It’s not the best business that wins. It’s the business with best marketing. This means that marketing -- and digital marketing specifically during a pandemic -- is the single most important way to survive and thrive right now.  After all, it’s marketing’s job to communicate value, generate leads, bring in and win new clients.  Without clients, you don’t have a business, you just have a really expensive hobby. To be truly successful at B2B marketing, you may want to enlist the help of a dedicated digital marketing consultant. But finding and hiring someone for your business can be a challenge.  https://youtu.be/yrnnDKt57VU To help startups, change-ups, and scale-ups find and hire the right consultant or agency, I spoke with Adam Erhart, a digital marketing consultant, agency owner, course creator, and educator.  Adam has also amassed over 45,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, The Marketing Show, where he shares marketing strategies and best practices so in the world of B2B, he's a YouTube marketing powerhouse. I asked him, “how does a company hire a digital marketing consultant?” And here’s what he said. Download this chart here Learn the marketing basics before hiring  Before you even begin your search for a digital marketing consultant, you have to have the basics down yourself.  Here’s the deal: if you need an expert strategist, you’re going to be paying top dollar.  And you get what you pay for.  So until you can afford a digital marketing consultant with the expertise you need, the onus is on you to know how to write a basic headline, know a bit about email marketing, to understand sales copy, and know when to deploy owned, earned, shared and paid media channels..  You have to buy the books, hire the coaches, and do the courses….to be the strategist yourself. Don’t use a digital marketing consultant as a crutch because you don’t want to learn something. Think of it like this: Startup, no budget >> You become that person. You don’t have money, so you have to spend time becoming your own digital marketing consultant.Change-up, small budget >> In search of a product-market fit, you are in pivot mode trying to light a fire that can catch wind and take off..Scale-up, medium budget >> You follow the steps laid out here to find the right person with the digital marketing consulting services you need, so you can spend money, not time, trying to figure it out.Grown-up, big budget >> You have a team on in-house marketers and outside agencies maintaining and growing market share. Download this chart here Follow that logic and, when it is time for you to hire an individual or agency, you will also be equipped with enough know-how to effectively manage the relationship. How to become your own digital marketing expert The world of digital marketing is broad. You have content marketing, paid ads, SEO, PPC...it can all be overwhelming.  Adam assures us that anyone can do marketing, but they DO need to dedicate the time, energy, and money toward studying it. Even after 10 years of being a professional digital marketing consultant, he spends a minimum of one hour each day dedicated to learning.  Top Tips for Keeping Your arketing Skills Current: Learn how to establish a target marketKnow what market research looks like -- and how...