Why Marketing Consultants Don’t Know It All
There is this notion that marketing consultants should know it all. They are after all qualified in marketing and are employed to steer a company or brand, but here are some reasons why they may not exactly know everything. And why technology helps fill the gap.
They have other clients.
Your marketing consultant is just that: a consultant. As such, they are likely to have more than one client. This means that, while they are more than able to devote the necessary resources to you, they also have other commitments on their plate which will require their attention. They won’t be spending all the hours of each working day with you or on your business. They may be well versed in your business and its services; however, they likely won’t know as much about the business as you do. They may be highly experienced marketers, but that doesn’t mean they will know everything about your business unless you take the time to fill them in. Don’t assume your marketing consultant knows all of this; instead, help them by filling in the gaps so, in turn, they can help you more efficiently.
They are not prophets.
Though experienced marketing consultants are well versed in providing their clients with adequate assessments of potential risks in marketing campaigns as a result of threats and weaknesses, ultimately, they cannot predict the future. This means that even the best marketing campaign is susceptible to failure for any number of reasons – but this does not necessarily mean your marketing consultant is at fault. Take, for instance, the myriad of well thought out campaigns that never came to fruition in light of COVID-19. Well planned marketing campaigns are certainly less risky than a game of roulette in that they are informed by previous strategies and market trends that provide the perfect foundation for educated hypotheses and projections. However, it is important to keep in mind that there is always room for human error.
They lack follow-through.
The professional landscape is highly saturated with individuals declaring their marketing expertise. This may well be true in the majority of cases, however, there are certainly a number of frauds masquerading as seasoned marketing aficionados. Sure, your marketing consultant can come up with an exciting plan for your business, but can they just as eloquently execute this plan? As Scott Belsky, author of Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, points out, “an idea can only become a reality once it is broken down into organized, actionable elements”. As such, your marketing consultant, though creative, may lack the necessary discipline that could lead to the downfall of your campaign.
Their work is expensive.
Your marketing consultant can provide you with a comprehensive plan of execution when it comes to your marketing campaigns. Its implementation will likely be strategically scheduled out over the desired duration of the campaign, and detail specific tasks for communications. This plan will revolve around sending out emails and calling existing clients as well as prospects, writing content for blogs, coming up with concepts and shooting video content, devising engaging social media posts, and more. It is significantly more cost-efficient, especially for small businesses, to implement these marketing strategies themselves and simply rely on marketing consultants to provide them with extensive planning, as opposed to turning to consultants to both divise and execute plans. Businesses can end up spending a great deal of money asking their marketing consultants to execute the ‘grunt’ work of a campaign, and small businesses should prioritize minimizing costs wherever possible. When it comes to smart marketing, every dollar counts.
They don’t embrace change.
Though the future of AI is daunting to some, an understanding of strategy technologies that founded, in reality, can provide marketing consultants with an invaluable tool to improve their efficiency and accuracy. Many consultants remain apprehensive about AI, largely due to the proliferation of a false narrative that this form of technology is going to steal human jobs. AI won’t take jobs so much as it will change how they operate for the better. Those who are late to the party risk missing out on all the advantages working collaboratively with technology has to offer and end up putting themselves at a significant disadvantage.
How can marketing strategy technologies fill in these gaps?
Unlike individual marketing consultants, strategy technologies do not have multiple clients. In fact, they are built to work quickly on multiple tasks at once. This means that you are always their top priority. Furthermore, your marketing consultant isn’t a prophet, and neither are marketing strategy technologies, although they do provide more accurate projections of the future. This is due to the multitude of calculations they can complete with precision where a human is more likely to become exhausted by such tedious and menial calculations. With automated calculations, there is even less room for ambiguity, which means your estimations for the future are founded in hard facts.
While humans are capable of lying about their level of expertise, a machine is incapable of fabricating the truth. With marketing strategy technologies, what you see is what you get. In other words, you know exactly what return you are getting and there are no surprises. It is, in a lot of ways, a far more valuable and secure investment for a business without a pre-existing relationship with a trusted consultant. Whereas consultant rates are quite high, especially when relied upon for ‘grunt’ work, strategy technologies are comparatively inexpensive when taking into consideration the range of specific and automated tasks that can be undertaken in a short period of time.
In contrast to the ultimately less predictable nature of humans, technology seldom lacks follow-through. Don’t be mistaken, though, into thinking that AI can execute everything exactly as, or better than, humans do. AI is of particular use when it comes to small, repetitive tasks such as calculations or sending out emails, which would take a marketing consultant much longer to complete. However, human marketing consultants are irreplaceable in how they add value to projects through imagination, innovation and informed understanding of the customer psyche. Humans are natural storytellers, and our ability to craft unique marketing campaigns depends on our innate inclination to creativity. This is something that technology inherently lacks. Perhaps we will be there one day, but we are certainly not there yet.
