The salary for marketing consultant is between $60,000 to $200,000 per year but varies depending on your specialty, niche, experience, etc. This article will share with you data and expert insights on how much marketing consultants make.
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What marketing consultants do
A marketing consultant works for advertising agencies or as a freelance marketer. Depending on their niche and specialty, they can work with companies to build their brand, increase market share, develop go-to-market strategies, or attract customers using SEO or social media.
For example, one marketing consultant could specialize in using social media marketing to attract prospective buyers to e-commerce websites. On the other hand, a different marketing consultant may conduct market research to help product development teams design or improve products.
There are many types of marketing consultants, which makes it an attractive career for professionals that enjoy being creative and technical at the same time.
Marketing consultant annual salary
The salary for marketing consultant can vary and depends on your marketing expertise. However, according to Payscale the average salary for a marketing consultant is $63,110.
What you need to remember is this number is an average salary. It will include entry-level and senior marketing consultants and people that work for agencies.
The Payscale averages salary for a marketing consultant also doesn’t show specializations or marketing niches. Always remember these are salary estimates. They aren’t perfect, but they can show you how much you can potentially make.
For example, if you look at Ziprecruiter, the average salary range for a Digital Marketing Consultant is $90,143 a year and tops out at $202,500.
Many of the reported salaries that Payscale and Ziprecruiter use to develop their averages are marketing consultants that work for a company.
If you’re a highly specialized freelance marketing consultant, your salary has no limits. So if you’re considering working for yourself, the salary for marketing consultant is as much money as you can make.
Your salary will depend on your marketing consulting niche, specialty, pricing, ability to get clients, etc. Let me show you what I mean.
Marketing consultant cost
A marketing consultant costs between $100-$500 per hour, depending on experience level. The average hourly rate for a full-time marketing consultant is around $200. Therefore, if a company wants to hire a good marketing consultant, they need to be prepared to spend at least $10,000.
Think about it this way: if you can charge $100 per hour, bill twenty hours per week to clients, and take two weeks of vacation, that’s $100,000 per year. If you’re at $500 per hour, that’s $500,000 per year.
Marketing consultant pricing
But here’s the thing, marketing consultant pricing is also a factor in determining your salary. There are many different ways to price marketing consulting services.
There are three main types of marketing consultant pricing strategies.
Hourly rate pricing
This means that you charge by the hour. You determine how many hours you work on a project and bill the client based on your hourly rate. For example, if you charge $100 per hour and take 20 hours to complete the project, you invoice the client $2000.
According to Upwork, 32% of all freelancers charge hourly.
Fixed-rate pricing
This means that you set a fixed amount of money for a marketing consulting project.
For the fixed project free, you analyze the project scope and determine a flat fee to complete the project.
For example, the average project price on the Catalant platform in Q1 2021 was $49,500. More than likely, the average project takes 2-3 months to complete.
Value-based pricing
This means that you charge a certain percentage of the value of the project.
For example, if you’re creating an email marketing campaign for a client, you’ll charge them 5% of the total sales increase from the campaign. This type of pricing is often used when you can quantify the value of the results you are delivering.
Expert insight: I recently used value-based pricing for a 3-month consulting project that was intense and brought a tremendous amount of value to the client. I determined the price by analyzing what the project would do for them IF I only increased their sales by 3%. The original price for my marketing consulting services was $210,000. We negotiated a little but let’s say, we were both pleased by the end of the project.
Other types of consultant pricing
There are a few other types of time-based pricing strategies that consultants use.
Daily rate: You charge a flat fee based on the number of days you work on the marketing consulting project.
Weekly rate: You charge a flat fee based on the number of weeks you work on the project.
Monthly rate: You charge a flat fee based on the number of months you work on a project.
Retainer: You agree always to be available to provide marketing consulting services for a set number of hours each week or month. The client pays you to remain ready and available even if they don’t have work.
The job outlook for marketing consultants
There’s no perfect way to determine the outlook for marketing consultants. However, when analyzing several factors, you can see the outlook is good.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data shows the job growth for Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Managers from 2020 to 2030 is 10%. That’s rated as “Fast as Average.”
And the BTG Skills Index saw a 450% YoY increase in requests for Consultants with skills in B2B Marketing in 2021.
Now that’s some remarkable growth.
And in BTG’s 2022 High-End Independent Talent Report, out of the Top 8 “Most In-Demand Projects,” Marketing & Sales was #2, Product Strategy & Launch was #3, Opportunity Assessment was #6, and Growth Strategy #9.
Plus, in that same report, for the Top 10 “Most In-Demand Skills,” Market Landscape & Research was #2, Growth Strategy was #4, and Market Access & Value was #10.
Bingo! If you combine those, you can see that being a marketing consultant has a tremendous growth opportunity.
Further insights
Remember, the salary for marketing consultant depends on many different factors. When you work for yourself, the sky is the limit.
If you’re interested in becoming a marketing consultant, plenty of resources are available. As a marketing consultant, you can remain a generalist (not recommended) or specialize based on your marketing expertise (recommended).
You can even develop a marketing niche in a specific industry, region, B2C, B2B, etc. Check out our article on “How to become a marketing consultant” for more information.
