by Melissa How | Jan 7, 2022 | Business, Digital Marketing, eCommerce, Marketing Strategy
There are many reasons why a business might choose to hire a digital marketing consultant. For most, it’s a fantastic decision. More than 90% of people visit search engines and social media before trusting a brand. And that’s just one of the reasons why investing in digital marketing is highly recommended.
But how can you determine which consultant to hire and whether they’re a good fit for your organisation? Well, a good place to start is their skills set. After all, it all comes down to the individual needs of your business.
In this blog post, you will learn about the skills of a digital marketing consultant and why having professional advice in these key areas of digital will prove useful for your business.
From content marketing and SEO to email marketing and e-commerce, we’ve covered all the skills so you can confidently choose the right person for the job.
Hiring an experienced marketing consultant has many advantages. You add a professional to your team and save money while increasing the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
But what makes a good digital marketing consultant? To answer this question, let us look at the 8 essential skills a professional should have.
SEO has everything to do with your website and its ranking on search engines like Google. A professional marketing consultant knows how to help your website rank higher by optimising it for search results.
The biggest benefit of SEO is that it helps you gain qualified, inbound leads that cost less than advertising and deliver higher conversion rates. Keep in mind that more than 90% of online experiences start with a search on Google, so it’s kind of essential that your business can be found in keyword searches.
SEO is a technical skill and not simply about keywords on a page, however. Here’s just a few SEO concepts that a digital marketing consultant should understand; indexing, UX, core vitals, link structure, anchor text, meta data, alt tags, backlinks, do-follow, domain authority. They should also know how to research keywords and analyse competitors to replicate links.
Digital marketing consultants should understand how email marketing works. This strategy uses types of emails like storytelling emails, newsletters and re-engagement emails. It’s often referred to as Electronic Direct Marketing and emails are known as EDMs.
Email marketing has a higher ROI (return on investment) than other marketing strategies like social media marketing. It is also one of the most effective methods for engaging customers in eCommerce, with automation tactics increasing conversions by recovering cart abandonments and upselling.
Another benefit of email marketing is that your email list can be one of your most valuable assets. Unlike social media where the audience belongs to the platform and you compete with their algorithms, your email list is your own. Therefore, strategies for list building are another very important skill for digital marketing consultants to have.
With most consumers checking emails on their mobile devices, your digital marketing consultant should know how to optimise content and templates for mobiles, as well as know how to best schedule your EDMs for the best open and click through rates.
Contrary to what many believe, your content is not limited to your website’s blog posts. The term encompasses any type of information (emails, e-books, social media posts, podcasts, etc.) that you create.
Content marketing is about building a trusting relationship with your target audience while feeding them good content that they can engage with and value. A good consultant will help you leverage information to build brand awareness and drive customers to action.
This type of marketing includes:
Types of Content used in Content Marketing
Social media marketing has everything to do with a company’s social media strategy and channels. Most brands these days have business accounts on social media.
However, a digital marketing consultant has more than just the knowledge on how to post. They can design effective strategies and automate social media, so it consumes less resources.
Scheduling and automating posts on social media are a data-led approach, which requires some analysis of the best time and day to get the best impact. There are tools like Buffer that marketers use for scheduling.
Digital marketing consultants are also responsible for analysing social media performance. Analytics are crucial when it comes to getting ROI from paid social media campaigns and generating new leads from socials.
Pay-per-click (PPC) is a term used for paid ads and promotions across search engines and social media. PPC helps businesses drive more traffic and leads to their website.
In a typical PPC model, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your website. This category includes ad types such as:
A digital marketing consultant can develop a strategy according to your needs and budget that includes keywords, targeting and ad copy. They can also help you set up marketing campaigns and understand the technical factors involved. And their contribution doesn’t stop there. They can help you to manage your ads, which is especially important as campaigns require ongoing maintenance and adjustments to ensure they are delivering results.
Digital marketing is ultimately measurable. This means that digital marketers can help you track the performance of your marketing at any given point in time. This is possible through data and analytics that track user behaviour.
Analytics can help you and your digital marketing consultant in the following ways:
Analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, are customisable. And such platforms offer endless opportunities to measure your brand’s online performance if you know how to set them up properly. A professional is usually required to set up all the features that make GA most useful for helping with marketing decision making.
According to recent research, the global e-commerce market was approaching $5 trillion at the end of 2021. E-commerce has become an indispensable channel for the retail industry around the globe.
Of course, this also means that competition has become fierce. For this reason, a digital marketing consultant will bring the required understanding of how the e-commerce industry works.
Likewise, a professional consultant can help you:
Mobile marketing is very important if you want to promote your brand on mobile devices. This type of marketing includes mobile apps, social media, responsive websites, text messaging and emails.
With consumers spending around 5 hours per day on their mobile devices, investment in mobile marketing is crucial. A great marketing consultant knows how to best optimise a website, emails or social media content for mobile devices.
In addition, smartphone apps can take your mobile marketing to the next level, especially when it comes to eCommerce which has proven apps get higher conversion rates. It is obvious that this skill has become essential for digital marketing consultants.
The above list contains all the hard skills a digital marketing consultant should have in 2022. Still, hard skills aren’t everything. In fact, soft skills like adaptability, creativity, and persuasion are also important for marketers.
Moreover, a professional consultant should have leadership skills, a motivated attitude, and exceptional professionalism. By combining such skills, a digital marketing consultant delivers great value to any business.
