An external perspective can identify a business’s process gaps, new opportunities, and other quality improvements.

No matter how strong an organization might be, there is always a path to continuous improvement.

This article covers all you need to know about what a consultant does, the different types, and how to become one.

What is a Consultant?

A consultant is an individual who provides expertise in a specific field, such as education, business, or marketing.

Consultants provide professional advice to businesses, organizations, and individuals.

They usually work on a contract or temporary basis.

Why Does a Company Use a Consultant?

There are several reasons why a company will initiate a relationship with the consultant:

• The business needs an external opinion on its current processes, systems, and policies.
• The business needs someone who can identify blind spots in the business from a differing perspective.
• The business needs expert coaching on integrating a new solution or solving a recurring problem.
• The business needs to fulfill the current staff gap in an efficient, scalable manner.
• The business needs talent from an expert, which could otherwise be difficult to find in a standard employee role.

Where Do Consultants Work?

Consultants can work in a couple of different settings.

First, they can work for an employer or corporate entity with robust training and development programs, molding future consultants to grow and build with the firm.

These individuals will oversee an assigned group of accounts or one individual enterprise.

Some consultants own and operate a business by themselves.

They represent their brand when they engage with clients and offer advice.

These professionals work remotely but might also have their own brick-and-mortar office where they host clients for meetings.

Which Industries Hire Consultants?

No matter how successful a business is, there is always an opportunity for improvement.

Below are some of the critical areas where a consultant can offer expertise.

1. Finance and Accounting

A finance and accounting consultant will assess a business’ financial health.

This analysis could include financial statements, current debts, and other metrics.

This type of consultant will identify areas to improve the current accounting procedures.

2. HR

An HR consultant will analyze current processes and offer solutions for talent development, talent management, recruiting, onboarding, employee relations, and other HR-related activities.

They will collaborate with the business to create a compelling company culture that attracts and retains top talent.

3. Employee Training

An employee training consultant will assess the current staff development programs a company has in place by analyzing the content, effectiveness, and structure of the employee training processes.

4. Technology

A technology consultant advises clients on maximizing information technology (IT) principles and practices to reach their long-term goals.

They will craft innovative strategies, ensure smooth implementation across the company, and help a company deploy an existing technology within its operations.

5. Branding

A branding consultant helps a company form the storytelling behind the business.

They engage with a company to help develop a vision and brand that its customer will believe in.

The consultant will also work with the business on designing its marketing kit, including the enterprise’s logos, colors, and other design consistency.

6. Marketing

A marketing consultant guides a company through developing and executing marketing strategies.

The consultant lays out a blueprint for boosting brand awareness, increasing leads, and generating sales.

They can also help form the company’s marketing plan through competitive analysis and in-depth research, including maximizing target audiences and product development.

7. Management

A management consultant engages primarily with the company leadership team to analyze current problems, gather information, and deploy new solutions.

They will assist the company in forming strategic plans, guiding capital projects, and integrating solutions that make it more competitive and profitable.

Management consultants can specialize in a specific industry, such as education, manufacturing, or healthcare.

8. IT

An IT consultant advises a company on potential security threats, optimizing current systems, analyzing code, and leveraging IT infrastructure to be more productive and profitable.

They will also evaluate the current IT support process and identify areas for improvement.

Training the IT team is another critical service an IT consultant could provide.

What Does it Take to Be a Good Consultant?

If a consultant role is something that interests you, there are four things you need to obtain if you want to be a top-tier consultant.

Experience

Experience is essential for a consultant.

More experience means they have encountered more business problems than someone with less experience.

Therefore, the consultant has a more substantial bank of information to pull from when advising a business.

This experience could be the total number of years as a consultant, the number of years working in a specific area of expertise, or both.

Expertise

An excellent consultant will have a proven track record of success with their clients and as a professional within the industry.

The consultants know when and how to deploy their expertise.

They understand the perfect moments and situations when their expertise is most beneficial.

People Skills

Creating an idea or strategy is half the battle.

The consultant needs to connect with stakeholders on a logical and emotional level.

A company might have several different team members engaging with the consultant.

Therefore, the consultant must mesh well with all personality types.

Problem-Solving Skills

Lastly, the consultant must have reliable critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

They must be able to think on their feet, utilize their resources, and keep a calm head while doing so.

Do Consultants Make a Lot of Money?

The amount of money a consultant makes will vary based on experience, industry, and employer.

Consultant earnings will range between $55,000-$100,000 on average when working for an established firm.

Independent consultants have higher earning potential because they set their fees and report to themselves.

An independent consultant with more expertise and experience will probably make the most.

Which Type of Consultants Make the Most Money?

A consultant’s earnings will depend on their experience.

A big differentiator in consultant salary in the industry.

Below are the types of consultants that make the most money:

• Strategy consultants
• Technology or systems consultants
• Lead generation and business development consultants
• Financial and accounting consultants
• Investment consultants
• Risk management consultants

How Do Consultants Get Paid?

Consultants are not typically full-time employees of the company.

A consultant working as an independent contractor or freelancer will accept payment through several different means: by project, by the hour, or on retainer.

The company will pay the consultant an agreed-upon fee for a venture or project with a deadline.

The consultant will usually create a “scope of work,” including the estimated work, projected hours, and cost.

Regarding the timing of payments, the consultant might prefer to accept a percentage of the cost upon contract signing.

Consultants can also get paid on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.

What are the Qualifications to Be a Consultant?

There are no set qualifications to be a consultant because they work on a contract basis.

It will ultimately come down to the decision-making criteria for the business hiring the consultant.

How Hard is it to Become a Consultant?

It may not be hard to become a consultant, but it will be challenging to become a great consultant.

Use every experience you have in the industry to inform your work and pass that expertise on to your clients.

How to Become a Consultant

Below is the straightforward path to becoming a consultant:

• Finish your degree
• Gain practical insights and knowledge through your work experiences
• Gain certifications in your industry
• Expand your network

How to Find Consulting Clients

Now that you’re a consultant, you’ll need to find clients.

1. Identify Your Ideal Customer

What are the types of customers you want to serve?

Better yet, what solutions will you provide?

Identify your “bread and butter” regarding the problems you solve.

Once you have your optimal customer persona, you can begin your outreach.

2. Seek Them Out

Initiating relationships is the single more important thing you can do as a consultant.

Your clients will not seek you out toward the beginning of your career.

You will have to get creative with your outreach, whether cold calling, video marketing, or other digital tactics on LinkedIn.

3. Check Out the Competition

One of the best ways to improve as a consultant is to study the competition.

Find the things your competitors do well and not so well.

Brainstorm ways to improve upon what they are doing, making your services unique.

Frequently Asked Questions

Below are the most frequently asked questions about hiring or becoming a consultant.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, a consultant can provide various solutions in several industries.

A consultant can help you improve your finances, boost brand awareness, increase sales, create a healthy company culture, and more.

If you want to become a consultant, it starts with identifying a niche, gaining experience, and building relationships.

Leave a comment below if you have questions about what they can do or the industries they serve.

As a business, you have to decide which areas of your business need another look.

Instead of waiting to build a popular blog and then monetizing it by displaying ads, you take things to the next level by identifying services you can offer to others as a freelancer or consultant, and by clearly showcasing this service(s) on your website.

This approach is much more effective, perhaps the fastest way to make real money blogging, and you don’t need boatload of traffic to get results if you use it.

Two great examples to the effectiveness of this approach:

• Through a blog designed to attract clients for my services business, I started getting clients barely a month after starting it and I was making 4 figures monthly with an average of 600 visitors monthly to the blog.
• This lady is making four figures monthly with less than 100 visitors to her blog monthly, by focusing on directing her traffic to her services business.

Do I need to say more?

If your aim is to get clients to your services business through your blog, it is very important to consider the 6 tips below.

6 Tips to Consider When Building a Service-Based Blog Business

To allow you to better implement the suggestions in this article, I have prepared a checklist that you can use to audit your blog to ensure you are on the right track.

1. Be Specific

You’ve probably heard the blogging advice “choose a niche” before?

If not, this is one of the most common problems bloggers face when starting a new site or blog.

When your blog is aimed at powering your services business, this advice can’t be more invaluable!

Whether you’re offering freelancing services, consulting services or some other type of service, you want to position yourself as an expert in your field, as this will significantly increase your chances of success.

The best way to do this, is by defining your niche and ensuring you only blog about a core group of inter-related topics.

There’s always the temptation to write about a lot of different topics so as to be able to cover a lot of ground, but that’s a fallacy many bloggers easily fall into.

You have a higher chance of success, both in terms of blog growth and revenue to your services business through your blog, by focusing on a small niche.

Also, it is important to make sure this niche is connected to the service you offer, and that it is a niche your potential clients are in.

2. Clearly Outline Your Services

The next step is to make sure details about services you offer are not in any way obscure on your blog.

A lot of service professionals make this mistake; they maintain a very good blog, but there’s no reference to the services they offer or the fact that they can be hired on their blog.

Don’t make this mistake.

Create a hire me/services page outlining and detailing the various services you can offer, the benefits clients get by hiring you and various ways they can reach out to you.

Make sure this page isn’t obscure on your blog; feature it prominently in your blog navigation bar, and pay attention to point 6 in this article for a tip to further promote this page.

3. Have a Defined Content Schedule

A blog is rarely effective in achieving its goals – whether that goal is to generate traffic, get subscribers, get clients, or increase sales – if it isn’t properly updated.

Don’t expect your blog to be very effective in sending clients to your services business when you have just 2 – 4 articles on it.

That won’t work.

For guaranteed long-term results, you need to define and stick to a content schedule.

For example, you can decide you want to be updating the blog once or twice a week, but make sure you have a schedule; don’t publish 5 articles this week and then ignore the blog for the next 3 months.

This is especially important if your blog is new; define a content schedule and stick to it.

4. Identify Key Articles You Need to Regularly Create

While you’d have to write a lot of articles on your blog to grow it, you need to realize that some types of articles are more effective than others in attracting clients.

It is very important to identify these key articles, and focus on creating more of them.

Sometimes, you will publish an article and then realize that the article is very effective in getting traffic to your blog and clients to contact you.

It is important to do more of these types of articles.

I have found 3 different types of articles to be effective in getting traffic and clients, and I’ll recommend doing more of these types of articles:

• The resource article: This features a list of resources people can use right away after reading your article. They don’t need to go through any other step, do any special Google search; they can’t start using the resources in the article right away. This article featuring 110 websites that pay writers is a good example. This list of blogs accepting guest posts is another example of a resource article that has resulted in five figures in freelance income for me.
• The ultimate guide: This is aimed at being a definitive guide to something. The article basically focuses on a subject people want to learn about in your niche, and it covers it with as much details as necessary; including screenshots, visuals, relevant examples and links to other resources that complement the article. This post is an example of an ultimate guide on guest blogging.
• Case studies: This is aimed at demonstrating your expertise with a particular thing, and showing potential clients what your process involves for successfully achieving a particular task. Case studies might not end up being as popular as the other two examples above, but they have massive potential for sending clients your way. This post by Neil Patel is a very good example of a case study. This is another case study showing how I got 1,200 subscribers in 2 months, and it is quickly becoming the second most popular article on my blog in no time.

So, amongst other types of articles, try to give the above articles some attention as well; doing them on a regular basis will not only increase your traffic but will actually result in clients for your services business.

5. Ensure Your Articles Effectively Reference Your Services

After creating a services page outlining the services you can offer to potential clients, the next step is to make sure you give this page maximum exposure.

One of the best ways to consistently and effectively promote your services is by referencing it in majority of the articles on your blog.

There are two ways to do this:

• Subtly; by occasionally hinting at your services, or subtly mentioning your services, and linking to your services page inside the body of your article.
• Explicitly; by clearly including a call to action below your article telling people about the services you offer and asking them to reach out to you.

Here’s a screenshot of what explicitly referencing your services in an article looks like:

Both examples are good, and I recommend a healthy combination of both.

If you run a personal development blog and offer counseling services, for example, you can easily update an article giving people life improvement tips with a call to action below the article to use your counseling services; this is explicitly referencing your services.

If you’re a freelance writer talking about the need for quality content, and you subtly hint at hiring an expert writer to solve clients’ content needs, and you link to your services page while doing that, you’re using the subtle approach.

6. Have a Clear Outreach System

The final step, which is just as important as every other step listed approach is outreach.

Even if you have a blog that is a massive resource, you won’t achieve much through it unless people are aware of it.

There are two key ways to go about letting people know about your blogs and they are:

• Paying to advertise your blog
• Leveraging successful platforms to freely promote your blog

The first option is definitely not available for most people, and it is not really recommended unless you have a system designed to maximize every dollar spent.

I’ve found option 2, however, to be very effective.

Look for other successful blogs and publications that have the audience you want, and look for a way to get them to refer their audience to you.

A great way to do this is by offering to write high quality articles for them, in exchange for a link back to your blog in your bio.

This process is called guest blogging, and there are several great articles on Blogging Tips on guest blogging that you can get started with.

Conclusion

The above are 6 really important tips you should consider when building a service-based blog business.

What other tips have worked really well for you that you want to add?