The profile of online marketing consultant is being seen more and more in the types of work 3.0. as freelance, because with new technologies and internet are emerging new digital functions necessary for the marketing area of any company.

Therefore, as a freelance online marketing consultant in Valencia, I want to explain my profession and that from now on you know what it is, what is done, and how to be a digital marketing consultant so you can identify it.

What is a digital marketing consultant?

A digital marketing consultant is a person in charge of defining and implementing different online marketing campaigns and strategies to achieve the objectives of a company on the Internet or brand recognition for offline sales.

This person must be knowledgeable of the strategies most needed by the project to achieve visibility and must be able to advise you about them, as each company, SME or personal brand project is unique and will require different needs.

Today to resort to these marketing services is not necessary to hire digital marketing agencies, as currently we find people who are engaged in consulting as freelance who can help a company in the same way, without the need to be working for a third party.

Digital marketing consultant is an expert on everything, knows absolutely everything about the internet, and is able to do it on his own, and most of the time, you are really disappointed. You have to be very careful with this type of people, since we are all specialists in something, but the Internet is a tremendously wide world, which no one is an expert of everything in general.

In addition, the possibility of having a person to advise and help you in the area of digital marketing of your company will be a win-win, but in this tandem have to give the two parts. If one of the parts sinks, the ship will sink whole.

What a Digital Marketing Consultant Does: Functions

A digital marketing consultant has a number of functions to perform and you should know to take them into account if you ever get to have this profile of work, either in agency or freelance.

This person will be in charge from the compilation of information of your company or project to the management of the diverse strategies depending on the contract that you have previously established. For this reason, I am going to make you a list of tasks or functions that a digital marketing consultant does.

Carry out an audit of the project to be worked on

When a consultant agrees to run a business or personal project, the first thing he or she should do is audit to determine what has been done so far and how the different strategies have been working (if any have been done before).

In addition, a briefing should be sent to the client to learn all this information before getting down to work, as the consultant should know whether he or she has previously had a freelance consultant, a marketing agency or some other profile that has taken charge of these functions.

This audit will study and detect SEO errors of the website to advise on the improvement, web traffic, content, sales strategies, email marketing and recruitment, social media and other factors that have been made to have an initial situation in which to start working.

Project and competition analysis

As in any digital marketing plan, besides knowing the project, a good online marketing consultant must have analyzed the competition and their digital strategies to have an estimate of what is being done in the customer sector. For this reason, they must carry out an analysis of web traffic, SEO, content strategy and all the channels they are using, as well as those of the project itself.

Definition of objectives and target audience

The consultant must be aware of the offline objectives of the project, since once the objectives are established on the Internet, they must be aligned with those of the business.These objectives will be established according to the SMART method (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and in a certain time) and they will have to pursue to fulfill the goals.

In addition, they must know how to segment who is targeted by each marketing campaign to be carried out and differentiate between the different types of buyer people who might exist for each product or service of the company.

Establish digital marketing strategies

Although a consultant should be knowledgeable of all the strategies that can be carried out, you do not have to be a specialist in everything and know how to execute them one by one (a specialization in SEO is not the same as in Social Networks).

Therefore, you must know how to establish, advise and manage digital marketing strategies, as well as when to delegate each of the functions to another person on the team or subcontract to a specialist in the area (depending on the type of contract signed).

Another option is for the consultant himself to train his client or project team to carry out these tasks in your company.

Analyze and monitor results

In this phase in which the different digital marketing strategies and marketing mix strategies have already been established and implemented, each and every one of them must be monitored and measured, in order to see what can be improved or which strategy must be rethought or refocused.

Skills and competencies to be an online marketing consultant

Like any professional in your sector, to be a consultant you must have a series of skills and competencies in the area of digital marketing. You must be up to date with the latest technologies as well as the necessary tools to optimize each of the campaigns and marketing strategies, whether through social networks, search engines or advertisements in them.

But in addition, he must have knowledge in digital marketing of different areas to increase the visibility of the project. For this reason, I am going to name you one by one these competences that do not have to be required in each and every one of the businesses, but they are the most common that you are going to find.

Design and user experience

Although a digital marketing consultant doesn’t have to be a designer, he or she does need to know about experience and user interface to determine if web design is focused on converting or losing visitors to the website without reaching the final goal.

This can be analyzed with multiple tools (heat maps, A/B test, etc.), but also the intuition and experience must be part of this person to see where the design is failing.

If we want to be successful on the internet, web design will be the first thing we have to optimize to carry out successful digital marketing strategies and really convert through the landing page.

Digital Marketing Tools

Digital marketing consultant should know and control as much as possible (you don’t have to be an expert in all of them, but you do know how they work and implement them in the project).

• Google Analytics.
• Search Console.
• Facebook Ads.
• Google Adwords.
• The social networks themselves and their statistics.
• Some email marketing tool: Mailchimp, Active Campaign (this is the one I use), Mailrelay…
• Some tool for content strategy: Ahrefs, SEMrush, Adwords itself…