How to choose a digital marketing consultant

Start with the question you need answered

Write down, in one sentence, what you want to be true in six months. More enquiries from the website. A lower cost per lead. A team that knows what it is doing each month. The right consultant is the one whose experience matches that sentence, not the one with the longest channel list.

Questions worth asking

Ask every candidate:

• What would you need to see before recommending anything, and how long would that take
• Do you earn anything from the channels or tools you recommend
• Who does the work, you or someone else, and who do I speak to each month
• Show me a plan you produced for a business my size, redacted if needed
• What have you told a client to stop spending money on recently
• How will we know in three months whether this is working

The last two are the most revealing. Anyone who has never recommended stopping something has never really audited anything.

Warning signs

• A recommendation before any research has been done
• Guaranteed rankings, guaranteed leads or a fixed number of enquiries
• Reporting built on impressions, reach and followers rather than enquiries and revenue
• A twelve month contract with no break clause for work that has not started
• No ownership of your own accounts: ads, analytics, domain and website must stay in your name

Comparing quotes that look nothing alike

Quotes vary wildly because the scope does. Bring them back to the same footing: what is being researched, what will be delivered in writing, how many days are involved, who is doing them, and what happens after handover.

Then compare the cost against the decision at stake. A £950 audit that stops £2,000 a month of misdirected spend has paid for itself in a fortnight.

Independence matters more than channel expertise

Channel specialists are worth hiring once you know where the budget belongs. The job of a consultant is to work out where it belongs, which is very hard to do honestly if the answer determines their next invoice.

If your candidate also runs the ads, writes the content and builds the site, you are buying delivery with advice attached, not advice.