their fault.

Because all the information in the world is not going to make a difference if you are still operating from a blind spot.

A business marketing consultant can support you in uncovering your specific blind spots by supporting you on how to:

1. Have Clarity on where you are—-> to where you want to be.  (Know your numbers)
2. Know what to prioritize and then optimize before you maximize.  
3. Stay focused on your 3 Key Performance Indicators 
4.  Closing the gap to achieve your results. 

If you feel stuck, as if you’re never going to thrive in today’s fast-paced market, it’s time to hire a professional to support you in seeing your blind spot’s so that you do things consistently which will produce extraordinary results.- the results you were meant for!