What does a marketing consultant do day to day?

Research, analysis and decision making: auditing current activity, reviewing performance data, interviewing the sales team, comparing competitors, then writing and presenting the plan. Ongoing work adds direction, agency oversight and mentoring the internal team.

Is a marketing consultant worth it for a small business?

It is worth it when you are spending money on marketing without a clear reason for the choices. A few days of senior thinking usually saves more in wasted spend than it costs.

What qualifications should a marketing consultant have?

Look for real senior experience in businesses of your size, and Chartered Marketer status through the CIM if you want an independent standard. Ask for the reasoning behind past decisions, not just a list of logos.

How much does a marketing consultant cost in the UK?

Day rates for experienced consultants commonly sit between £300 and £700. My own starting prices are on the cost page: audits from £950, strategy from £1,250 and days from £300.

Working with a consultant

What does a marketing consultant do?

A plain English description of the job: what a consultant is brought in to fix, what the weeks look like, and what you should expect to be handed at the end.

August 2026 · 6 minute read · Sarah Ward CFCIM

Marketing consultant is a loose title. It covers everyone from a one channel specialist to a former marketing director working across a handful of businesses, which is why the answer to what one does depends entirely on who you hire.

Here is what the role means in practice for a UK SME, based on how I work with businesses that have a small team, a real budget and no senior marketer in the building.

The short answer

A marketing consultant is brought in to work out what your marketing should be doing, prove it with evidence rather than opinion, and leave you with a plan the people in your business can actually deliver.

That is the difference between a consultant and an agency. An agency is usually hired to run a channel. A consultant is usually hired to answer a question: why are enquiries flat, where should this budget go, is the agency worth the money, what do we do next year.

What the work involves

Most engagements include some combination of:

Auditing what exists now, from website and search visibility to email, social and any paid activity
Talking to the people who sell, because the sales team usually knows why deals are lost before marketing does
Looking at competitors properly, not as a screenshot exercise but as a positioning comparison
Setting the priorities, with the reasoning written down so it survives a busy quarter
Building the plan: channels, messages, owners, timings and a budget that adds up
Reviewing delivery, whether that is an internal executive, a freelancer or an agency

How a typical project runs

Discovery first: an honest conversation about what the business needs marketing to deliver, and what has already been tried. Then the audit, which is where most of the surprises are found. Then the plan, presented and talked through rather than emailed over as a PDF.

After that it varies. Some businesses take the plan and run it themselves. Others keep a day or two a month for direction, agency oversight and mentoring the person doing the work.

Consultant, agency or hire

A consultant suits you when the gap is direction and judgement. An agency suits you when the gap is delivery volume in a specific channel. A hire suits you when there is enough ongoing work to justify a salary and someone senior to manage them.

Plenty of SMEs need two of the three. The mistake is buying delivery when the real problem is that nobody has decided what should be delivered.

What you should expect to receive

At the end of a project you should have:

A written record of what was found, with evidence rather than assertions
A prioritised plan with owners and dates, not a wish list
A budget you can defend to whoever signs it off
A clear view of what to stop doing, which is usually where the money comes from

The short version

A good consultant leaves you with better decisions, not a dependency. If you cannot run the plan without them, it was not a plan.

Questions I get asked about this

What a marketing consultant costs Marketing services Consultant or agency

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