What does a content marketing consultant do?

Content marketing consultant vs. Content creator

When we think about content, we often jump directly to its creation. But if you skip to creating content without a plan, you’re building your content house on little to no foundations. It might work, it might not, but at some stage, it will definitely fall apart.

The role of a content marketing consultant is to set up a solid foundation for your content through research, analysis, and strategy. They will consider your current assets, your goals, and your budget to offer the best and most sustainable solution for your business. The main difference between a consultant and a creator is that a consultant doesn’t necessarily work on the content itself. Usually, consultants create an overarching content plan, whereas creators work on executing it.

Moreover, the work of most content marketing consultants includes making sure that you can execute the strategy they come up with. This means they can offer training, write guidelines, or recommend partners who can execute the strategies they plan. It’s a big picture role and one that varies among different professionals.

First, a content marketing consultant will review your digital presence

The first thing a content marketing consultant will do is look at what you already have. Many businesses are sitting on a wealth of content they don’t even know about. Anything from your website copy to sales support documents like pdf quotes, scripts, and email templates can be a content marketing gold mine. The process works the other way around as well – your marketing content can support your sales enablement process with a few tweaks.

Although it’s still likely to need a lot of work, your pre-existing content is bound to give you a head start. By assessing the state of your content marketing, a good consultant can suggest tweaks and edits that drive the same results as new content. Not only will this save time, but it will build on the investment you have already made into your content instead of letting it gather digital dust.

Your past content and the results it has achieved can also serve as a foundation for a new content strategy. For example, if a page is driving great traffic, but little results, a content marketing consultant might suggest adding a lead magnet to it. This way, you can convert some of this traffic into leads through an email sign-up form and start building a mailing list. I’m oversimplifying here, but I want to show you how small tweaks can go a long way.

They will help you structure your content goals

Business owners often venture into content marketing blindly, with an added sense of panic that they need results quickly. As you might have already guessed, any content marketing consultant will tell you that a sense of urgency is the quickest path to failure.

When you start a content marketing partnership, your consultant will help you identify and set goals for your business. These goals might look very different depending on what you do and your industry. Some business owners may want to build brand awareness and explain what they offer. Others could be looking to drive traffic to their website to get inquiries or build a lead generation strategy.

This paradox of choice often causes indecisiveness as business owners try to do everything all at once. Unless you have a large budget and a big team, you will have to pick one path and stick to it to get results. A good content marketing consultant will ground you and help you find that path. They will review what you would like to achieve and methodically assess what content strategy will work for you.

Offer advice on technical and on-page SEO

It’s important to mention that not every content marketing consultant offers SEO services. Some focus on content that doesn’t need to be indexed or drive traffic and there’s nothing wrong with that. Others create content with SEO in mind, but don’t focus solely on driving traffic. And then there are those who create content with the sole purpose of SEO. I would classify the last category as SEO experts, not content marketing consultants, but they’re both broad definitions so you can take your pick.

In my experience as a content marketing consultant, SEO is important, but it’s not the main point of creating content.

Too often do we find top Google results that provide no valuable information and repeat keywords in a methodical manner.

I don’t know how you feel about this, but I often navigate to page 2 of Google to skip all the keyword-stuffed blog posts that won’t answer my question.

Having said that, SEO is important for most businesses, and it should play a part in any overarching content strategy. When a consultant reviews your website and existing content, some of their suggestions will be related to SEO. For example, they may suggest you restructure your pages in a hierarchical manner so search engines can read them better. Most importantly, if your goal is to create content, a content marketing consultant will come up with a keyword strategy and identify internal linking opportunities. This will ensure that your website’s architecture supports your content marketing and doesn’t negatively affect your rankings.

Do I need a content marketing consultant?

Well, if I haven’t convinced you so far, I probably won’t manage to do it in a short summary. But just because you asked, the answer is a definite ‘yes’.

Having said that, the type of consulting you need might not be exactly what I’ve outlined above. Maybe you have a lot of this covered already, maybe you’re just starting, and you need a content strategy built from scratch. There are as many options out there as you can think of and all of them can be great for you.

Moreover, content marketing consultants are a flexible tribe. We know that every business is unique, and we’ve built this concept into our offering. If you think you’re ready for a content marketing strategy, you can drop me a line and tell me a bit about your business. I’ll offer you some great advice whether we end up working together or not so you’ve got nothing to lose.

Just drop us a line or book a free discovery call to chat about what you have in mind and how we can help you achieve it.