What Does a Digital Marketing Consultant Do?

Digital marketing has been the buzzword thrown around for the past couple of years. But what does it actually mean?

This article explores ways digital marketing consultants can help you widen your reach, improve CAC performance, decrease churn, and increase your website’s search engine ranking. 

Surprisingly, not all established companies understand digital or know how to market their brands online.

So let’s explore how you can shortcut the process of creating profit-squeezing campaigns by hiring a digital marketing consultant. Here’s how they can help.

Strategise your website to increase sales

Consultants worth their salt will help you create compelling, easy-to-navigate websites that actually increase your online sales and online visibility.

They will help you uncover any design flaws in the user journey and offer to make the changes for you.

An example of this would be a web design consultant that can tell you how best to structure your user journey to compel more people into signing up or purchasing your product.

Help with your content marketing

There’s nothing worse than a website that doesn’t have relevant content or worse – boring content. Marketing professionals will help research topics that your audience is already consuming.

Then with various tactics, they’ll recommend a solution to recreate popular content to drive more traffic to your website.

Some consultants also write the content, just like me, and others will recommend who to hire if they’re too busy to do the work themselves.

After the consultant has a clear grasp of your audience, they’ll typically create an SEO strategy (based on the hub & spoke framework or the ‘Hero, Hub, Hygiene’ model) for your brand.

It’s important to understand that every page on your website plays a role in increasing sales. That said, not all of them have to be ‘salesy’.

This is exactly why the hub & spoke framework exists.

Get your content in front of the right people

After creating the content, getting it out in front of your target audience is essential. A digital specialist will help you identify where to promote your content and offer to do it for you.

Creating audiences is perhaps one of the most overlooked things in marketing. Yet it’s the exact words and ways you come across to people which will determine if they buy from you.

So an experienced online marketing expert will spend a lot of time on your audience before making any judgements or decisions on promoting your content. 

Thereafter the expert will explore sales-driven acquisition channels (e.g. Google Ads) in order to direct quality traffic (people searching or who may be interested in your services) to your website.

That said, the strategy mentioned above is usually if you want bottom-of-funnel sales (e.g. sales right NOW).

Whereas if you were going for a long-term approach, you’d explore more social channels and link-building strategies (guest posting) for better impact in the long run.

They offer simple yet powerful SEO advice

One of the most important characteristics of a great marketing professional is the ability to analyse your website’s search engine optimisation and report back to you in a simple and easy-to-understand way.

They will also offer suggestions for optimising your website (on-page and off-page) and offer a list of resources that you can refer to if you find yourself stuck.

Sadly, many digital marketing agencies and consultants scan your website using generic tools.

They then just hand you cookie-cutter recommendations generated by a robot (annoying, right?). If their reports look generic or not custom to some degree (e.g. in a Google Doc), then there’s cause for concern.

Although it does take a bit of time to find the right person, I recommend asking them these questions to weed out the people who are just polluting the industry with baseless recommendations.

They may help with social media marketing

Social media platforms can increase customer engagement and brand lift and drive more traffic to your website by targeting specific demographics.

One of the most important things is whether a marketing specialist will determine which platforms are best for your business.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean social media, as this is sometimes outside the wheelhouse of some consultants, but it’s vital if that’s what going to work for your business.

Do you need to be on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook? Which one will help you reach your target audience the most?

Experienced consultants, whether it’s in their wheelhouse or not, will help you develop a social media marketing strategy or point you in the right direction to somebody who can do this.

Plan your video marketing

People are watching more videos than ever before, and video content is generally more effective than text at grabbing their attention.

By hiring a digital expert who specialises in video marketing, you will be able to make the most out of your YouTube (Google Ads Performance Max) and social media campaigns.

They will help you figure out how to craft the right message, where to distribute the videos, and how to help you create a consistent brand image (to increase brand lift).

Video marketing is certainly a speciality and something that you can’t take shortcuts with.

So if you’re serious about omnichannel marketing tactics, video can help with bringing you explosive numbers of traffic to your website.

Boost your online reviews

Social media has led to an increased emphasis on customer reviews. This is both a good thing and a bad thing for businesses.

It’s good because it increases the likelihood of someone discovering your product or service (great for SEO, too!).

Still, it can also be a bad thing because online reviews are permanent and can have an impact on your reputation.

To combat this, an online marketing consultant will help you develop a reputation strategy.

This is designed to address complaints before they get out of hand and engage with your customers to show them that you care to elicit more reviews.

They will also teach you how to respond to negative reviews.

Find high-converting SEO keywords

Keywords are the lynchpin of SEO. They are what people type into search engines to find a website and determine whether it has the information they need.

Choosing the right keywords is key for any site looking to rank at a high level on Google’s search engine results page.

When you are writing blog posts, articles, or other content, you will want to include keywords that help you rank on Google SERP faster.

But how many and what keywords should you use? This is a difficult question and one that many people don’t know the answer to.

Marketing specialists with in-depth SEO experience will be able to find the right keywords for your content.

Manage profitable Google Ads

Google Ads is the holy grail for many businesses to attract bottom-of-funnel sales. Most businesses won’t survive without it.

Yet many new ones start off thinking that social media is the answer.

Consultants with Google Ads specialisation can craft profitable Google Ads campaigns that not only drive more traffic to your website but also help you predict how much it costs you to acquire a new customer.

With Google Ads, you’ll be able to measure campaign performance and budgets to make more informed decisions that will lead to a more profitable business.

Help write persuasive copywriting

Good copywriting is both an art and a science. It’s about understanding the nuances of human psychology and knowing which words and phrases will compel a person to make a purchase.

Digital marketing experts can help you with your copywriting to ensure that your content is engaging, persuasive and convincing.

Good copywriters can use their words to sell a product or service effectively. They can understand the audience’s needs and produce creative, engaging content that will leave people wanting more.

Craft brand touchpoints

Your branding is a crucial component of your success in the market. No matter how great your product or service is, if people don’t know who you are, they can’t buy from you.

Branding encompasses everything that makes up who you are as a company, including your logo, colour palette and even the atmosphere at the office.

If you have an outdated logo and colour palette that looks like it’s out of something in back to the future, then you probably need a revamp.

People need to remember your brand positively. Usually, the aim is to have them remember days after seeing the brand (brand recall).

Digital marketing consultants will help you figure out how to make your brand image stand out, and they will show you how to differentiate your brand from your competitors.

So, what does a digital marketing consultant do?

Digital marketing consultants are the behind-the-scenes heroes of the digital age. They’re experts in their field with a thorough understanding of digital marketing and all it entails.

This expertise is invaluable for businesses looking to thrive in today’s digital world.

They’re essentially a one-stop shop for everything you could ever need for your online marketing strategy (depending on their skillset).