Successful small businesses owners don’t always get to the pinnacle of success on their own. In many cases, because they’re a small company, they don’t have the manpower that larger companies have. Many small business owners don’t have the resources to increase their staff permanently and many don’t always have the marketing knowledge and expertise to help themselves. A good solution is to hire contractors and consultants to help them.

One area that business owners or entrepreneurs might seek help with is with their infrastructure and their growth. A consultant could help a small company succeed in many ways. Hiring an internet marketing consultant, for example, could help you take your moderately successful business to the next level of success. If your business is failing or flailing, an expert could help you strategise and execute a plan of action to turn things in a better direction. If you’re just starting out, a consultant could help you hit the ground running.

Hiring someone in a mentoring role could be just what you need. Instead of hiring a permanent employee, a consultant allows you to hire a seasoned expert either temporarily or in a specific capacity. This can be a symbiotic relationship,

Help for Start-Ups

Let’s say you’re just starting out. Whether you’re experienced with the internet or not, getting help could be detrimental. There are many important facets to your internet marketing strategy. The consultant can help you with web design, search engine optimisation, paid advertising campaigns, gathering market intelligence, product launches, social media optimisation, reputation management, and more. They can also help you analyse your campaigns so that you can achieve optimal results and maximise our marketing budget.

Let’s say you’re already established but want to fix something that’s broken or want to grow your business. An internet marketing consultant can help here, too. A professional can help you ascertain where improvements could be made both to your internal infrastructure as well as to your online efforts. Maybe some website tweaks, a new focus, a direct mail campaign, or another area could help you jumpstart efforts or regain lost market share.

So many different factors could be hampering your success. Maybe you know just what is standing in your way and maybe you’re at a loss. In either case, an outside expert could be just what you need for perspective and for guidance on how to get from where you are to wherever it is that you want to go.

A small business could struggle with finding a way to optimise their website effectively. A small business consultant might be the ticket. It’s not easy to optimise your site both for search engines and for your visitors. Not doing both extremely well could result in a flop or even a disaster. A consultant can find the happy medium between optimisation for search engine spiders and optimisation for your prospects.

Search engine optimisation / SEO consultants typically understand your position. They know that there is a fine line between keyword optimised and keyword stuffed. They understand that you want top spot in Google, Bing, and Yahoo for the top phrases in your industry and to rank well in local search engines but they know that too much of the keyword focus and not enough attention to customer experience won’t do much for you.

There’s a lot to figure out when you’re optimising on your own. And you don’t always have time for trial and error. Hiring an expert to run your marketing campaign for you could be a move that makes your life easier and that gets you the results you want.

Consultants typically spend time understanding your business model and your goals. Then they find a way to help you bridge those gaps. Many will work closely with you and at times, if necessary, they’ll take the reigns so that you can focus on what you need to focus on. A consultant will work with your desires and your goals in mind.

Finding the right consultancy firm isn’t always easy. Here are some tips:

• Look for a local firm. That way you’ll be in the same time zone and that will facilitate collaborative efforts. If you’re in the UK, for instance, you might hire a UK small business consultant.
• Check out the firm’s online presence. You can tell a lot about a company by the way they conduct themselves online. How can a company help you with your internet presence if they have no presence of their own? Don’t hesitate to dig into the online reputation of the company / companies you’re considering.
• Don’t enter into a contract lightly. Read the fine print. Look for reasonable guarantees. Look to see if the company has been in business for some time and whether or not you can find any complaints about them online.

The right small business consultant for your company will mesh well with you, listen to your wants and needs, and work with the best interests of you, your customers, and your bottom line in mind.

When it comes to a website, traffic is good. Your traffic is coming from somewhere and if you’re using a marketing consultant, they should be attempting to track where that traffic is coming from.

Every visitor that lands on your website arrives there for a specific reason. Either that individual clicked your link from another web page, they arrived via typing in your URL in their address bar, or they arrived via a search engine results listing that made them believe that your site had the info they were seeking.

By understanding where your website traffic comes from, your marketing consultant can analyse the actions of each visitor. That analysis will help the consultant determine whether any part of your online strategy should be changed.

Information on your traffic report can include a lot of things, such as:

• Referring websites.
• Referring search engines.
• Visitor origin
• Search engine key phrases that you are ranking for
• And more.

This info can help you understand where your traffic is coming from. This info can help you figure out how your visitors are arriving. This data can tell you whether or not your existing focus is providing your website visitors with the experience they are looking for.

If you or your marketing consultant isn’t regularly looking at your traffic reports, then not everything is being done to their job very well.

These reports are easily accessible and can help you understand why you are having the results you’re having online. Do you have 100 visitors a month arriving via a page that doesn’t deliver on the word most people are using to access that page? Perhaps it’s time to better optimise it. Do you have a large number of visitors linking to a specific page on your site but they don’t buy? Perhaps you should make a bigger “buy now” or “learn more” or “contact us” button on that page. Maybe the web copy needs to be a bit more convincing.
Have you noticed a rush of traffic that you now realise is coming from a blog where your product has been positively mentioned? As you can see, analysing traffic can be very fruitful.

Many tools exist that can help you analyse your website traffic. Perhaps you should consider hiring a marketing consultant to do this for you. An internet success consultant knows how to read these reports and turn the raw data into an action plan that could boost your site’s results, saving you time and increasing your sales.

If you want to become a management consultant or start your own consulting business, there are certain skills you should have. Not only will these skills help you perform your job, they will make you more marketable to potential clients and make growing your business much easier.

You may possess some or all of these abilities already, but if you are lacking in some areas, consider taking a class or getting involved in a group or organization where you can practice using these skills and build up your potential.

Problem-Solving

If you are a creative thinker, you are probably good at thinking outside the box and solving problems. Being able to think outside the box is critical to being a good management consultant because your clients are relying on you to come up with solutions that they cannot see themselves.

Brainstorming is a great technique for coming up with new and different ideas and solutions. There are books on brainstorming that can help with this (for example, “How to Get Ideas” by Jack Foster). It is a cheap way to help you excel in your career.

Communication

The skill of communication is important in virtually any field, but when you are working with a client one-on-one, you cannot pretend to be a good communicator. Being able to listen and make the client feel like they are heard is a great asset. Understanding what a client and wants and being able to deliver just that will get you repeat business and referrals.

There are communication classes that teach students things like how to relate to others, social and business etiquette, how to be an effective team player, etc.. If you think that you need to enhance your communication skills, contact your local community college or city recreation department to see what classes are available.

Computer Skills

These days, it is essential to be skilled in the area of computers and technology if you are going to be consulting other businesses. You will need to use computers and other modern technology to effectively communicate and provide services for your clients. In addition, your expertise in this area can assist your clients in more effectively using the latest technology themselves to increase the efficiency of their operations.

Leadership

Your clients are depending on you to lead them in the right direction. Management consultants must be confident, decisive and inspiring to others in order to get them to follow and take action. Other traits of leaders include honesty, intelligence, competence and courage. While some of these are personality traits or values rather than learned skills, they are good to keep in mind when consulting with clients.

Ability to Work under Stress

Management consultants need to be able to work well even in stressful situations. Working with businesses means there will be lots of projects going on, a variety of people to deal with and of course deadlines. If you don’t handle stress well, you most likely will not enjoy your work, and it will show. However, if you thrive under stress and do your best work under deadlines, you can be a great asset to your clients.