Are you looking for a marketing expert to help double your leads and sales?
Before you start hiring, you must be aware of some tell-tale signs which indicate their quality and whether you’ll be suitable for each other.
Marketing experts come in all shapes and sizes. Some are good, some are great, and some make you wish you never contacted them at all.
The fact is, hiring a marketing expert is an investment that can cost you big time – if you hire the wrong person.
To help mitigate risk, we’ve written this guide so you’ll know when you’ve found a marketing expert. Don’t waste time on people who don’t deliver results or help move your business forward.
1. Marketing Experts Have Years of Experience
And they can use both traditional marketing and digital marketing methods to achieve results.
Prolific marketing experts love marketing and helping businesses grow. Simply taking a quick look at their website gives you an overview of what they’re about.
Look out for the key proficiencies and competencies shown on their website. You need to identify exactly what they’re good at, to know whether they’ll be the right fit for your business.
For example, let’s say you’re looking for a marketing expert who’s excellent at both email marketing and sales collateral creation. There should be a section on their website which displays this and their other expertise.
2. They Know How to Generate Leads Online
With over 3.2 billion people now using the internet (2015), you must be well equipped to attract this swarm of potential customers to your business.
A good marketing expert must know the ins-and-outs of online lead generation. From inbound marketing channels such as SEO and social media to paid advertising and referral marketing.
What you need is a marketing expert who understands online marketing and how to use different digital marketing channels to generate quality leads.
An easy way to identify a marketing expert’s digital knowledge is to ask them two important questions.
1. Which three digital marketing channels have worked exceptionally well for your past clients and why?
2. How do you perform lead capture and lead nurturing in your business?
This quick-and-easy test will highlight whether they actually know what they’re talking about.
Also, pay attention to their website. Do they have email capture forms on their site such as pop-ups, scrolling bars and simple forms (contact forms don’t count)? Also, check for call-to-actions which direct you to targeted landing pages.
If they’re not doing any of this, you may want to reconsider and look elsewhere for a marketing expert who practices what they preach.
3. They’re Committed to Understanding Your Business Challenges
Good marketing experts are great communicators. They listen more than they talk.
They will always ask thought-provoking questions about your background, business and the challenges faced today.
Through your conversations, you both must feel like you’re moving forward. You’re aware of each other’s skills and what’s possible. Any advice or suggestions you receive from them should make sense instantly.
Over time you will form an uncanny friendship where honesty, trust and respect is upheld on both ends.
This is especially important if you’re a small business. You have limited funds and resources, meaning you have fewer chances to make mistakes and more to lose. In short, you can’t afford to work with a marketing expert who doesn’t understand or hasn’t worked in small business before.
Don’t put too much faith in marketing experts who only have experience in the corporate sector. While they’re probably good at what they do, they may struggle to apply their strategies to businesses with fewer resources.
You can have five businesses with exactly the same problems, but each one will need different advice. What you want to avoid is a marketing expert who plays copy and paste with your business; using old strategies from past clients which no longer work.
This leads me to my next point.
4. They Focus on the Right Marketing Channels
The hallmark of a good marketing expert lies with their ability to hone in and select the best marketing channels that’ll deliver stellar results for your business.
For example, the bullseye framework is a good way to quickly test the effectiveness of a marketing channel without investing so much time and money.
Your marketing expert should be able to recommend the most effective marketing channels for your business. Likewise, they can tell you which channels to eliminate and which to double- down on.
Your goal is to find the channels which generate the biggest returns while keeping your cost- per-lead as low as possible.
For example, imagine you’re a training provider selling online courses to remote working parents who’re looking to improve their career prospects. Using social media marketing platforms such as LinkedIn and Pinterest, might be your best channels to market on. Why? Because research shows both LinkedIn and Pinterest users have more disposable income than users of every other social media platform.
5. Their Website is Functional, Attractive and Runs Well on Mobile Devices
Web development is not a skill most marketing experts have. However, they should still be aware of what’s happening in their own back garden.
The number of people using mobile to search, apply for jobs, do their groceries and buy high- ticket items increases year-over-year.
Therefore marketing experts must know just how important mobile is for the future of the internet.
It’s so important that Google prioritises search results that are optimised for mobile devices.
You don’t want to be at a disadvantage because your website is not designed for mobile browsing. And your marketing expert should be able to point this out to you immediately.
Look at their website and scrutinise it.
If their website is filled with colours that clash, pop-ups that interrupt, and scroll bars that stretch beyond the length of your device – you’ll trust them less.
Why? Because you had a poor website experience.
You want a marketing expert who understands this and can recommend people to build a website experience your visitors will never forget.
Grow’s marketing advice has added over £200,000 to our turnover this year – it’s been our best year yet!
6. They’re a Human Marketing Encyclopedia
Which never goes out of date. Your marketing expert must have their finger on the pulse at all times. They must know what’s happening in the marketing world.
They’re aware of new resources and updates that can make or break your business.
This allows them to recommend the best practices that’ll help you avoid costly mistakes whilst growing your business.
Because they’re so committed to personal and professional development, they can provide you with more effective strategies that’ll grow your business for years to come.
They understand that they don’t have all the answers, and so attend conferences, take courses and regularly go to marketing events all over the globe just to keep on top.
Find out whether a marketing expert is up to date by asking them the following questions:
- Which marketing programs, courses or books are you currently studying?
- Could you give me some names of current marketers you follow and find useful for your business?
- Which tool or service is currently giving you the biggest gains in your business?
They must be able to give specific names of these individuals and businesses. Whether you’ve heard them or not doesn’t matter.
Figuratively, you’re looking for a social marketer who’s “in the know” and can give you a monthly digest of the latest happenings in the marketing world that’ll be useful for your business.
7. They Have a Swiss Army Knife Filled with Tools That’ll Take You to the Next Level
Your marketing expert must have access to the best tools and resources that’ll give you an unfair advantage over your competitors. They will also be more than happy to look for lengthy free trials for you to use if it means your business grows as a result.
They should have a tool for SEO, marketing automation, CRM, analytics, social media marketing and scheduling and much more.
Your marketing expert will most likely be an affiliate for these tools they recommend to you. But if they’re any good, they’ll only let you sign up for tools that your business can’t thrive without. Even if it means losing out on hundreds of pounds worth of affiliate commissions!!
You know you’re in good hands when your marketing expert recommends a competitor’s tool over a tool they’re using. A good marketing expert wants to see you succeed. Everything else is secondary.
8. They Have Glowing Testimonials and Encourage You to Contact Previous Clients
A marketing expert will not hesitate to provide you with key contact information of their very best clients.
When you’re looking to buy a product or service you’re not too sure about, what actions help alleviate fears and objections every single time?
Reading testimonials!
A good marketing expert should have 3-5 super fans who would jump at the opportunity of working with them again. Even if their rates have doubled since last working together.
Why? Because they got results and moved their business forward.
Contact them and ask questions about the marketing expert they’ve worked with. Find out about their processes, what they did and where their business is now as a result of that.
Is your marketing expert revered so much that people will happily send out recommendations about them?
On their website, they should display clear testimonials which give a real insight into how their work impacted the business.
Don’t pay too much attention to testimonials which use turn-key phrases without delving into the specifics. You want to find real numbers, real evidence of improvement and positive change.
Check to see how many testimonials they have? If they have a dedicated page to testimonials which link to case studies – even better! It shows they understand why and how testimonials work so well.
9. They Communicate With Clarity
Marketing experts specialise in strategy and mentoring, but tend not to implement.
This is why excellent communication skills should be non-negotiable. Every member of your firm must be able to understand them. And they shouldn’t use marketing terminology as a cover-up for ineffective strategies that’ll hold your business back.
For instance, having hundreds of blog comments, followers and engagement on its own will do nothing for your business. They are not the business metrics that matter, they contribute very little if anything towards revenue and profit growth.
A good marketing expert must be able to explain how these metrics contribute towards increasing conversion rates, click-through rates, and lower cost-per-acquisition rates.
10. Their LinkedIn Profile and Background Exudes Authority
Normally you’ll come across three types of marketing experts.
A. Ex-corporate marketing managers and experts
They’ve implemented marketing strategies for big brands and have switched to working for smaller SMEs. They have a wealth of experience, but they may struggle to scale down their ideas and growth strategies to clients who have less money to spend on advertising.
You want someone who can get excellent results without having the marketing budget of a FTSE 500 company.
B. Ex-corporate marketing communications
Usually, these marketing experts have worked in the non-profit sector and for some bigger businesses. Their experience lies in creating collateral content such as whitepapers, email marketing series and managing websites.
They’re versatile and possess a vast skillset, but may lack the strategic thinking to apply modern online marketing strategies to a company’s existing goals.
C. Small business marketing experts
A marketing expert who describes themselves as a small business marketing expert is one to look out for. It doesn’t guarantee they’ll be right for you. However, it does mean they understand the issues most small businesses have, such as lack of staffing, advertising budget, having limited availability for bookings, etc.
Look at our marketing consultancy page to see how Grow can boost your company’s revenue and profit this year. Pay special attention to our copy and judge us on the 10 points above.
Final thought
Excellent people aren’t exempt from failure.
Even if your marketing expert is a genius, the actions and strategies they recommend that work in principle might not work for your business.
Lots of elements including luck are required for a business to become successful. Never make assumptions about the results your marketing expert will get.
Always try to get a feel for their thinking process and how they would approach your business challenges without committing yourself to a long-term deal.
After all, it’s their thinking process which could mean the difference between doubling your sales this year or spending even more money hiring someone else.
