Accountants, Interior Designers, Architects, Engineers, Naturopaths, Nutritionists, Chiropractors and other Complementary and Alternative Medical practitioners struggle with how to hire a marketing consultant.
Professionals have unique responsibilities and sensibilities that impact the style and method by which they need to engage in marketing activities.
How can you hire a marketing consultant well suited to the unique requirements of your professional practice?
Find someone who has experience marketing your profession, who will complement, rather than overshadow, your skills and vision, who has the training to provide the specific services you require, at the level of quality you seek, and with whom you feel at ease. Your marketing campaign will be poised for success if you can hire a marketing consultant that you trust to consistently have good judgement and an earnest focus on the best interests of your practice.
Susan Van Dyke’s article for the CBA, How to Hire a Legal Marketing Professional offers specific ideas on how to hire a marketing consultant. Although this article was written for the professional practice seeking full time marketing assistance, it carries relevance to those professionals that simply want to hire a marketing consultant:
get consensus… as to….mandate… and, just as important, what it won’t be. How will you recognize… success…
Ask good interview questions…
Provide your new marketer with intelligence about the firm, such as updates of billable targets, new file opening reports, the firm’s strategic plan and other information that’s important for them to do their job effectively. Grant access wherever it’s warranted and enable your new marketing professional to shine, and shine they will.
Finally, a few wise words on how to hire a marketing consultant from How to Hire a Great Marketer for Your Firm and Get Out of the Way by Bruce Marcus, a contributing Editor to RainToday.com:
You should know, first, that the mechanics of marketing—the media relations and the writing and the direct mail and seminars and such—are not marketing. Marketing, in the final analysis, is an art form. The mechanics and tools are not the art. (And, as I’ve often said, when you’re hiring a marketer, don’t look for a mechanic, look for an artist.)…
Thinking in terms of… not what you think you know about marketing but probably don’t, will more likely get you an effective marketing operation—and knowledgeable marketers as well.
Related post: What do Business Consultants do?
Photo credit (top): moonjazz
