How To Successfully Become A Digital Marketing Consultant In The Next 6 Months

No matter how the economy or world around you is doing, one thing will never change. Businesses will exist and they will want to make more money. In order to make more money, often times business owners will seek out marketing consultants to help them improve their numbers.

Marketing consultants will never die out, they just evolve into different mediums over time. The demand for skilled professionals with good experience in social networking, internet marketing, search marketing, mobile and search engine optimization is developing at a rapid pace.

In light of all the growing demand, Digital Marketing Consultant’s are making a ton of money by offering their services to businesses worldwide. Competent digital experts bridge the gap between the business and the online world. Digital marketing experts are constantly being hired because more and more businesses are finding it difficult to digitally market their businesses.

Being a digital marketing consultant has been a service that I have provided for a few years now. However, due to time constraints and my businesses growing rapidly, I’ve been able to take on fewer and fewer clients each year. However, digital marketing consultants can get paid a lot. At the peak of my offerings, I was making around $250 an hour for consulting businesses.

In this blog post, I’m going to show you guys exactly how to successfully become a digital marketing consultant in the next 6 months.

1. Be Optimistic

Optimism is said to be contagious. The road to becoming a digital consultant is not easy and it isn’t completely straightforward. Along the way, you will struggle with ups and downs, but it does not mean that you should just give up. Regardless of what you will encounter along the way, you need a positive attitude to face it all. If you are planning to become a digital marketing consultant, you must have a vision of what you want to achieve and keep that positive mental image engraved in your head for as long as you can.

2. Stay Focused On Goals

A skilled digital marketer always understands the “Why.” One must understand the overall goals, as well as how individual actions contribute to the goal. It is an essential perspective in making decisions throughout a successful project. When marketers wonder, they often ask “Why am I doing this?”, instead of “How does this impact the program”? With marketing, every action has a direct result and you want to constantly remind yourself of that.

3. Strategies vs. Tactics

A strategy is a plan of action with a goal. A tactic is a particular action that is part of implementing the strategy. A lot of marketing consultants can’t distinguish the difference between the two and it often leads to losing clients. Understanding the difference between strategies and tactics can ensure all the “why” is present and will contribute to more successful projects.

4. Listen And Empathize

A lot of people underestimate the power of listening, but for marketers it is a vital skill. The combination of real listening and the ability to empathize with others will make them very successful. Understand the current situation, goals and troubles that a business is having while sharing the necessary emotions to relate with them. From there, the job of the digital marketer is to understand what they need to do and how to do it. Experienced and confident marketers provide valuable perspective and a plan of action well before they implement anything.

5. Prioritize

Any successful consultant will tell you that you have to prioritize your clients and make them feel like the most important people in the world to be successful. A big part of the consultant’s job is to collect data, organize, extract insights and present recommendations that balance options with priorities. Prioritization can vary from engagement to engagement, but most clients are going to expect a lot of your time. Clients will also expect phone calls keeping them in the loop and these are all obligations that you must consider before taking on a job.

6. Understand The Digital Marketing World

From social media marketing to search engine optimization, there are a ton of digital marketing methods that a business can utilize. If you become a one-trick pony, your clients results will suffer and so will your paycheck. Be well-rounded and knowledgeable about the entire space of digital marketing. Understand the needs of a client and really grasp the concepts before you take on a project.

7. Develop A Strategy For Each Client

Every client has a unique set of requirements; no two firms will want the same thing. Develop a unique strategy for each. Understand what the client wants and tailor a strategy that will cater to their specific needs. Always listen to what the client wants and strategize around them instead of bringing a pre-packaged plan.

8. Analyze The Clients Existing Marketing Tactics

In order to save a lot of time and to save your clients a ton of time, you really need to analyze what methods of marketing your clients have done. Find out what has worked, what hasn’t worked and try to figure out why they got the results they did. In order to become a consultant, you can’t just implement ideas. You have to also be able to analyze previous pieces of data and figure out how you can improve upon things.

10. Create A Killer Portfolio

No matter the strategy you have, people are looking for a consultant that has the resume to back it up. You can claim to be the leading expert on SEO, SEM, Social media marketing and everything else, but it means nothing if you don’t have a portfolio that proves this. Create a portfolio citing your previous works with excellent results, utilize case studies and obtain testimonials from previous clients that you can use for future sales pitches.

11. Set A Price That You Are Worth

Digital marketing consultancy is not a free service and there is no set price for it. Pricing shows how you value yourself to your clients and nothing is more valuable than your time and service. What is 20 hours of your time, effort, hard work and knowledge worth to you? Set your own worth and don’t discount it if you don’t want to.

12. Educate Yourself Constantly

Anyone can learn to become a digital marketing consultant if they understand the internet and have basic marketing skills. However, the best digital marketing consultants don’t take a couple courses or educate themselves just once. They’re constantly learning and spending just as much time to improve their own skills as they are on helping their clients. If you really want to be successful in this space long-term, go in with the mindset that you’ll never know everything when it comes to marketing and that you’ll constantly have to improve yourself.

Conclusion

Becoming a digital marketing consultant is not easy. But if you possess the skills, confidence, and understanding necessary, you might become a successful one in 6 months or less. In this post, I shared with you how to successfully become a digital marketing consultant in the next 6 months.