Marketing Consultant vs. Marketing Agency: Which Is Right for Your Business?

You’ve decided your business needs marketing help (that much has perhaps been painfully obvious to you lately 🫠) But which kind of marketing help is feeling… less certain.

Do you need someone to tell you what you should be doing, someone to actually do it, or a little bit of both? Before you can decide, we need to define them clearly so you know what to expect with each.

What’s the difference between a marketing consultant and a marketing agency?

The easiest way to understand the difference between what a marketing consultant does and what a marketing agency can do is like this:

➞ A marketing consultant provides strategy, expertise, and direction while you or your team handle the execution.

➞ A marketing agency brings a team of specialists who can develop the strategy and do the work.

Either one could be the right choice depending on what’s actually going on inside your business.

What Is a Marketing Consultant?

A marketing consultant typically has a wide variety of experience across multiple areas of the field and/or different industries. Their job is to put that experience to work for your business to look at what you’re currently doing, identify any potential opportunities or problems, and recommend what to do next.

They may help with:

➞ Marketing strategy

➞ Audience research

➞ Brand positioning and messaging

➞ Campaign planning

➞ Channel strategy

➞ Marketing audits

➞ Measurement and analytics

➞ Advising or managing an internal marketing team

What does a marketing consultant actually do?

When you hear the word “consultant”, think of two words: expertise and direction.

Think about a large company like Coca Cola, for example. There are many layers of marketing executives who make up the top level of the team, bringing their knowledge to direct the other members of the marketing department .

In your small business, it may just be you or a small team of collaborators doing marketing. Hiring a marketing consultant is like borrowing a marketing executive’s brain to better understand what is actually working in your marketing and what you can do next to capitalize on that in other areas.

Do you have a marketing coordinator who can write emails, schedule social media content, and update your website, but you’re not confident all that activity is actually moving the business toward the right goal? A consultant may be the perfect missing piece to help you understand the bigger picture and give that person (or yourself!) a clear, strategic roadmap to follow.

Because let’s not forget: “post more on Instagram” is not, in fact, a marketing strategy 😉

What Is a Marketing Agency?

A marketing agency comes complete with a team of specialists in their field who can both help determine what needs to happen and then do it.

When you hire a marketing agency, you get expertise and capacity.

While every agency’s service offerings can vary, the list for many includes a strong mix of the following:

➞ Marketing strategy

➞ Branding

➞ Content creation

➞ Email marketing

➞ Social media

➞ Website strategy/development

➞ SEO/AEO

➞ Paid advertising

➞ Public relations

➞ Analytics and reporting

What does a marketing agency actually do?

Where a marketing consultant hands you the roadmap, an agency will build the roadmap, drive the car, and keep an eye on the GPS to make sure things don’t go off course.

Maybe a marketing consultant has already helped you identify email as an opportunity to generate more business. Great! But then you realize neither you—nor anyone on your team—has the time to execute the strategy, write the emails, build the automations, segment the list, monitor performance, or figure out why no one clicked the giant button you were sure they would click.

You can see how having a team of specialists to collaborate with in this situation would be pretty valuable, right?

What Is the Difference Between a Marketing Consultant and a Marketing Agency?

The biggest difference between a marketing consultant and a marketing agency typically comes down to one thing: execution.

A marketing consultant provides expertise, recommendations, and strategic direction. A marketing agency combines strategy with the people and resources needed to actually execute it.

That’s not to say there isn’t overlap between the two. Some agencies (🙋‍♀️) are highly strategy focused, and some consultants still like to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty.

Bottom line: don’t focus too much on the label. Look at what you’re getting when you work with someone.

Individual expertise vs. a team of specialists

While hiring a marketing consultant gives you direct access to one person’s experience and perspective, hiring a marketing agency gives you access to multiple areas of expertise without having to hire an entire marketing department.

Hiring a marketing consultant gives you access to that executive level thinking and direction. Hiring a marketing agency could give you access to a strategist, copywriter, designer, PR pro, digital specialist, and more.

Cost and scope of engaging a consultant vs. an agency

A marketing consultant’s overall engagement generally costs less compared to engaging a marketing agency, but it’s not as simple as “consultants are cheaper.”

Working with a consultant is typically a shorter, defined engagement where you’re primarily paying for their expertise.

Engaging an agency is often a larger expense because you’re paying for access to multiple people, their expertise, and actually getting the work done.

A better comparison is cost vs. capability.

A marketing agency’s proposal will likely come in higher than a marketing consultant’s proposal that only includes strategy. When you factor in who else you might need to hire and manage to outsource the execution of that strategy, a marketing agency’s cost may actually come in lower overall.

You can have the best strategy ever from a great marketing consultant, but if you never use what they provided because of a capacity issue, then it is still a wasted investment no matter the price tag.

When Should You Hire a Marketing Consultant?

As with most things, the answer is: it depends. But a consultant may be the better fit if:

➞ You already have a capable internal marketing team

➞ Your team needs strategic direction

➞ You need an outside perspective on a specific challenge

➞ You’re entering a new market or launching something new

➞ You need help developing a plan your team can execute

➞ You need specialized expertise for a defined period

If capacity for you or your team is typically not an issue but clarity and expertise is, a marketing consultant may be the best move for your business.

When Should You Hire a Marketing Agency?

If, instead, you or your team is sitting around thinking, “Okay…but who’s actually going to DO all of this?” you probably need more than strategic direction. When the skills or bandwidth to execute aren’t there, a marketing agency may be the next right move for your business.

If you have a beautiful 47-page marketing strategy collecting dust in a long forgotten Google Drive folder, odds are you don’t need another strategy document.

You need people who can help you do the work.

Can You Use a Marketing Consultant and an Agency Together?

The short answer: Yes!

A marketing consultant can absolutely help set the overarching strategy while an agency handles specialized execution.

Similarly, an agency can (and often does) work alongside an internal marketing team or you as the business owner.

It’s less about making sure everyone fits neatly into a box and more about everyone being clear on what they own.

When everyone is lacking in clarity around ownership, you end up paying three different people to sit in meetings and talk about the work that nobody has actually been assigned to do. No thank you!

Frequently Asked Questions

Most of the time when people are asking about a marketing consultant vs. marketing agency, they’re putting it in terms of which one is “better.”

But a more helpful question is what does your business need that it doesn’t currently have?

That might be anything resembling strategy or it might be an expert in one given area of marketing like social media, email marketing or advertising strategy. Or maybe your strategy is perfectly fine, you just need more hands on deck to actually get it done.

And sometimes, you need the whole Krewe.

Not sure what kind of marketing help you actually need? Let’s talk.