It’s not the best business that wins.  It’s the one with the best marketing.

Which means that marketing -- digital marketing specifically during this lousy pandemic -- has become the single most important way to survive and thrive. 

After all, it’s marketing’s job to communicate value, generate leads, bring in, and win new clients. 

Without clients, you don’t have a business, you just have a really expensive hobby.

To be truly successful at B2B marketing, you may want to enlist the help of a dedicated digital marketing specialist.

But finding and hiring someone for your business can be a challenge.

https://youtu.be/yrnnDKt57VU

To help startups, change-ups, and scale-ups find and hire the right freelancer or agency, I spoke with Adam Erhart, a YouTube marketing specialist, course creator, and educator. 

Adam has also amassed over 45,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, The Marketing Show, where he shares marketing strategies and best practices.

I asked him, “how does a company hire a digital marketing consultant?” And here’s what he said.

Download this chart here

Learn the marketing basics before hiring 

Before you even begin your search for help with digital marketing, you need to get the basics down yourself. 

Here’s the deal: if you need an expert content agency, you will pay top dollar. 

And you get what you pay for. 

So until you can afford the big digital marketing guns, the onus is on you to know how to write a basic headline, know a bit about email marketing, understand sales copy, and know when to deploy owned, earned, shared, and paid media channels. 

You must buy the books, hire the coaches, and do the courses….to be the strategist yourself.

Don’t rely on a digital marketer as a crutch because you don’t want to learn something. Think of it like this:

Startup, no budget >> You become that person. You don’t have money, so you have to spend time becoming your own digital marketing specialist.

Change-up, small budget >> In search of a product-market fit, you are in pivot mode trying to light a fire that can catch wind and take off.

Scale-up, medium budget >> You follow the steps laid out here to find the right person with the digital marketing specialty skills you need, so you can spend money, not time, trying to figure it out.

Grown-up, big budget >> You have a team on in-house marketers and outside agencies maintaining and growing market share.

Download this chart here

Follow that logic and, when it is time for you to hire an individual or agency, you will also be equipped with enough know-how to effectively manage the relationship.

How to become your own digital marketing expert

The world of digital marketing is broad. You have content marketing experts, paid advertising pros, SEO consultants, PPC...it can all be overwhelming. 

Adam assures us that anyone can do marketing, but they DO need to dedicate the time, energy, and money toward studying it.

Even after 10 years of being a professional digital marketing consultant, he spends a minimum of one hour each day dedicated to learning. 

Top tips for keeping your marketing skills current:

Learn how to establish a target market