A strategist who does the math on your marketing.
Cross-channel consulting for operators trying to figure out where the next dollar goes. SEO, PPC, content, conversion, attribution — sit down with a senior who's actually shipped the work.
Grab a time, 1:1 with Clint.
$200/hour of real strategist time. Pick a slot, tell us what you're working on, and we'll dig into your marketing live on the call — no sales rep, no slides.
What's included in marketing consulting
Six deliverables. No mystery, no theater.
Every engagement ships these. Some scope to your situation, but the discipline doesn't change.
Channel & budget allocation
Where should the marketing budget go this quarter. Why.
Attribution review
How are you measuring? What's broken about it? What should you measure instead?
Written strategy doc
Signed strategy with named bets and kill criteria.
Quarterly strategy check-ins
Stay aligned without retainer overhead.
In-house team coaching
Your team gets directly mentored.
Direct consultant access
No layer between you and the strategist.
How we deliver marketing consulting
Same four steps. Strategist on every one.
Audit
Real audit by a strategist. Revenue leak map, not a template scan.
Strategy
Signed strategy doc. Named bets with explicit kill criteria.
Execute
Weekly shipping cadence. Real artifacts, not a roadmap Gantt.
Iterate
Monthly business review. Revenue, pipeline, what changes next month.
Marketing consulting vs. a fractional CMO
Most agencies don't run this service this way. We do.
Want a strategist running Marketing Consultant for you?
Marketing consulting reviews
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One funnel. Four services.
Runs as one strategic system. Every service feeds the others.
Compare your marketing consulting options
Honest trade-offs. No sales spin.
Weighing your options before you commit? These decision guides lay out the real trade-offs.
Marketing consultant
Marketing Consultant
Marketing consulting is strategy + sequencing — not ‘one more set of recommendations on top of your existing stack’
Most marketing consultants get hired to validate a decision the executive team has already made, or to add a fourth opinion to a problem that already has three vendors weighing in. That’s not consulting — that’s expensive consensus. Real marketing consulting is the work of sequencing: deciding which growth channels to invest in this quarter, which to harvest, which to retire, which to test, and which to leave alone — and being accountable for the sequencing decisions over a 12-24 month window.
Three things that separate real marketing consulting from category theater
- Marketing consultants own sequencing; they don’t own execution — The hire is for the question ‘what do we do next, and in what order’ — not for the question ‘who does the work.’ Marketing consultants who get drawn into execution (running campaigns, managing vendors, hands-on copywriting) stop being able to see the strategic picture clearly. Clear separation between consultant and executor matters.
- Marketing consulting is most valuable at inflection points — New funding round, major product launch, leadership change, acquisition integration, geographic expansion, post-incident recovery — these are the moments where strategic sequencing compounds most. Steady-state businesses with stable marketing programs benefit less from consulting than from operational excellence inside the existing program.
- The hardest consulting work is telling you to do less — Most growing businesses have too many marketing channels going at once, too many vendors, too many testing initiatives — diluting team focus and budget across efforts that individually can’t reach significance. Marketing consultants who consistently recommend deprioritization (alongside investment) deliver more value than consultants who always recommend ‘one more channel to test.’
Questions to ask before hiring a marketing consultant
Marketing consultant vs. fractional CMO — which do I need?
Marketing consultant works outside-in (engaged for strategic clarity, no direct team accountability). Fractional CMO works inside-out (sits on leadership team, owns marketing P&L, manages team + vendors). Consultants are typically 8-25 hours/month; fractional CMOs are 30-100 hours/month. Pick consultant for strategic compression; fractional CMO for ongoing leadership compression.
When does it make sense to hire a marketing consultant?
Inflection points (funding, launches, leadership changes, integrations, expansions, recoveries), persistent underperformance against KPIs that internal teams can’t diagnose, or pre-decision diligence for major commitments (new agency selection, new platform investment, geographic expansion). Steady-state operations rarely need consultants.
How is marketing consulting different from agency strategy work?
Agencies have inherent conflicts of interest — they recommend the work they execute. Marketing consultants who don’t execute (no campaign-management, no media-buying, no content-production revenue) can recommend deprioritization, vendor changes, channel shifts that agencies structurally won’t. The independence is the product.
How long should a marketing consulting engagement run?
Strategic-clarity engagements: 3-6 months. Ongoing strategic involvement: 12-24 months on a reduced cadence (monthly calls + quarterly reviews). Beyond 24 months evaluate whether strategic energy has been transferred to the internal team — if yes, wind down; if no, restructure to figure out why.
How much should a marketing consultant cost?
Senior independent marketing consultants run $5-20K/month retainer or $300-800/hour for project engagements. Fractional CMOs (deeper involvement) run $12-30K/month. Below $5K/month either it’s not senior or it’s not real consulting. Above $20K/month for advisory-only work, evaluate fractional CMO instead — the bandwidth-per-dollar improves.
What marketing consulting actually looks like inside our engagements
- Strategic diagnostic across all marketing channels: paid, organic, content, email, partnerships, PR, influencer, events
- Channel-prioritization framework: which channels compound, which are tactical, which to deprioritize, which to test
- Vendor + agency portfolio review: which relationships compound, which extract value without delivering, which to restructure
- Brand positioning + messaging strategy: not creative execution, but the strategic foundation creative teams execute against
- Marketing operations review: attribution, reporting cadence, decision rights, accountability structure
- Quarterly strategic reviews with leadership team: what changed, what’s working, what to retire, what to invest in next
- Knowledge transfer to internal team: frameworks, decision rationale, ongoing playbooks — building internal strategic capacity
This isn’t for everyone. If you want a consultant to validate a decision your team has already made, save the money. If you want a consultant to take execution off your team’s plate, hire an agency or fractional staff instead. Marketing consulting is for strategic-clarity work — if that’s not what you need, the engagement won’t pay back.
Strategy call: 45 minutes, no slide deck, no pitch — just an honest read on whether marketing consulting compounds for your current situation, or whether you need a different shape of help. Book the call →
Done with agency theater?
Book a 30-minute strategy call with an experienced strategist — not a sales rep. Honest assessment, no obligation, no slide deck. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you who is.
- Experienced strategist on the first call — every time
- No contracts. No "let it work." No theater.
- Real audit + opinion within 5 business days
- If the fit is wrong, we'll say so plainly
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