Why your marketing consultant doesn't know it all

When hiring a marketing consultant it is important to ask some basic questions:

• What are your qualifications in marketing? How many years have you been working in marketing? 
• What areas of marketing do you specialise in?
• Have you been successful in marketing? What does success look like to you?
• What technologies do you use when developing a marketing campaign? 
• What industry-based experience do you have?
• Do you develop a marketing strategy before going into marketing tactics? If so, what is included in the marketing strategy?
• What key performance indicators should a company lookout for?
• What measurement tools do you use?

These are fairly standard questions that need to be asked of any marketing consultant you hire. Once you have passed the phase of asking basic questions, you should explore how the marketing consultant that you are about to engage with is going to work with you.

• What is the process they use?
• How do they determine whether they too want to work with you?
• What does a successful client relationship look like?
• How does a client get the most out of them?

They should in turn ask you some questions:

• What does a successful marketing campaign look like?
• What is your story? What is the brand story?
• What makes your business different from your competitors?
• Do you have a marketing strategy?
• Who is your customer? How is this qualified?
• Who are your competitors?
• What are your budget and timeframe?

From there, you have the foundation for a relationship that can be nurtured and grown over time. Marketing consultants usually have certain personality types and sometimes doing a free personality profiling will help determine whether your relationship will be a good one.

Marketing consultants need to have the mentality that they don't know it all but want to keep on learning. Having conversations about what websites do they get inspiration from, what podcasts do they listen to and what was the last book they read, can help you ascertain just how up-to-date they are with marketing and how keen they are to learn more.

Marketers only have a limited amount of time each day and mostly they are working 'in marketing' not 'on marketing'. Good marketers do both.