The business world is going digital at an increasingly fast pace. So it’s important to understand what a Digital Consultant is and why your company should have one.

First let’s define before we go forward:

A digital consultant doesn’t consult your business in the traditional sense. They help you with how and where your business should exist digitally. The digital space encompasses anything that is connected online such as websites, mobile phones, networks, and many other options that currently exist or will be invented soon.

With that, here are 7 reasons your business needs a Digital Consultant:

1. Digital Consultants Are Cutting Edge

Every day it seems like there is a new social network or technology being invented where businesses need to ask themselves if that pertains to them. The answer unfortunately is ALWAYS unique to every business. Facebook is absolutely not for everyone, and some businesses like Taco Bell should be on Snapchat where many shouldn’t even worry about it. The online landscape changes in the blink of an eye, and it can be difficult to keep up with. You should focus on your business. As digital consultants, we will focus on how digital changes affect your business and let you know how to act accordingly.

2. Digital Consultants Lead The Strategy So You Can Execute

You might have a team of 2, 5, or 20 to handle your digital marketing, but these employees are almost always hired to execute and not write the strategy. Strategy is understanding the best mix of technologies and platforms for your business, when to post for maximum effectiveness (changes for demographics and audience), and what your next move is. Your team is great at engagement and producing content, but it doesn’t mean they should lead the strategy decision.

3. Digital Consultants Are Affordable

Think about how much it would cost to hire an in-house SEO expert, a social media manager, a web designer, an advertising executive, a videographer, and multiple developers to handle your many different digital landscapes? You need to invest in human resources to recruit these people, interview them, and train them. You will need to pay salaries and benefits for all these people. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars here. Wouldn’t you rather work with a full-service digital consulting firm that can scale up or down with your needs; paying much less for the same caliber of work, without all the in-house expense? You will have significantly more talent on hand than you might be able to recruit yourself.

4. Digital Consultants Help You Keep Up With Competitors

Are your competitors on the new social network, have they created their own app, or is their site responsive for mobile and tablet users? It’s a digital consultant’s job to keep track of all this and notify you when you’re lagging behind and give you recommendations on what you should be doing to be a few steps ahead of your competitors. A good digital consultant will conduct competitive research to see where your top competitors are investing their time and money, and let you know if its worth it for you to keep pace. Companies can lose or gain big time when making the decision to jump into a new technologies or not engaging in a platform when competitors are.

5. Digital Consultants Ensure Your Website is Always Fresh

One of the chief duties of a Digital Marketing Consultant is to ensure that your website looks and functions its best; at ALL times. Your customers are on your site 24/7 and there’s constantly a new “normal” in terms of expectations for what your site should look and act like. You want a look that represents your brand, your current business, and one that tells your story to accomplish your objectives. You’ll want someone you can call if something goes wrong and the site needs immediate fixing, no matter the problem.

6. Digital Consultants Deliver Technology Proofing

Quite often businesses will ask consultants good questions like: Should they build their eCommerce site on Magento, WordPress, or Drupal? Should they build their website using WordPress or do they need something more robust or within a different language? It’s a digital consultant’s job to help you understand the best foundation for where you are now, and also what you want to be doing down the road. Building on the right foundation with clean code will enable you to easily add on the functionality you wanted to add initially but waited to do so for 18 months. Ensuring that you’re building on the right technology will save you thousands of dollars and many headaches when you suddenly realize that the site you built for marketing purposes isn’t capable of doing what you want it to, and now you need to build from scratch all over again.

7. A Digital Consultant Becomes A Valued Partner

As the world continues to change and move online, you’ll need a digital consulting services. Find a partner you can trust whose specialty is making your business succeed online. Ensure that you’re using the latest technologies to streamline your workflow, that you’re using the right outlets and platforms to engage your key influencers and customers. And to always be there when you have a question about what your business should do or where you should be online. A good consultant should become your trusted partner.