Marketing Strategy Consultants: What Actually Works

You've paid $25k-$50k for a marketing strategy consultant. They delivered a beautiful 60-page PowerPoint deck. Six months later, your revenue is unchanged. Sound familiar?

95% of marketing strategy consultants are glorified report writers. They analyze, they strategize, they present—and then they disappear. You're left holding a plan you don't know how to execute.

Here's the truth: Strategy without execution is worthless. And most consultants stop at strategy because execution is hard, messy, and accountable.

Let's break down what separates consultants who drive revenue from consultants who deliver expensive paperwork.

The Consultant Trap: Why Most Fail

They Sell Strategy, Not Results

Traditional consultants bill for hours spent analyzing and presenting. Once the deck is delivered, their job is done. Whether you implement it, whether it works—not their problem.

If a consultant isn't measured on your revenue growth, they're incentivized to sell you more analysis, not more results.

They Don't Execute

You hire a consultant, they build you a "comprehensive marketing strategy," and then hand you a 60-page plan that says:

• "Launch paid acquisition campaigns on Facebook and Google"
• "Build content marketing funnel targeting high-intent keywords"
• "Implement marketing automation and lead nurturing sequences"
• "Optimize conversion rates across landing pages"

Great. Now what? You still need someone to actually do all of that.

Most businesses don't have the internal team to execute. So the strategy sits on a shelf, and six months later you're back at square one.

They Use Generic Frameworks

Here's how most consultants work:

• They run the same "diagnostic" they run for every client
• They plug your data into their templated frameworks
• They give you the same recommendations they gave the last 10 clients
• They brand it as "customized strategy" and charge $30k-$50k

If your consultant's strategy looks like every other B2B SaaS strategy on the internet, you overpaid.

They Have No Skin In The Game

Most consultants charge flat fees or hourly rates. Whether their strategy works or not, they get paid the same.

No risk. No accountability. No reason to care if you actually grow.

What Actually Works: The 5 Criteria

If you're hiring a marketing strategy consultant, here's what to demand:

1. They Must Execute, Not Just Strategize

A real consultant doesn't hand you a plan and walk away. They build it, launch it, and optimize it with you.

Ask: "After you deliver the strategy, who's implementing it?"

If the answer is "you'll need to hire an agency or internal team for that," run. You're about to pay for a plan that won't get executed.

Good consultants guide execution. They don't do all the grunt work, but they're in the weeds with you—setting up campaigns, reviewing creatives, optimizing funnels, managing agencies.

2. They Must Be Measured On Revenue, Not Deliverables

If your consultant's success metric is "delivered comprehensive marketing strategy," you're getting screwed.

The only metric that matters is revenue growth. Everything else is vanity.

Ask: "What revenue growth can you commit to, and what happens if we don't hit it?"

Good consultants tie their compensation to results. Whether that's performance bonuses, revenue share, or guarantees—they have skin in the game.

3. They Must Have Vertical-Specific Expertise

Marketing a $10k/month B2B consulting service is completely different from marketing a $47/month SaaS product. If your consultant treats them the same, they don't know what they're doing.

Ask: "How many businesses in my vertical have you scaled, and what were the results?"

You don't want someone who's "done marketing for 15 years." You want someone who's scaled 10+ businesses exactly like yours.

4. They Must Build Systems, Not Run Campaigns

Bad consultants launch campaigns. Good consultants build revenue systems that compound over time.

The difference:

• Campaign thinking: "Let's run Facebook ads to a webinar."
• Systems thinking: "Let's build an evergreen acquisition engine that captures cold traffic, nurtures them through automated sequences, converts them on VSL funnels, and upsells them into backend offers—predictably and profitably."

Systems scale. Campaigns don't.

5. They Must Bring Outside Perspective

You're hiring a consultant because you're too close to your own business. If they just ask you what you want to do and write it down in a fancy deck, they're useless.

Good consultants challenge your assumptions, tell you what you're doing wrong, and bring strategies from outside your industry.

Red Flags: When To Walk Away

Here are the warning signs that a consultant will waste your money:

🚩 They Can't Show You Case Studies In Your Vertical

If they say "we've worked with hundreds of businesses across all industries," that means they're generalists who don't deeply understand your market.

You want someone who's scaled 5-10 businesses exactly like yours, not someone who's "done marketing" for 500 random clients.

🚩 They Charge Flat Fees With No Performance Incentive

If they're charging $30k-$50k for a strategy with no accountability to results, they're not confident in their work.

Real consultants tie their fees to performance. If they won't, it's because they know their strategies don't work.

🚩 They Lead With "Discovery" And "Analysis"

Consultants love to sell "discovery phases" because it's billable time with zero accountability.

Translation: "We're going to spend 4-6 weeks interviewing your team, analyzing your data, and researching your market—and then we'll tell you what you probably already know."

Good consultants diagnose fast and move to execution. Weeks of "discovery" is a stalling tactic.

🚩 They Talk About "Brand" And "Positioning" But Not Revenue

If a consultant spends the first 30 minutes of your call talking about brand strategy, thought leadership, and market positioning—but hasn't mentioned revenue growth once—run.

Strategy consultants love abstract concepts because they're impossible to measure. Revenue growth is concrete. Demand concrete.

🚩 They Don't Ask Tough Questions About Your Offer

A real consultant will ask:

• "What's your LTV and CAC?"
• "What's your current close rate and sales cycle?"
• "How much can you spend to acquire a customer?"
• "What have you tried that failed, and why did it fail?"

If they just nod along and say "yeah we can help with that," they're order-takers, not strategists.

What Good Consultants Actually Deliver

Here's what you should expect from a marketing strategy consultant who actually drives results:

1. Rapid Diagnostic (1-2 Weeks)

They audit your current marketing, identify what's working and what's broken, and present a clear diagnosis with prioritized fixes.

Not a 60-page deck. A short, actionable document that says "here's what's wrong, here's what to fix first, here's the expected impact."

2. Revenue-Focused Strategy (Week 3-4)

They build a 90-day roadmap with specific tactics, expected costs, and projected revenue impact.

Good strategy is specific: "Launch Facebook VSL funnel targeting [audience] with [$X] budget, expecting [Y] cost per acquisition and [Z] monthly revenue by day 60."

3. Execution Guidance (Ongoing)

They don't disappear after delivering the plan. They're in weekly calls, reviewing performance, optimizing campaigns, troubleshooting what's not working.

They're in the weeds with you, not observing from 30,000 feet.

4. Systems That Outlast Them

When they leave, you should have documented systems, trained team members, and infrastructure that keeps running without them.

If you can't operate without them, they built dependency, not leverage.

How To Evaluate Consultants: The Interview Questions

When vetting marketing strategy consultants, ask these questions:

If they can't answer these confidently and specifically, keep looking.

Pricing: What To Expect

Marketing strategy consultants typically charge in one of three ways:

Option 1: Project-Based ($25k-$75k)

Flat fee for strategy development. High upfront cost, zero accountability to results. This is how most consultants operate—and why most strategies fail.

Our take: Avoid unless they offer performance guarantees.

Option 2: Monthly Retainer ($8k-$25k/month)

Ongoing engagement where the consultant provides strategy + execution oversight. Better than project-based because they stick around to see results.

Our take: Good option if they tie fees to performance milestones.

Option 3: Performance-Based (Base + % Revenue Growth)

Lower monthly retainer ($5k-$15k) plus percentage of revenue growth they generate. Consultant has real skin in the game.

Our take: This is what we do. If a consultant won't do this, they don't believe in their work.

The Bottom Line

Stop paying for PowerPoints. Demand execution and accountability.

The difference between good and bad marketing consultants is simple:

• Bad consultants deliver strategies and disappear
• Good consultants build revenue systems and stick around until they work

If your consultant isn't willing to guarantee revenue growth, they're selling hope, not results.

We guarantee 30% revenue growth minimum. If we don't hit it, we work for free until we do. That's what accountability looks like.