How Much Are Marketing Consultants Worth?

For most clients seeking the services of a marketing consultant, their main concern when shopping for one is the cost of hiring one.

Marketing professionals are notorious for the stupendously high professional fees or salary packages they charge. Understandably, clients who approach marketing professionals do so with caution. Like driving a car on a slippery road.

Marketing consultancy is an underground economy in the Philippines. There is no set industry average for professional fees charged by marketing consultants. This is mainly because the professional fee depends on the scope of work that the client expects the marketing consultant to do.

If a client only requires the marketing consultant to give marketing advice on a regular basis, the price will not cost you your spleen. By marketing advice, I mean the consultant sits in the CEO's office once a week and listens to him wail about his business and executives for an hour. No daunting physical output like a strategic plan is required from him. So, you pretty much charge the way Monk is charged by his shrink.

On the other hand, if the marketing consultant is expected to fulfill the function of CMO/marketing head, the fee skyrockets. It is not a joke being CMO even if you're just a temporary one. You became a consultant to escape the tyranny of being CMO and, here you are many moons later, doing the work you wanted to avoid. Many a gray strand on my fair head are caused by being interim CMO. For the amount of I spend on hair stylists, of course, I will charge the earth, hello.

It also depends on the credentials of the marketing consultant. If you're hiring a retired SVP of marketing, he will charge you for his lost golf time. If you're hiring a young gun, you're only paying for lost iMax time.

Note, however, that not all marketing consultants are created equal.

Just because he was once SVP does not automatically mean he's Philip Kotler. By the same token, a young marketing consultant is not always witless and sorely lacking in experience.

Your SVP could have lasted until retirement age because firing him is an expensive option. In reality, he has the brains of a peanut and it remains a mystery as to why the man was ever in a marketing position. However, your young marketing consultant, could be a marketing genius and has better things to do with his life than sit around and wait for a vice presidency to fall on his lap. Life, after all, is short, people. Why waste it waiting for the sky to fall? Look at Chicken Little. Such a sad chicken, really.

Of course, there are retired SVPs whose marketing brains and credentials you just must have. At the same time, there are young marketing consultants you just want to burn at the stake.

So. Like I said, professional fees of marketing consultants are not and cannot be regulated because it all depends on the client's needs and the project details. Unlike other service-oriented professions, we cannot come up with a menu with corresponding fees for marketing services being acquired.

Because what will you put there? Brand management: P40,000 a month. Hello, there are many aspects to brand management and, depending on what you want me to do, I cannot just charge a flat rate. If you simply want me to review the proposed brand names your marketing department came up with, a buffet lunch is already good enough for me. But, if you want me to develop your marketing campaign, an expensive lunch and dinner is not going to do it. Some things in life must be paid for by cold hard cash.

You get? Okay.

Let's assume you're hiring a marketing consultant to develop a marketing campaign and, in the process, act as your interim CMO. Please do not expect the fee to be affordable. You're not buying laundry detergent, you're buying that person's brains and time. Assuming, of course, he has marketing brains worth paying for.

Do you have any idea at all of the number of veins that have exploded in my brains as a result of conceptualizing a marketing campaign? Or the amount of backbreaking hours I spend sitting in front of my computer doing so? Not to mention the agony I go through making sure the marketing plan is implemented properly by your people who, in another life, should really be citizens of Pandora. Some of us could be getting laid except we're not because we're overseeing your marketing campaign as you are getting laid.

Therefore, it is not a funny life. Of course, I will charge and charge I will.

Some clients opt to hire an ad agency or PR firm instead of a marketing consultant. Oh, you poor misguided children. This is the same as saying the drummer can take over the task of an orchestra conductor.

Your ad agency will simply tell you to develop marketing collaterals that will wipe out entire forests and produce TVCs that will create a crater in your P&L statement. Let's see you explain that red line to your shareholders. But, look! We produced nice commercials and even won an award!

On the other hand, your publicist will be churning out press releases and articles until readers beg for mercy. And let's not even get into social media.

Advertising, public relations and social media are tactics and functions of marketing. For it to work effectively, you need a coherent, cohesive and strategic marketing plan. There is just no going around it.

Your talented creative director and hardworking account director can never replace a marketing strategist even if they drank Promil as kids and are, therefore, gifted children. There is a reason why they are creative and account directors just as there is a reason why your marketing strategist is a marketing strategist. It is a bad idea for the twain to mix. This is not coffee; we do not do a 3-in-1 here.

And that, my dear, is why you must hire a CMO/marketing head or marketing consultant. So your orchestra does not sound like a death knell and you actually achieve your business objectives which is the primary task of marketing.

To the question then, are marketing consultants expensive?

It depends on how you value and appreciate the worth marketing brings to your corporation or business. If you only equate marketing with sales, advertising or PR - then, yes, they are expensive. If you see how crucial your marketing is to achieving your business goals, they are worth the expense.

So am I expensive? Only if you do not understand the value of marketing.

Photo credit: tourism.gov.ph

Labels: client relationship, consultants, marketing campaign, marketing consultant

Marketing Confessions of Sunny whispered 8:57 AM
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