Marketing consulting was once a fairly static discipline.  Not a lot changed for years until it was triggered into life by three drivers: the realisation that brand is truly important, the emergence of omni-channel, and the pervasiveness of the Internet and mobile. We are exposed to hundreds of marketing messages every day, and marketing consulting services aim to direct these to the buyers and consumers of your products and services.

Marketing consulting services in demand

• Brand strategy consulting is about the ‘look and the feel’.  Clearly, the ‘look’ is tangible and the looker will either love it or hate it.  But the ‘feel’ is very intangible and this is where your brand strategy has to work really hard to capture the all-important customer relationship.
• B2B marketing consulting develops an appropriate business-to-business approach dependent upon organisation type, i.e. for profit, not for profit, government.
• B2C marketing consultants provide expertise in the business-to-consumer approach, dependent upon the consumers’ demographics, eg age, gender, location, languages spoken and other socio-economic and lifestyle factors.  More and more B2C marketing is focused on digital – view digital-specific consulting services here.
• Buying behaviour consulting uses surveys, focus groups and the neuro-sciences to identify and analyse buyers’ purchase decision-making patterns, and thus define and implement appropriate marketing responses.  Analytics consulting is a discipline in its own right which is being increasingly leveraged to analyse big data around consumers’ behaviour online and offline.
• Customer experience consulting identifies and analyses your customers’ interaction with your organisation and its products / services, to establish the appropriate customer relationship that will result in loyalty, retention, sales and referrals / recommendations.  This may involve techniques such as customer journey mapping, storytelling, co-creation and benchmarking.
• Franchise set-up and marketing consulting defines, develops, reviews and sets up franchise systems with appropriate marketing support in what is a growth area of business.
• International marketing consultants can help you develop strategies and tactics to enter or expand in offshore markets.
• Market planning, feasibility and review consulting is greatly assisted by predictive and prescriptive technology enablers to develop the forecasts, prescribe the plans and frame the actions.
• Market research
• Market strategy consulting is central to subsequently determining and implementing your marketing actions.
• Marketing automation consultants can help you understand the landscape forautomated IT solutions to support marketing activities, and define the best solution for your needs.
• Marketing plan consultants can create, or collaborate with you to jointly develop, a best-practice marketing plan.
• Multicultural marketing consulting develops the strategies and tactics to help your organisation tap into or expand share in various ethnic markets.
• Public relations consulting is often outsourced as a way of gaining exposure for your brand in the media, or for managing crisis scenarios which may cause negative brand impact.

What to look for in a marketing consultant

Marketing is a broad discipline and rarely will one marketing consultancy be best in class at everything.  Therefore it is important to carefully decide what type of marketing consulting you need and match this against the marketing consultant’s particular areas of specialisation. At FindaConsultant, we find that clients are increasingly looking for marketing consultants with innovation capability and digital in their DNA.

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