At Marketing Eye, we employ a lot of marketers and over the years you learn to refine what type of marketer you look for in a role such as marketing consulting.

Like any company, we realise that reinventing yourself internally is the only way to keep people's jobs interesting. While many of us like routine, it's when this is turned upside down that we really put in our best performance. Just a few tweaks here and there, and all of a sudden you see things so much more differently than ever before.

I'm sitting at the airport about to hop on my next plane. I dress the same way every flight for comfort; a Nike pant, Armani knit, Nike shoes and jewellery. I wear a scarf to lift the outfit just in case my luggage goes missing at the other end, and I always pack a pair of heels in my hand luggage. I am ready.

The most phenomenal changes are occuring in our business right now, and it is exciting and scary all at the same time.

Being a marketing consultant is truly insane. Trying to explain what you do on a daily basis, is like talking another language to most people that are not in the industry - and for reason. We all work at different levels and few of us really talk to each other about marketing because everyone wants to be the top marketing expert that clients go to for advice.

It's not in your imagination, but marketing your business is getting a whole lot harder. What was once an easy to achieve goal, is now polluted by too many choices for both your customer and yourself, in the marketing mix.

As a customer, it is confusing and very few companies have fine-tuned the art of simple. We all learn at University to "Keep It Simple Stupid" - the KISS principal, but too many of us have forgotten that and perhaps we no longer believe it to be relevant. I do. Confusing the client, and our clients confusing their customers is a huge mistake and only when a customer identifies this do they start the breakthrough to achieving their next step towards achieving their ultimate marketing goal.

The question is often asked of our people at Marketing Eye : "What do you do that other marketing firms don't?". And the answer is quite simple.

While other's are now using the term "outsourced marketing department", few have actually defined it quite like we have at Marketing Eye. After 24 years in the industry, I have learned a lot from both succeeding and failing. From these learnings, I have developed a series of systems, processes and ways in which to improve our capability of delivering world-leading marketing strategies to businesses seeking a high growth return.

The difference is from start to finish

Marketing Consultants or Marketing Managers are being kept on their feet these days with changes in technology, the economy, corporate responsiblity and the new green ethos that surrounds most businesses large and small.

When looking at a company, whether it is large or small, it is imperative that marketing consultants (or marketing managers) are across all areas of marketing. It's no longer about the 4P's as most Gen-X marketers who now hold the senior positions in marketing have trained on, and more about social media, customer interaction, mobile marketing, podcasts, blogs, online marketing, guerilla marketing, slideshare and of course word of mouth marketing.

What are you really saying to your customers?

Have you had a great conversation with a potential customer, been really optimistic about getting them on board, and then never heard from them again? Maybe that conversation wasn’t as great as you had thought? Impossible! You know your product inside and out, you answered every question they had. As hard as it may be for you to identify, there may be something small in the way you are speaking with these customers that is putting them off coming back.

A new year means many things to many people. If you are an entrepreneur and it is a new financial year, your goals will tend to be around business. Alternatively, 1^st of January tends to be a combination of personal and professional goals.

As I look back on the year we have just had, I smile. Why? I think it is more to do with growing – as a person and as an entrepreneur.