Being a marketing consultant is not easy.
There are endless layers—from strategic to tactical, creative to technical, and everything in between.
But the hardest part is not any one of those things. The hard part is the unpredictable nature of it all.
As marketers, we work hard to specialize, create frameworks, apply methodologies, and continually develop our skills.
But even if you find people with the same problem—which happens a lot when you specialize—the solution is never the same.
Reality is just too complex to have one answer for all problems, even if they’re highly similar.
Which means, as consultants, we need to apply everything we know to each problem—in a unique way—in order to get a solution that works for each individual situation.
The best you can do is work hard, run the system, and be ready to iterate.
Either your clients are bought into that idea from the beginning or they are not.
And if they aren’t bought into any of those three things, there’s a very good chance you won’t see results quickly enough to satisfy them.
So this is it: work hard, run the system, and iterate until you succeed.
It takes time and there are no shortcuts. That’s the law of marketing reality.