Marketing consultants come from very wide backgrounds and have varying levels of experience and diverse skillsets.
Although there will be some marketing consultants who are considered the ‘best’ in their field, it is greatly subjective, as it will very often, depend on the project and the specific attributes of the marketing consultant that will make them appropriate for the project.
Marketing consultants are never ‘masters of all’ and some will have a more digitally concentrated focus and therefore be classed as digital marketing consultants, others will be more strategically focused and will therefore be less hands on in their approach.
So maybe the question should be, ‘the best marketing consultant for ME?’ This therefore addresses the aspect of the ‘suitability’ of a marketing consultant for a given piece of work or ongoing contract.
When considering the best marketing consultant, some will value a marketing consultant who is part of, or associated with a large global group, where the credentials will be those associated with working for larger global brands.
This is entirely appropriate when the client organisation is global in reach and has a complex and multi-location strategic marketing structure.
Such a business would consider that using a globally significant marketing consultancy will give peace of mind that the consultant is suitable qualified and experienced with other ‘logo’ brands.
However, although this may be the ‘best’ option for a global player, it will certainly be out of reach financially for many SME businesses or start-ups, as the level of strategic input alluded to comes with a very hefty price-tag.
Also culturally, the larger marketing consultancy is no best geared for working with the fast paced nature of start-ups and will more likely assign teams rather than individuals to a given project or requirement.
Smaller businesses therefore, will usually look to work with smaller consultancies, or self-employed marketing consultants who can offer a responsive service, that comes within the smaller budget scopes that make the investment viable.
Does location matter when choosing the best marketing consultant? There is no doubt that cultural variation, language and innate knowledge of a region is a deciding factor when establishing the best marketing consultant for your needs.
This is important, as it is unlikely that a first-choice marketing consultant for your international project will be effective if they don’t have in depth knowledge of the location in which products and services are to be marketed.
It’s also not the sort of thing that can necessarily short-cutted just be doing a few hours of desk research or taking a couple of days visit. In actual fact, most good marketing consultants will usually tell you at the outset if the remit of the international marketing requirement is outside of their experience.
There are many high profile cases easily searched on Google where high profile marketing consultancies, or ad agencies have tried to apply a business model, product or brand in unfamiliar territories and ended up coming unstuck or their campaigns being completely ineffective.
So in these cases, the best marketing consultant option may well be one who resides in the location, or one who has a very good working knowledge of the customs, people and cultural/ social expectations and tolerances of these audiences.
Sometimes, being the best marketing consultant rests on having very distinct areas of expertise in terms of technology or within certain topic areas. This could look like a marketing consultant who specialises in an area of technology or manufacturing where he or she calls on a very specific range of knowledge that is very attuned to the products and services in question.
In these cases, being the best marketing consultant will very much depend on the specific expertise and skillset of the marketing consultant in question. Again, the ‘best’ will therefore be very conditional on the appropriateness of this person’s skills to the task at hand.
There are many industry types where this is very apparent, such as IT, Pharma, Engineering, Aerospace, SaaS, Agriculture, Energy, Telecoms and many other sectors where it is extremely important to have a technical knowledge that is more than a working knowledge.
When such an organisation uses a marketing consultant without the necessary in-depth technical knowledge, it ends up bending members of the client team out of shape as they can end up having to write, or edit heavily content, which can be so time consuming as to make the employing of the consultant a redundant exercise.
Therefore the best marketing consultant, in these cases, will be one who comes with a long list of relevant industry experience and the specific expertise on products and services that is unique to them.
Does age matter when selecting the best marketing consultant? Actually age is just one factor, and it is entirely possible for a young and recently qualified marketing consultant to add value to companies and make a very successful consultancy.
This is more likely in areas of technology or for areas of social media, motion media, apps or influencer marketing or paid-for marketing approaches, as these areas benefit the skillset of the younger marketing consultant and would be not appropriate for most aged 50+ marketing consultants who in truth, would readily volunteer that they don’t know their way around the hottest apps and platforms young people are using.
So you can see in reading this article, that indeed you can Google a list of the best marketing consultants and those ranked highest for geographic regions, but there is actually far more involved in assessing who is the best marketing consultant and it is very much based on many factors.
If these factors are overlaid on to the ranking of marketing consultants, then a more accurate picture emerges of the best marketing consultant for a given project or contract.