Being a successful advertising consultant usually requires a person with marketing or branding expertise, a creative mindset and excellent interpersonal skills. Essentially, these individuals help businesses develop an effective advertising strategy to promote goods or services. An advertising consultant can be employed by a consulting firm or may be self-employed as a freelancer. While the types of businesses that an individual works for can vary, his basic job duties are usually the same. These include meeting with clients, performing market research, choosing appropriate advertising media, creating sample advertisements and giving presentations to clients.
Meeting with a client is typically the first step an advertising consultant must take for each project. During this initial consultation, he will discuss information like the client's products or services, his advertising goals and his budget. It's important for the consultant to get a clear understanding of these details so that he can provide his client with the optimal marketing strategy. This can involve meeting with a single individual for small companies or a team of individuals for larger ones.
Once he has met with his client, the consultant will usually perform some background market research on the client's niche and target audience. For example, if a client has a jewelry-making business, an advertising consultant may research some different methods of promoting jewelry and how to effectively reach potential consumers. Both of these factors will ultimately determine the marketing strategy that the consultant employs.
Perhaps the most important part of this job is choosing appropriate advertising media for a client. The specific amount and types of media will differ between clients, but might include things like social media, online ads, promotional sales, television commercials and magazine ads. Choosing effective media for advertising often involves considerable brainstorming and experimenting with different possibilities before deciding upon an advertising campaign.
After he has devised some realistic marketing ideas, an advertising consultant will often create some sample advertisements for his client. For example, he might create a rough draft for a magazine ad that features a client's products. In other instances, he may create a website landing page that showcases those products.
Once he has come up with some draft ads and ideas, an advertising consultant will give a presentation to his client. This presentation will usually involve explaining his market research findings and his proposed advertising strategy. Along with this, he is likely to show the client his sample advertisements to get a better idea of what he has in mind.