Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
How to Hire the Right Marketing Consultant
74 Plays3 years ago
Hiring a marketing consultant is often a leap of faith.
You’re hoping their expertise and experience fills gaps and make things happen.
But a lot of consulting engagements don’t work as well as expected.
- There’s misalignment on expectations.
- A lack of engagement and collaboration (no partnership)
- Not enough clarity about what success looks like.
- A lack of commitment to actually do marketing (more talk than walk)
When I lost a client recently, some of these issues reared their ugly heads.
To get some more perspective, I talked to Kevin Whelan, who helps marketing consultants improve their businesses.
A key theme was how companies need to hire consultant and, as important, how and when consultants should take on clients.
Consulting is a two-way street.
Both parties need to agree to work together. It’s there’s a good fit, that’s a great start.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Marketing Spark and Consultancy
00:00:05
Speaker
Hi, it's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark. As a marketing consultant, it's rewarding when what you do delivers value and helps you be more successful.
Consultancy Red Flags and Client Selection
00:00:16
Speaker
But sometimes engagements don't work out for a variety of reasons. I recently parted ways with a client, which was disappointing, although not terribly surprising given the red flags that were popping up.
00:00:27
Speaker
But it got me thinking about how companies should hire marketing consultants, and in turn, how and why marketing consultants should take on engagement with clients. In an ideal world, you're looking to create a win-win proposition. The company gets what they need strategically or tactically, and the consultant performs and gets compensated.
Insights from Kevin Whalen, Business Coaching
00:00:50
Speaker
To get some perspective, I reached out to Kevin Whalen, a marketing consultant who also teaches other marketing professionals how to build and run a profitable marketing advisory practice. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Kevin.
00:01:03
Speaker
Thanks Mark, nice to be here. Before we get started, I should be transparent. Kevin and I have been working together for the past year. Kevin is my business coach and he's had a huge impact on how my strategic advisory business operates. The ROI has been tremendous. So Kevin, I want to start with the basics.
Consultant vs Employee: Autonomy and Expertise
00:01:23
Speaker
It sounds like a softball question and it is, but I think it sets the stage for our conversation.
00:01:29
Speaker
What is a consultant and what should a company expect them to do and as important not do compared with an employee, especially with the rise of fractional talent?
00:01:40
Speaker
Great question. And there's a lot of parts to that, Mark. I think ultimately at the end of the day, a consultant's job is to help a client get from point A to point B, whatever that transition looks like. That's their first and primary objective, but secondarily, their job is to provide risk mitigation and to make sure that things don't fall off the rail. So anytime someone hires a consultant, the first thing you want to know is, okay, how do we not screw up what's working? And how do we then also achieve our new objectives and our new goals?
00:02:08
Speaker
So really the consultant has two main jobs, which is one, to reach for the stars and to help achieve those things. Usually there are things that are higher risk or maybe not bet the business, but potentially a shift in positioning or an expansion into say a new market or a new product or service line. Something that is generally inherently risky and or difficult and that the company themselves don't have a lot of experience in.
00:02:32
Speaker
So that's sort of what a consultant does and that could even be as simple as let's build an effective marketing program just so that we have more structure because we are really stressed out or disorganized or it can mean a number of other things depending on the context. I think you got a second part of that question around employees and how they sort of differ from a consultant.
00:02:50
Speaker
Exactly so the engagement that i was and i felt like i was being treated like an employee like i was in some respects and order taker from our conversations there's a difference between hiring a consultant and hiring.
Consultant Roles: Strategy and Resource Management
00:03:05
Speaker
I'm a full-time employee maybe you can elaborate on you know how you delineate and how should how should each party view each other given the fact that it's not a full-time engagement.
00:03:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of it is just understanding the definition or the objective of a consultant. So really, a consultant isn't an employee, even by legal definitions. A consultant has to use their own tools. You can't tell them exactly where to go and when to work and how to do things. Ultimately, a consultant or any kind of a contractor needs to have some sort of autonomy to accomplish their goals. They're not just taking orders and that kind of thing because frankly, that's just not the way a consultant agreement is structured.
00:03:45
Speaker
Secondly, you don't hire a consultant and tell them what to do. Typically, they have more experience on the subject in which they're being hired for. And if you're looking to just hire a consultant, have them be a set of hands, you're better off working with a part-time employee or sure, maybe some contractors who are just going to follow some tasks. But ultimately, they're in the business of helping you accomplish a result.
00:04:10
Speaker
So yeah, at the end of the day, that's really important distinction is that you have to be ready to kind of submit to their process and to sort of be bought into their expertise before you even work with them. And it's the consultant's job upfront to set those expectations that, Hey, I'm going to take you on a journey. I'm going to take in your input and we're going to go with the best way that I know how to get you to that destination. And I need to be able to steer the ship and you need to be able to give up the reins for a bit as we go, as we navigate these things.
00:04:37
Speaker
Now, one of the wild cards within the consulting world these days is the idea that fractional executive, a fractional CMO, which is what I do, fractional revenue officers, a fractional chief financial officers. How does that change the dynamic and how should companies view fractional executives and fractional leadership people?
00:04:58
Speaker
They should view them as consulting engagements, first and foremost. There might be a task component to it. Fractional CMOs typically also have a bookkeeping component, but that's usually handled by someone on the team and not usually the fractional CMO themselves. Just the same way, or CFO in that case, just the same way you wouldn't have your
00:05:16
Speaker
chief marketing officer, writing tweets and proof editing blog posts and choosing colors and uploading content on a website, nor would you have a chief fractional chief marketing officer or fractional CMO do those kinds of tasks either. So the way you want to be approaching this is how do we bring someone in at a high level so that they're going to steer the ship? They're not going to be the engine. They're not going to drive projects forward. They're not going to be project managers even necessarily. They're facilitators. They remove roadblocks. They ultimately
00:05:46
Speaker
Their job is to get a result however they can and need to be done. A lot of people when they hire a fractional CMO, or at least when they consider hiring one, are really thinking they need basically a part-time marketing manager. To me, I define that as a managed advisory services or a contract marketing position. That's just different. That's just someone to basically be a set of hands with some level of experience or expertise, tactical or otherwise. Ultimately, you want to be thinking at a higher level with a fractional CMO, which is ultimately an advisory role.
00:06:15
Speaker
Here's another softball question. When and why should a company hire a marketing consultant? It's a question that I wonder about all the time because I'm always trying to solicit companies that are looking for consulting help. But I am curious about when can a company justify hiring a consultant versus hiring a full-time employee? Yeah, I mean, that's a really great question.
00:06:37
Speaker
Generally speaking, when you have a lot invested, when you're spending $10,000 plus a month, basically you want to manage that invested spend as effectively as you can. If I were to do, say, home renovations on my house every single month for the rest of my life, and I wasn't really an expert on everything from paint colors to choosing suppliers to
00:06:59
Speaker
knowing how to design a space or something, basically I'd be out of my depth. And that would be every single month forever and ever because that's not my core competency. So when you bring in a consultant, their job is to be a steward of your resources and to be a steward of your company and your goals and to help you sort of accomplish the outcomes you're looking for through management of the resources and by removing the roadblocks necessary to do those things. Now you can hire an employee to do that for you. They just,
00:07:26
Speaker
tend to not have the level of seniority that I say a fractional CMO or a marketing advisor would have. And obviously this will vary on a person by person basis who should do your own due diligence regardless. But that's sort of the main difference. A consultant will have like a rolodex of freelancers, developers, contractors, people that they can bring in to do execution work. They'll have worked with several different clients and several different either in your industry or in similar related industries.
00:07:51
Speaker
And they bring all the wealth of experience that you get to have a piece of. These would be multiple six figure a year salary type people, professionals that you would get for the price of say a marketing coordinator. So really it's when you need that high level expertise when your business really demands and you expect reducing the risk of hiring somebody who's less qualified to do tactics. That's when you want to bring in a consultant so that they can bring in that experience to the table.
Hiring Consultants: Expertise and Expectations
00:08:16
Speaker
Let's drill a little bit deeper into that hiring process. When a company goes through the consulting review process, when they're looking at their different options, and there are many options when it comes to the consulting business, what are the key questions to ask? What does a company need to know or understand in terms of how a consultant operates their track record?
00:08:36
Speaker
the kind of companies they've worked with in the past, I'm trying to get a sense of the due diligence that a company needs to go through to make the right marketing consulting hire. I think you should never really hire a consultant unless you have familiarized yourself with their thinking. And what I always say is if someone comes to me and they're looking for, you know, they're looking to hire me and they've never read an email or a blog post of mine, I write daily emails and all kinds of things, I'll basically say, hey, why don't you just,
00:09:04
Speaker
read my content for a bit, learn what's going on and really kind of get a sense for how I think. And if you want to pay for my thinking applied to your situation, ultimately that's what it's there for. So when picking a consultant, I mean, referrals can have a big impact. I just recently was referred to a client. There's a lot of trust that gets transferred because the person referring me knows that I'm competent. And actually the last two clients I got were referrals.
00:09:28
Speaker
So that's a good sign. But if you don't have that, the first thing you should look at is the content. Does it resonate? Do you like their way of thinking? Do you like the way that they're marketing themselves? Because that's going to be a potential reflection on how they're going to market you. And then in terms of asking questions, you just want to know, hey, what are you going to do? What's your process? What's your thinking? They should be willing to share a little bit of their strategic thinking about your situation and help you paint a potential picture of what it'll be like to work together.
00:09:52
Speaker
So you can ask them any questions like, have you worked with companies like mine before? What kind of results have you gotten? They may have a case study, but at the end of the day, it should be really obvious that they're able to provide value, that they can do so in the sales conversation, regardless of the questions you ask. The consultant should be asking you most of the questions and providing you what you need to succeed, and then painting the picture of what a successful engagement will look like. But ultimately in terms of what you ask a consultant, it's what can I expect over the next six or 12 months and see if you like it.
00:10:22
Speaker
Let's flip the coin in terms of the questions that a consultant should ask a potential client because it is a two-way street. You're forming a partnership. It's not like hiring an employee where they're just going to do what you tell them to do. What should the consultant be asking a company? What should they be telling them in terms of how they want to work and their processes and the steps that a consultant wants to take or needs to take so they can be successful with clients?
00:10:52
Speaker
I mean, like anything else, the consultant's job is to get really clear on what the goal is of the client. What does success look like? And so I use the analogy of Hawaii, for example, and I say, well, where are you trying to go? And okay, we're trying to go to Hawaii. Okay, well, that tells us a lot. So when do you hope to get there? Well, I hope to get there by tomorrow and I want to take a train. Well, that's just not going to happen.
00:11:12
Speaker
First, by identifying the goals and the timelines and what does a home run look like and what's realistic, then you can start to work backwards from that and say, is this goal reasonable? And ultimately, can I help you achieve that objective? The consultant should also be checking in, and then this goes both ways with how they feel during the initial sales conversation. If one person feels overly intimidated or doesn't quite feel comfortable with the kind of working conversation, that may be a sign that your working engagement won't be great long-term.
00:11:39
Speaker
Other things that a consultant might ask are, have you worked with a consultant before? Because unlike working with employees, unlike working with freelancers or even agencies, a consultant is basically selling you access to their thinking and maybe a few other benefits like training resources and content and structure and other things. That's ultimately what you're paying someone for. No, it's a great question because when I look at the client that
00:12:03
Speaker
I just parted ways with. I'm kicking myself, or maybe it's not kicking myself, but I am disappointed that I didn't ask them all these type of questions. For example, have you worked with a consultant before? That would have given me a lot of insight into how much I needed to educate the client.
00:12:19
Speaker
as far as how I work and how the consultants work and what actually consultants do. The second one would have been what does success look like and be fundamentally clear on what do they want to happen over the next three, six, nine months. And the final one, and this is one I think every consultant needs to ask is what are your priorities? What do you want me to do right now versus in a month or two months from now versus six months now?
00:12:45
Speaker
When a company hires a marketing consultant or a consultant, any kind of consultant for that matter, there's a gap that they're trying to fill or a pain that they're trying to resolve. And while you're trying to build a long term plan and build a solid foundation, there's low hanging fruit that needs to be picked.
00:13:01
Speaker
which gives the client confidence and validates the buying decision. So I think these are all things that in hindsight, I'm going to ask blatantly, not just subtly, but it's going to come out and say, you have to answer these questions. And unless I get the right answers, then we're not going to be sex, sex, hustle working together.
00:13:20
Speaker
You have to basically try to unsell them into working with you as well. So why even work with me? Why not do this yourself? Why not just try this with the freelancer? Why not just hire an agency to do everything for you? And I think you have to really uncover why they're coming to you. And there needs to be a good reason about why you versus anyone else and why you as a consultant versus anyone else. And then how do you envision success looking in terms of our relationship? What do you imagine I'm going to do? And what do you think you need to do in order to meet these objectives?
00:13:49
Speaker
So those kinds of questions can really help in pushing back and saying like, what's the real business case here to work together? What's the value of achieving the goal in working together? You want to grow by 10% or you want to bring structure to your marketing program. What is the business value of doing that? What's the risk of not doing that? And I think that's where a consultant really has to uncover what is the true business case of working together
00:14:12
Speaker
And that only comes by pushing back and kind of playing devil's advocate about whether they should even work with you in the first place. And I will add that the dynamics of working with a strategic marketing consultant versus someone who's focused on tactics are completely different because if you're really good at putting together Facebook campaigns or social media updates or advertising on Google, then there's a specific reason why you're hiring them and they've got a job to do and you can
00:14:39
Speaker
assess pretty quickly whether they are successful or not. When you're hiring a strategic marketing consultant, it takes time and strategies evolve and it may take time for results to emerge and it lends itself to the next question I want to ask you about the length of an engagement.
Consulting Engagement: Planning and Alignment
00:14:56
Speaker
Now, some marketing happens quickly. You can see the results right away. You can gauge whether ROI is happening, but a lot of marketing takes time to develop, evolve and produce results.
00:15:07
Speaker
Is there a sweet spot as far as the length of a consulting agreement with a marketer, especially one that is focused on strategy as opposed to tactics?
00:15:17
Speaker
I mean, yeah. When you talk about the difference between strategy and tactics in and of itself, there's no point of being the best Facebook ads manager if your business is positioned poorly or if your target market isn't clear and therefore you don't even know if they're on Facebook. Those are a good strategic marketer, and I'll get to your question, but a good strategic marketer will ultimately be the difference between whether you're succeeding or not. Sorry, could you rephrase your question just a little bit? I'm trying to get a sense of
00:15:46
Speaker
how long a consulting should be because a lot of a lot of companies they expect instant results so they want to hire for a month or two months and is that realistic or are you really entering into a long relationship.
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, no change really happens fast. So when people come to me, a red flag will be, I need to grow like by Black Friday and this is the beginning of November and all those kinds of things. Reeled results, sustainable results happen over several months to several years. So I have clients, my minimum engagement is about six months and I have clients that have stayed with me for going on five plus years. And that, you know, usually engagements will last for me between a year and two years, sometimes longer and sometimes less.
00:16:31
Speaker
That's because really by the time a client is coming to hire you, there's so many layers to marketing and it's like building up a steam engine. It's going to take a little bit of time to build momentum to get things moving. If you expect full speed by month six, but you haven't done anything in your track record up to that point to get up to full speed already, then you're not going to achieve what you want. When you're hiring a consultant, unless you're going in for one specific surgical move,
00:16:58
Speaker
You want to be thinking at least in terms of three to six months minimum depending on the project. But if you're thinking about hiring a fractional CMO or a marketing advisor, it should be six months, a year minimum. The tactics that you work on, the things the projects you're working on tend to come together and congeal around six months. Then you start to really get traction around eight to 12 months.
00:17:20
Speaker
So then the question is, do we stay working together or do we part ways after six or 12 months? Have we accomplished the mission we set out to do and have we reached the end of that consultant's expertise? And usually that's not the case. Usually they're able to hire in-house, they get the systems you've set up going and at some point they no longer need you and then that becomes fairly obvious.
00:17:38
Speaker
Let's take a step back. So you're a company and you've done your due diligence and you've reached an agreement with a marketing consultant. Everyone's excited to get started. What needs to happen next? How do both parties articulate how they're going to work together, the expectations and the goals?
00:17:55
Speaker
I think all those things should be set up before you even get started. That stuff should be kind of super clear from the minute you hit go. And if you're kind of just figuring that out once the ink is dry, then you're kind of already kind of flat footed. So I think ultimately it's about getting clear on all those things right off the bat rating before you get going so that the vision is clear so that when the ink is dry, you're basically running on a predefined trajectory. Not that I want to focus on the negative.
00:18:24
Speaker
But what happens if the engagement isn't working at all or things aren't getting done? I sort of have a fresh wound right now with this client, so it is a very relevant question. What do you do? How do you get realigned
00:18:42
Speaker
with the client to make sure that you're on the same page when it comes to how you're going to work together, what the expectations are, what needs to get done. Because if you don't do that, then the relationship is going to sour and then no one's going to be happy. And the last thing as a consultant that I want is an unhappy client because unhappy clients mean no referrals. The engagement's over. The question is, how do you mitigate engagements that may not be going as well as you expected?
00:19:10
Speaker
Assuming you've done your upfront work and you have pre-qualified people and just established a fit and established a good positive trusting relationship, then you shouldn't really run into that many problems later on, but they do occur. Sometimes you get into the middle of things and that happens. So it's really the responsibility. First of all, a consultant should be a fiduciary. They should be your advocate more so even in addition to all their expertise, they should be looking out for your best interest and acting in your best interest at all times.
00:19:37
Speaker
So if things aren't working together, it's the job of the consultant A, to be willing to have hard but tactful conversations, to address things head on, whether it's how you perceive people are feeling, some behaviors that are maybe happening, or some expectations that aren't being met either on your half or their half.
00:19:53
Speaker
And ultimately, just addressing it head on and just being ready to put things on the table so you can deal with them objectively. And ultimately, if it's not working, you need to be ready to part ways, both parties, even if there is a commitment period. You should try to work through it as long as there's reasonably a fit and figure out here, get those expectations realigned.
00:20:12
Speaker
But if they're not going to get back on the track, then you probably just want to say, we're obviously not a mutual fit for one another. Why don't we part ways and save ourselves the headache? Because it's not worth the stress for either of you. And it's not in anyone's best interest to keep working together. When you do part ways, is it that easy? It's just a matter of being honest.
00:20:32
Speaker
about the fact that they're probably not getting what they expected and you're not being able to deliver the value that you wanna do and just call it a day or I'm just trying to figure out how you end engagements in a very respectful and civil manner. So it's kind of like no harm, no foul, even though they may have paid you a little bit of money. Like you don't want the company going away thinking I got ripped off or this person misrepresented themselves. And at the same time, you don't want a client to think,
00:21:02
Speaker
They didn't engage with me. They didn't do what they promised they would do and it was impossible for me to do why they hired me to do the job.
Maintaining Integrity in Client Relationships
00:21:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's just about having the maturity to kind of call things for what they are and ultimately, it's about the business case of working together. So you could say, it looks like, and thirdly, taking responsibility on your end as a consultant, even if you're not fully to blame. To some degree, you signed on with this client
00:21:32
Speaker
you said the expectations or not with the client and then during the engagement, they're either meeting those expectations that you agreed to either in writing, in my writing, in my contracts, I say, here are your responsibilities as a client of mine as well. And then just being mature enough to say, you know what, I must not have managed expectations clearly enough or
00:21:50
Speaker
It appears though that you're not able to execute on some of these ideas in the way that we had imagined. And I can't see the business case of continuing to work together unless we make some sort of a change. So either we reduce the scope of our involvement to be more aligned with what's realistic and possible with you, or we potentially part ways.
00:22:07
Speaker
But you just do that in a way that takes full ownership, that claims it, and says, it's all about the business case. If you don't see the financial business case of working together, if it's not a clear win for both parties, you just want to say, look, how are you feeling? And I always just really be honest. How are you feeling about the engagement? Do you feel like we're moving too fast, too slow, or what have you?
00:22:24
Speaker
Ultimately, that's going to be the difference between a positive exit or not. The last thing I'll say is if you're stressed out as a consultant or even as a client about the engagement, that's a sign that you have to just communicate. You have to say, this feels like it's not working. What can we do to turn it around? If not, I totally understand, but right now this isn't really working and I don't want to waste anyone's time or money.
00:22:50
Speaker
and that's the approach. But ultimately, you do it with tact and you take as much ownership as you can and let one another save face to the degree that you can because burning bridges is not going to really benefit anyone and holding people to contracts that they don't want to be in is not going to feel good for either of you either. It's not going to work. I wanted to circle back on something you said about consultants having a fiduciary duty. One of the realities as a consultant
00:23:14
Speaker
After you've won an engagement, after you've gone through the sales process, you want to keep the client. Like the last thing you want to do as a consultant is lose a client. There's a tendency to go into pleaser mode. But what I've learned over the years is that the best consultants push back. The best consultants hold to their principles and hold to the way that they do things successfully. And often they'll have the courage
00:23:40
Speaker
or the experience to say, that's not how we do things. If you do this thing, we're going to move in the wrong direction. And I think a lot of consultants are afraid of doing that because they think if I behave that way, then the client will think, think of me in a negative way, and then they could fire me and they live in fear as opposed to moving forward and confident.
00:24:03
Speaker
That last part of your point kind of reinforced what I was thinking as you were saying that, which is as a consultant, you can't be desperate. As soon as you're desperate, meaning like you need the money, then you're already putting yourself and your client at risk that you're not going to act in their true fiduciary interest. And part of their fiduciary interest, fiduciary interest just means you're looking out for their best interests over yours, right? Which is one of the reasons I don't mark up people's time when I make introductions, why I don't charge for any execution work. It's all in limited fixed fee kind of stuff.
00:24:32
Speaker
As long as you're not desperate, then you can say things the way that need to be said. You have to be frank and honest and you have to check in with yourself and saying, am I doing work in service of their best interest or do we need to have a conversation about it? Yeah, it sounds weird because I love having those conversations with clients. I feel like I deliver the most value when I'm telling them what not to do.
00:24:55
Speaker
or how not to spend their money. Because ultimately, I feel a responsibility for their success. They hired me for that to help them become more successful. And I would be doing them a disservice if I just went along for the ride. If I didn't raise my hand and say, I don't think this is the right thing to do. I think we should do X rather than Y. It feels very empowering as a consultant to have that kind of freedom because I'm not an employee.
00:25:23
Speaker
I'm not paycheck to paycheck and if they let me go, they let me go. But at least I've done the best job possible or I've tried to do the best job possible. And that's a really great place to be as a consultant. Yeah, you have to be able to fight for their interests regardless of your position, even if it's hard, even if it means, hey, you should let me go and go spend this limited money you have on other things you do. And the minute you stop speaking your truth, the minute you gloss over something and let it go is the minute you shouldn't be a consultant.
Consulting Trends: In-house Vs External Expertise
00:25:49
Speaker
Final question, when you look at the marketing landscape over the last 18 months, especially in the B2B, B2B SaaS world, a lot of companies thought that COVID was the end of the world. And often the first thing that goes is marketing. So they all scaled back their marketing operations only to discover that marketing mattered and they had to do marketing because the market was really doing well. But I've noticed a lot of companies hiring in-house again.
00:26:19
Speaker
At the same time, a lot of ex full-time marketers have hung up their shingle and consulting has become a very popular way to operate. And that's why I'm seeing a lot of people embracing the fractional mantle.
00:26:33
Speaker
I'm curious about your take on the marketing consulting landscape. Do you think there's more opportunities than ever as companies look to fill gas with specialists? Or do you think that we're heading back towards big in-house teams? Or maybe there's middle ground that a lot of companies are exploring.
00:26:53
Speaker
That's a great question. Obviously, I can only speak from personal experience. What I see happening is that there's a lot more of a distributed marketing team. There's about 18 different specializations within marketing, everything from graphic design to content writing, copywriting, you name it, web development. There's just so much that can be done.
00:27:13
Speaker
So what I'm seeing is that they typically have kind of a rock, a person in-house who's a marketing manager who is sometimes junior, depending on the size of the marketing budget, or intermediate, and sometimes even senior. And their job is to produce results. Now sometimes that means they also bring in an admin person or a secondhand person to do execution tactical stuff and they focus on the bigger projects. But surrounding those people, as I'm noticing with my clients, and maybe this is a bias because they're working with a marketing advisor instead of an in-house
00:27:43
Speaker
CMO of some kind. But what I'm seeing is that they're outsourcing the web development, they're outsourcing the graphic design, they're outsourcing the content they tend to bring in-house because that tends to be very close to the brand and the voice. But I'm seeing a much more distributed, on-demand, flexible model that is centered around someone to produce and execute and ultimately project manage, someone like an advisor to really bring in that
00:28:07
Speaker
fractional expertise just to make sure that the guardrails are up and that we're headed in the right direction and somebody who sees inside businesses all day is keeping us on the right track so we're not misspending money and we're investing in the development of our systems and processes and building a marketing campaign. Everything else can be outsourced. Web development, you can get over in the Philippines for 25 bucks an hour. You can work with ads folks from all over the world, specialists in their craft. It doesn't make sense to hire one person who's really only going to be capable at
00:28:35
Speaker
one or two things to try to execute on all the things unless they have no choice and the small budget in which case. Yeah. I mean, personally, I think the marketing consulting landscape, the marketing landscape is really fascinating right now because the rules are changing. The rules of engagement are evolving where people work, how people work is being turned upside down. And I think 2021, 2022 is going to be really interesting and I'm excited to be part
Promotional Content and Closing Remarks
00:28:59
Speaker
of it.
00:28:59
Speaker
Kevin, well, thanks for the excellent and inspiring conversation. Where can people learn more about you and what you do? Thanks, Mark. Probably the best place is my website, kevin.me. I have some consulting services there that are sort of general and then all the content pretty well these days is focused on helping marketing consultants and advisors build a profitable advisory business. That's where they can go to find out most things about me.
00:29:25
Speaker
Thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. To learn more about how I help B2B SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic marketing advisor, and coach, send an email to mark at marketingspark.co or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you later.