The decision is made, it’s time to bring in an expert.
Small businesses have an implicit understanding of the value and necessity of marketing. It is the activity that brings customers to the business’s doors. But for small businesses having a dedicated marketing department with full time staff is unfeasible more often than not. Moreover, large agencies can charge premium prices, as they are geared toward serving large complex organizations that have large complex marketing strategies. It can be difficult to determine how to deploy effective marketing strategies at the scale of smaller organizations.
Hiring a consultant is a daunting option.
They seem to come in three flavors, but their wrapping all looks the same:
A good marketing consultant in Portland, or anywhere else, should take time to understand your business – how it works, what is important, what your goals are, and how you perceive value. What will come out of that initial investment will be recommendations that are suited not only to your objectives, but in the context of your priorities, budgets, and limitations.
Small businesses have an implicit understanding of the value and necessity of marketing. It is the activity that brings customers to the business’s doors. But for small businesses having a dedicated marketing department with full time staff is unfeasible more often than not. Moreover, large agencies can charge premium prices, as they are geared toward serving large complex organizations that have large complex marketing strategies. It can be difficult to determine how to deploy effective marketing strategies at the scale of smaller organizations.
Hiring a consultant is a daunting option.
They seem to come in three flavors, but their wrapping all looks the same:
- Large and expensive
- Well-meaning, but ineffective
- The one that understands your business, and delivers value
-
A good marketing consultant in Portland, or anywhere else, should take time to understand your business – how it works, what is important, what your goals are, and how you perceive value. What will come out of that initial investment will be recommendations that are suited not only to your objectives, but in the context of your priorities, budgets, and limitations.
|
|
Why Hire a Consultant?
In short, to save time and money. If the path toward an effective marketing strategy were crystal clear, then there really is no reason to hire a consultant! But the digital marketing landscape is vast and complex, and for people who do not spend a lot of time navigating it, it can be quite overwhelming. Wrong turns or strategic and tactical mistakes can be costly and time-consuming. The ideal Portland marketing consultant will help create strategies and campaigns that avoid the pitfalls that flow from unfamiliarity. |
So what does that entail?
Consulting services offered may cover any number of areas of focus. Specific deliverables and outcomes depend entirely on the objectives of the small business marketing priorities.
Consulting services offered may cover any number of areas of focus. Specific deliverables and outcomes depend entirely on the objectives of the small business marketing priorities.
|
|
Advertising
Too often, marketing and advertising are treated as synonymous. Advertising is an important aspect of marketing to bring customers to your door, but it is only the first step in a prospect's journey to becoming a customer. It is a way to get your message, your service, your product, or your value proposition broadcast to increase awareness. At times, this leads directly to sales, but good advertising campaigns understand that sales are only one part of the customer journey, and an advertising campaign’s goal it to elicit some kind of action, which may or may not entail a sale. Unfortunately, poorly designed advertising campaigns with poorly articulated goals are difficult to measure making their efficacy unknowable. Advertising campaigns should be first and foremost set up with objectives, and set up to be measurable against those objectives. Furthermore, there are so many digital channels on which to advertise – is social media advertising the right strategy? Pay-per-click (PPC)? What about the myriad directory services? Organic? Paid? With so many options to sort through, and an apt consultant can help clear the path to an executable strategy, and organize campaigns that evolve and optimize to maximize the effectiveness of each dollar spent. |
|
Social Media Consulting
What is social media good for in business? While many small businesses vaguely understand that social media is an important aspect of their marketing portfolio, often there is little understanding as to how to use social media, or what specific benefits it has for business. Social media has grown to be a complex and mature channel for marketing techniques, and just as with every channel goes through waves of trends. Marketing strategies that stick to over-saturated techniques lose efficacy as they fail to adapt to current trends. One reason it may be difficult to understand how social media can be applied is that the answer to that question is ever-changing. This is where a professional consultant can help. |
|
|
|
Reputation Management
For some organizations, their image online is of utmost importance. Image drives trust, and trust is the underlying emotion to every sales interaction. For some businesses and industries this is more critical than others, so hiring a consultant to manage online reputation is paramount to long-term success. This may entail dealing with negative reviews, managing public communications with customers, or dealing with unfavorable search engine results for keywords that are tightly coupled with the business. Any aspect of how a company appears online can be treated as reputation, and any aspect of this may be best left to a consultant with deep understanding of the digital landscape. |
|
Customer Profiling
What are the characteristics that define your best customers? Are those characteristic predictive of others that may be future customers? These questions are at the root of data-driven methodologies to understand your customer. Using sophisticated statistical models that examine consumer behavior, we can understand not only what your customer looks like, but how they behave. And behavior in group dynamics is predictable. This means if we understand your customer, we can find more like them. |
|
Hamelin LLC is committed to opening doors for, shedding light on, and increasing efficacy for local business that want to see business growth.
We look forward to a lasting relationship built on trust. You’ll come away with a coherent strategy to implement. Whether you choose to implement yourself or outsource, you can set in motion a clear tactical plan to achieve goals
Don’t leave it to chance. Summon your advantage.
We look forward to a lasting relationship built on trust. You’ll come away with a coherent strategy to implement. Whether you choose to implement yourself or outsource, you can set in motion a clear tactical plan to achieve goals
Don’t leave it to chance. Summon your advantage.
