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Medullar: A Safer Way for Professional Services Firms to Collaborate with AI

Guest Blog Post By Heath Anderson, Medullar

Professional services firms run on knowledge: every client engagement, advisory project, investigation, tax matter, or consulting assignment depends on the team’s ability to find the right information, apply judgment, and move quickly.

But for many mid-market firms, that work is harder than it should be. Important context is scattered across email, cloud drives, chat tools, research notes, meeting transcripts, prior deliverables, and personal folders. Teams often spend too much time searching for information they know already exists. Work gets repeated. Collaboration slows down. And when sensitive client data is involved, the pressure to adopt AI safely becomes even more complicated.

Many small-to-mid-sized firms want the productivity benefits of AI and move quickly to adopt AI tools without investigating if and how their proprietary data/intellectual property will be kept private. But, they cannot afford to treat confidentiality as an afterthought.  The crux of this problem is one that Medullar aims to solve.

This image shows a black woman, Caucasian and an Asian woman looking at and working on documents together as they sit on a comfortable-looking brown leather sofa.

Medullar is a privacy-first, secure AI collaboration platform built for professional services firms that work with sensitive information. It gives teams a safer way to bring project knowledge together, collaborate across people and tools, and use AI in workflows where privacy, permissions, and trust matters.

At the core of Medullar are secure, encrypted Spaces. A Space acts like a private project room for a client engagement, matter, deal, investigation, proposal, or internal initiative. Teams can gather relevant documents, emails, notes, research, transcripts, and other materials into one controlled environment. Access is permission-based, so only the right people can see and use the information inside.

This matters because professional services work is rarely done by one person in one tool. A consulting team may have client emails in Outlook, research in browser tabs, deliverables in Google Drive or SharePoint, notes in a meeting transcript, and key context sitting in someone’s inbox. Without a shared, secure environment, valuable knowledge stays fragmented.

Medullar helps firms reduce that fragmentation without forcing a major data migration. Its universal search tool can search across connected apps and sources, helping teams find relevant information where it already lives. That means a team can locate prior work, surface client context, and reuse institutional knowledge faster, while still respecting permissions and access controls.

Just as important, Medullar is designed for private AI interactions. Instead of exposing confidential information to general purpose, publicly trained AI models (such as large language models (LLMs)/answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity), teams can work with AI inside a governed environment. AI can help summarize, compare, draft, validate, and search across approved project context, while keeping the work scoped to the right Space and the right users.

Consider a consulting team preparing for a client engagement. Before the project begins, the team creates a secure Space for the client work. They gather relevant emails, prior deliverables, client notes, web research, meeting transcripts, and internal reference materials. Instead of hunting across multiple systems, team members can search across everything from one place. They collaborate with each other alongside their frontier AI model of choice (ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, etc.) to help summarize the current state, identify gaps, compare findings, and draft sections of a client-ready output, all without exposing sensitive client information.

The same pattern applies to advisory, accounting, tax, investigations, and legal-adjacent services firms. A team working on a due diligence review, an RFP response, a case triage, a board briefing, or a client deliverable can use Medullar to organize the work, search across fragmented knowledge, and collaborate more efficiently.

This is especially useful for firms that are large enough to feel the pain of scattered knowledge, but not so large that they can tolerate slow, complex systems. Mid-market firms need tools that improve daily work without adding unnecessary overhead.

A secure AI collaboration platform should do more than answer questions. It should help teams work together around sensitive information, preserve client trust, and turn existing knowledge into better outcomes.

This is the image of Medullar's logo which says "Medulla"r in primarily dark purple letters and has a magnifying glass at the bottom of the m in the word Medullar.

That is where Medullar fits: helping professional services firms use AI safely, find and reuse information faster, and deliver higher-quality work with less friction. Interested in learning more? Reach out today to schedule a complimentary discussion about our secure AI collaboration and productivity tool for your own small-to-mid-sized business and/or for one of your clients; or, ask our friends at Results Communications & Research to make an e-introduction on your behalf.

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11 Years and Close To 150 Customers Later…

We can’t believe it either, but today (April 1, 2025) marks 11 years of Results Communications & Research (Results C & R) being in the marketing agency and SEO company business.

As we always have been, we are very grateful to the many talented marketing consultants, marketing agencies and their staff, and other marketing professionals we’ve had the pleasure to collaborate with, and to learn from. We mention a few of those marketing collaborators on our Our Team page, but the list is so long, it’s hard to give a shout-out to everyone we’ve enjoyed meeting, knowing and working with the last 11 years!

And, we are incredibly grateful to the close to 150 client organizations — both for-profit and non-profit — with whom we’ve brainstormed and strategized to achieve the best possible level of awareness, sales leads, and actual sales (both product and service sales). Many of our current clients have been with us a number of years. You can access a list of our past and current clients to see examples of industries we’ve served by visiting the Clients page of our website.

Lastly, we’d be very remiss if we didn’t give a huge shout-out to the various students or recent-college- or recent-graduate-school graduates who worked for us over the years, and to our Principal’s late sister-in-law who greatly supported our mission, contributed to our success, and believed in us. All of the aforementioned individuals will always be a part of Results C & R’s rich history!

What’s Next For Our SEO Company and Marketing Agency?

In general, it’s full speed ahead with serving the same type of customers we’ve always loved serving — small to mid-sized for-profit and non-profit organizations. But, right now, we are enjoying spending more time getting up-to-speed on anything new and different going on in the Google Ads space. We love helping clients create awareness, sales, and leads with Google Ads and always have, so we are refreshing our Google Ads skillsets (even though we’ve taken and passed a number of Google certification exams in the past), particularly, Google Performance Max ones, so that we are not missing out on any opportunities to maximize our clients’ Google Search, Google Display, and Google Performance Max campaigns. Think of this latter campaign type as of a hybrid of the two former Google Ads types of campaign, and one with an AI component, like Google Display.

AI Is Not New To Google Ads/Google Ads Is Not New To AI

Related to our above desire to continue to grow our Google Ads skills, we want to remind our readers that AI is not new to Google Ads and Google Ads is not new to AI. For years, Google Ads has been able to offer “display” ad campaigns that are targeted to individuals who show affinity to certain products or services because of past buying or researching of them, having interests related to them, visiting websites focused on them, or reading about them on a variety of diverse websites.

AI and Writing Website Content, Particularly Blog Posts

And, speaking of AI, another area in which we hope to do more client work in the coming year is blog writing for clients. We’ve offered blog-writing services for years — and a number of clients have taken us up on it — but because we really enjoy writing, we hope to do more of this work for clients.

We don’t think AI search-engine/tools like ChatGPT will, or should ever, replace humans when it comes to website content and blog post writing. There’s great evidence that, at least some of what is spit back by AI search engines is not accurate. Plus, we don’t think an AI tool can ever bring the behinds-the-scenes knowledge or heart ‘n soul of an organization to website content writing or blogging. Only the organizations, themselves, truly understand what challenges their target audiences face — what their pain points are — and what they most need help with and how the organization’s products and services make a difference in their client’s/customer’s lives.

Traditional Marketing Opportunities Are Often Missed Ones

And, we always enjoy — and hope to do more of this in the coming year — helping our clients out with traditional marketing opportunities like print, radio, and TV/cable/streaming advertising, transit advertising, outdoors (billboard advertising) and more. We’ve got years and years of experience related to it and can help you gather information on possible traditional marketing opportunities and evaluate them! By dismissing traditional opportunities because they aren’t online/digital ones, organizations can also miss out on reaching target audiences who don’t spend a lot of time on the internet!

An image of our digital marketing agency's Founder and Principal, Gail Snow Moraski who is wearing glasses and who has shoulder-length blonde hair and who is weraing a red dress, a black cardigan and a sliver necklace.
Our Principal, Gail Snow Moraski, in a photo from around 2014, the year she founded Results C & R

Many Thanks and Let’s Catch Up!

Many thanks to the clients and marketing professionals we continue to collaborate with!

If you’re a past client, a prospective client we spoke with, or a fellow marketing professional with whom we collaborated in the past, or if you’ve interned with us in the past, let’s catch up. Schedule a time to do so today!

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A Day In The Life Of An SEO Consultant

If you’re considering a career in digital marketing, and particularly within that, a specialty or expertise in SEO (search engine optimization), read on to learn what a typical work day look likes.

How An SEO Consultant Starts Her Day

8:30a.m. – 9:30a.m.

Check/read (and send response e-mail) e-mails, which inevitably include the following:

  • Notifications from paid search (SEM) ad platforms (Google Ads or Microsoft (Bing) Ads) about:
    • Policy changes that have caused a Google or Bing Search Ad to be disapproved
    • Ad extensions and ads that have become disapproved because “page destinations” are no longer working (sometimes, clients of ours take down or move website pages to which site links (one form of ad extension/asset) point or ads point and forget to let me know that pages have been taken down, moved, etc.
    • Payment form (credit card) can’t be charged — therefore, the credit card information that a client provided to Google Ads or Microsoft Ads is no longer accurate/has changed
  • E-blasts and e-newsletters about SEO and invites to various SEO webinars and classes (due to the large # of search engine optimization experts we follow)
  • Client questions about how well their website is or isn’t ranking in search engines, particularly Google
  • Questions or comments from other marketing professionals with whom I collaborate, including social media specialists, branding/graphic design specialists, and website designers and developers
This is an image of Gail Snow Moraski, our Boston SEO Company's Founder/Owner Who Is An SEO Consultant. Gail has blonde shoulder length hair and is waring and orange crew-necked sweater that reads "Carpe Diem" She is wearing classes and smiling and is standing in front of a field of black-eyed Susans in her backyard.

9:30 a.m. – noon

  • Use Google Analytics data, Google Search Console data, paid search platforms, and SEO rankings audit reports to analyze and document KPIs (key performance indicators) for upcoming monthly/standing client meetings
  • Have a mid-to-late morning #SEOStrong snack, particularly one with lots of protein like swiss cheese or hummus because you definitely need a sharp brain and a lot of energy to do SEO work!
  • Employ “Answer The Public” and Google Ads keyword planner tools to conduct keyword research in relevant geographies using approved “inputs” from client about what terms they believe their target audiences would use to identify someone who offers the services, products, and solutions to problems they offer
  • Check client Google Ad and Microsoft Bing Ad campaigns (including Google Nonprofit Ad Grant ones) to see how they are performing, including reviewing cost-per-click (CPC) and click-thru rate (CTR); plus, review and apply or dismiss recommendations from Ad platform to improve optimization score, and check for appropriateness of “search terms” for which ad platforms are serving up ads.

12p.m. – 6:00p.m.

  • Review SEO diagnostics reports to determine possible website issues and/or missed SEO opportunities related to a particular client’s website ranking situation.
  • Facilitate client discussion about next steps/implications of their SEO rankings audit, diagnostics reports, and/or monthly KPIs. Where do we go from here to move the SEO needle and drive more relevant searchers to the client’s website in the month ahead?
  • Write a blog post for my own website or for a client website to support SEO by addressing topics and answering questions that are important to clients, but also to show search engines, that the website in-question is being kept “fresh”
  • Write and enter SEO page/post title tags (this might be in WIX, GoDaddy, Joomla, WordPress, Expression Engine, or a propriety software such as a CMS platform used in a particular industry), and submit the revised pages/posts for indexing by Google and/or Bing using Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools.

7:00p.m. – 8:30pm

Check e-mail again and/or continue to complete client SEO work of the nature outlined above. Being an SEO consultant is not just a 9 to 5 job!

Considering Hiring An SEO Consultant/SEO Expert?

Reach out today to schedule a complimentary discussion about your particular organization’s marketing challenges and opportunities!

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What Is An SEO Consultant?

While I’ve referred to myself and my business as a marketing consultant or marketing consulting firm, it never struck me that individuals would use the term “SEO consultant” to refer to someone who offers the SEO services (search engine optimization services) that I and my firm does.

Just by chance, while conducting some keyword research for a client that offers business and management consulting services, I stumbled across the term and the average monthly search volume for it. Did you know that 27,100 individuals a month, across the whole U.S., search on this term in Google? That’s a lot of searches on an annual basis!

So, I’m using this blog post as an example of how you can write a blog post to support being found for a term relevant to your business and services you offer, but also to explain to individuals who are searching on the term, what “SEO Consultant” means and what an SEO Consultant does.

An SEO Consultant is an individual or firm who can help your organization be found on Google and on other search engines for relevant terms, and in relevant geographies.

This is a square gray image with black and turquoise and blue text which reads "Did You Know That There Are Consultants Whose Sole Or Primary Focus Is To Help Your Organization Be Found in Search-Engine Results Listings By Your Target Audiences? They Are Known As: SEO Consultants. The image also contains the logo of our Boston SEO Company, Results Communications and Research.

So, What Exactly Do SEO Consultants Do?

Every SEO consultant’s approach to SEO is likely slightly different, but, in general, SEO consultants not only help your website rank well “organically (via unpaid/non-advertising tactics)” in search engines, but also your Google My Business Profile or Bing Places Profile (collectively referred to in this post going forward as “Business Profiles”). In addition, they may also help you identify presences you can have on social media platforms and discussion forums, like Reddit and Quora, to support your organization being found in search engines, since social media presences and discussion threads can also be served up in search results — not just your website or Business Profiles.

We believe that, ideally an SEO assessment to arrive at an SEO state-of-the union (an understanding of how your website and Business Profiles already support or don’t support your being found on search engines) should be completed first. Hey, we and you don’t want to break something that’s already working and doesn’t need fixing, right? That, should, then, be followed by implementation of various SEO tactics and best practices, based on what the audit/assessment reveals is warranted and appropriate.

Step 1: Initial SEO Assessment/SEO State-of-the-Union Evaluation

To achieve the objectives above, common initial activities that an SEO consultant may complete to arrive at an SEO state-of-the-union include, but are not limited to:

  • Conducting keyword research to identify what terms your target audiences are searching on most to identify someone who offers the services, products, and solutions to problems your organization offers — and in the right geographies.
  • Employing website diagnostics tools to run reports that assess how well your website employs best practices, including what’s known as technical SEO practices (think your website performing well and loading quickly), and provides for a good user experience.
  • Reviewing what’s known as your “behind-the-scenes” meta tags to ensure that they inform search engines and searchers what your website is all about.
  • Analyzing your Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Bing Webmaster data to see what percentage of your website traffic comes from search engines, and for what terms Google and Bing are serving up your website most.
  • Conducting an SEO rankings audit to see just how well your Google My Business Profile and website rank on Google, and how well your website ranks on Bing.

Step 2: SEO Tactic Implementation To Address Areas For SEO Improvement Revealed By An SEO Assessment

Once the analyses listed above are completed, an SEO consultant will come up with a list of one-off/one-time SEO tactics and ongoing/regular/monthly tactics that should be implemented to support your website and various Business Profiles ranking better, plus your organization being found more online. These may include, but are not limited to the following:

One-Off/One-Time SEO Tactics To Support Being Found On Search Engines

  • Making your Bing Places and/or Google My Business Profiles (Business Profiles) more comprehensive.
  • Rewriting, or if they are missing, writing your meta tags for various website content (pages, posts, and images), and implementing and/or working with you or your website developer to implement them on your website.
  • Suggesting and/or writing new blog, FAQ, or website content to support your site ranking better in search-engines for certain high-volume keywords (search terms.)
  • Submitting any revised website pages and posts for indexing/crawling by Google and Bing by using Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools.
  • Developing and implementing paid search/search-engine advertising via Google Ads, Microsoft Bing Ads, or both, for organizations who don’t have the luxury of the long window required to rank better in search results, and need to rank well immediately!

Ongoing SEO Tactics — Since SEO Is Not A One And Done Marketing Activity!

  • Posting content regularly, including new blog post links, on Business Profiles
  • Writing, or making suggestions for blog topics, plus ensuring meta tags are appropriate and new website blog content is submitted for crawling/indexing by Bing and Google
  • Using Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster, and SEO rankings audit tools and diagnostic reports to monitor how your website and aforementioned Business Profiles are ranking in search-engines and making regular recommendations about tactics to improve rankings, as necessary

Speak With An SEO Optimization Consultant To Learn More

Want to learn more how we help and collaborate with organizations to ensure their websites, Business Profiles and other online presences are optimized for search? Reach out today to schedule a complimentary, no-obligation discussion with an SEO consultant!

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Nine Years And Counting And How We’re Paying It Forward!

Our Boston Digital Marketing and SEO Services Company’s History

When we hung our shingle for our Boston digital marketing agency 9 years ago, via the launch of this website (April 2014), we had no idea what lay ahead of us. I say “we” because at the time I launched this firm, I knew I’d be able to call on a couple of family members to help me if needed, particularly my wonderful sister-in-law, Sharon, who served as both a cheerleader and a “tasker.” Sadly, our family lost Sharon a number of years ago to cancer, but I strongly believe she continues to cheer me on and has caused many good things to happen on the work front for Results Communications & Research.

I won’t repeat what I’ve shared on other pages or blog posts on our site, but if you want to learn more about my and my digital marketing firm’s journey or the diverse nature of the clients we’ve had the great privilege to serve, check these pages and posts out!

Google Nonprofit Ad Grants

As I call out in this previous blog post about which type of marketing agency or consulting firm to hire, no marketing agency or PR firm can be all things to all people, or be good at all things! So, as our agency has evolved over the years, our team has put many of our energies and learning time into becoming the best possible SEO experts for our clients — helping them be found on Google and in other search engines for high-volume, relevant search terms, via both paid search (Google Ads) tactics and organic search tactics. We’re proud of the very favorable reputation we’ve developed in the Greater Boston area (and beyond) related to the aforementioned, but we’re particularly proud that we have helped numerous nonprofit/cause/charitable organizations apply for and obtain Google Nonprofit Ad Grants and/or optimize such a Grant that they obtained for themselves.

Google Nonprofit Ad Grants are very generous “Google search” online advertising grants that support nonprofits appearing at the top of Google search results for relevant search terms — also known as keywords — used by their target audiences. Ultimately, such advertising creates greater awareness of the organization and their services, and eventually, greater support of and advocacy for the organization’s mission.

You can learn more about Google Nonprofit Ad Grants in this blog post about growing your nonprofit with a Google Nonprofit Ad Grant, and if you reach out, I’m glad to share the slide deck (which includes a recent success story) from a webinar I gave on the benefits of, and how to successfully employ, your Google Nonprofit Ad Grant dollars. You can also watch a quick video I created a while back about Google Nonprofit Ad Grants.

Commemorating Our 9 Years In Business

As our 9th anniversary approached, I gave great thought to how we could celebrate it in a meaningful way. We’re all about giving back and paying it forward, anyhow, but we wanted to do something to express our gratitude to all who have helped us along the way in our business-building journey!

I really wish we could extend the following opportunity to all nonprofits that inquire about it, but one of our many blessings related to being in business for nine years is that we have an extremely full plate and have for a number of years now. Again, we want to thank all our marketing collaborators and our clients for that — so many of you have been great about making referrals and/or sub-contracting work.

So, here’s the opportunity:

If you are a U.S. nonprofit wanting & needing help applying for a Google Nonprofit Ad Grant, e-mail me, by April 30, 2023, to express your need and desire for help with the Google Nonprofit Ad Grant application process at gail.moraski@allintheresults.com and put “May Google Nonprofit Ad Grant Drawing” in the subject line. In May, I’ll randomly select two names from the list of entries we receive and we’ll work with your organization on a pro bono (complimentary/free) basis to help you apply for — and hopefully obtain — a Google Nonprofit Ad Grant. Keep in mind that if your organization is not certified as a 501(c)(3) organization or you are a government agency or health care provider (think hospital, physician, etc.) or an educational organization like a college or university, you will NOT qualify for a Google Nonprofit Ad Grant.

We Can’t Wait!

We can’t wait to see what’s down the road for our Boston SEO company! If we continue to be as blessed as we have been, it means we’ll have the great fortune to continue to meet exceptional business owners, entrepreneurs, nonprofit organizations, and marketers and to collaborate with them to make great things happen on many fronts!

Learn More About Our Google Nonprofit Ad Grant Services And Nonprofit Clients Whose Google Ad Grants We’ve Managed

See who we’ve helped and how we’ve helped nonprofit clients obtain and/or manage their Google Ad Grant.

Learn More About Our One-Time and Ongoing SEO Services And How We Might Help You

To schedule a no-obligation, complimentary discussion of your organization’s SEO opportunities and challenges, and how to get found on Google, e-mail us today at gail.moraski@allintheresults.com, use our calendar app to choose a convenient day or time to chat, or complete our contact form, to set up a no-obligation, complimentary SEO discussion. 

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Why Your Marketing Agency Should Be Both A Strategic Partner and Accountability Partner

A former manager of mine used to say I was a great “bird dogger.” Believe me, it took some painful lessons to realize that just because I assumed co-workers were moving time-sensitive/critical-path work forward, it didn’t mean they were. Sometimes, particularly when you are just starting out in the corporate work world, you need to get “bitten” a few times, to acquire and employ new skills.

Getting back to the bird dogging. At our Boston-area digital marketing agency and SEO company, we believe that any and all marketing agencies and marketing consultants should serve as both strategic partners and accountability partners. Read on to learn why it’s so critical to sales, marketing, and SEO success, and to assess whether or not your marketing agency or consultant serves as both types of partners.

Why Your Marketing Agency Must Be A Strategic Partner

Whether you’re a small business owner with no marketing staff and you’ve outsourced your marketing strategy and/or your hands-on marketing work to a marketing agency or consultant, or you’re a mid-sized business that has a small in-house marketing team, it’s likely you and your team are far too busy to stay on top of cutting-edge marketing tactics and tools. Particularly as pertains to digital marketing, available opportunities/tactics change constantly, and there are such a large number of broad digital marketing categories (as indicated on our digital marketing services website page), that it would be impossible for you and your team to be experts in all available digital marketing topics, like SEO, social media advertising, Google Ads, etc.

I’ve mentioned this numerous times in blog posts and on Results C & R’s website pages, but when I launched my digital marketing agency and SEO company in 2014, I launched it with this tagline and philosophy: “Maximizing Results Through Research-Supported Marketing.” I always say I will never encourage an existing or prospective client to begin or continue with a marketing tactic that doesn’t make sense for them, based on secondary or primary data. That’s why I regularly ask prospective clients to let me look at their Google Analytics data before they engage me for work, and that’s why, for many of my clients, I track their digital marketing KPIs on a monthly basis and review results with them. Then, we talk about implications and what tactics we’ll put in place/what steps we’ll take to try to move the sales, inquiries, engagement, etc. (conversions) needle by the next time we meet. Often, it’s tiny steps, but steps we think make sense even if they only lead to slow progress as far as conversions go. Progress is progress, right?

Ask Yourself The Following To Determine If Your Marketing Agency Is A Strategic Partner:

  • Does my marketing agency regularly look at data available in various marketing tools and analytics tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to determine which current marketing tactics are most effective and what the “health” of your website looks like?
  • Does your marketing agency document the above results/analysis and meet with you and your team regularly to review implications?
  • Does your marketing agency try to learn on your dime — therefore, are they charging you for the time they spend on educating themselves on a new marketing tactic, tool, or opportunity? They shouldn’t.
  • Does your marketing agency let you know if there is something you aren’t doing right and/or could be handling better on the marketing front, regardless of whether they are doing work for you related to it?
  • Does your marketing agency let you know when they don’t think a particular marketing tactic/opportunity is the right fit for your organization?
  • Does your marketing agency only recommend services they themselves offer, or will they recommend services/opportunities from which you’d benefit, even if it means they need to collaborate with/pull in another expert or strategic partner or refer you to somebody else?
  • Does your marketing agency have a number of collaborative and strategic relationships with other partners/subject matter experts (SMEs)?
  • Is your marketing agency regularly recommending new possible marketing opportunities to you?
  • Related to the above bullet, do you get the sense that your marketing agency wants to use you as a “guinea pig” to try out the latest-fad marketing activity or tool, even if it might not be the right fit for your organization? If so, that’s certainly not a win-win situation!

Why Your Marketing Agency Needs To Be Your Accountability Partner

So, here’s the questions you should ask to determine whether or not your marketing agency or consultant is a true accountability partner and the real tie-in to bird dogging reference at the beginning of this post.

  • If your marketing agency needs you to review something or provide information to move their work for you forward, do they reach out regularly for status updates and to remind you to ensure critical deadlines are met?
  • Does your marketing agency send you an e-mail after a meeting documenting what work you or your team are responsible for completing before your next meeting?
  • When your marketing agency senses that you are unable (for a variety of reasons) to review documents, provide information to inform their work for you, or complete hands-on work yourself, do they reach out and offer to help or to talk you thru what’s needed via a phone or Zoom call? Do, they do the aforementioned on a timely basis so that time-sensitive deadlines and deliverables are met?

I was talking with fellow marketing consultants this week and shared this famous line from the movie Jerry Maguire related to effective client-agency relationships, i.e., working collaboratively to move work forward, both successfully and efficiently: “Help Me, Help You.”

Does Your Marketing Agency Act Like Part Of Your Team?

Ultimately to determine if your existing marketing agency or marketing consultant or a prospective one is the right fit, in addition to the strategic-partner and accountability-partner questions above, you should ask yourself, does my agency treat me with respect and like a partner. Do I feel like my agency is as committed or even more committed than I am to my organization’s success? Does may agency feel like part of our team, and in some ways like family? Meaning, they’d do anything for you to help you succeed and only want the best for you?

I hope and believe that clients or prospective clients asking themselves any of the many questions outlined above arrive at answers that make them confident that the Results C & R team is both a strategic and an accountability partner and that we have our clients’ best interests are at the heart of everything we do!

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Should I Hire A Marketing Agency, A Marketing Consultant, Or A PR Firm?

Regardless of the size of your organization, it can be confusing to figure out what type of marketing agency or marketing consultant to hire to help you create awareness, and ultimately cause sales of your products, services, and solutions. The ability to market digitally/electronically — that came with wide-spread adoption of the internet — brought with it the following changes when it came to organizations engaging outside help for their marketing (outsourcing their marketing), whether it be for one-off/one-time work or ongoing work.

How Digital Marketing Leveled The Playing Field For Both Advertisers and Ad Agencies

  • Organizations who couldn’t afford the high costs associated with producing TV, radio, transit, or outdoors (billboards or other) advertising, found new, more affordable marketing activities were now available to them in the form of social media posting and advertising, tactics that support websites being found on Google and other search engines for desirable search phrases (organic search tactics/SEO tactics), paid search engine ads/marketing (SEM), e-blast and e-mail marketing, and more.
  • Since many organizations looking for marketing help no longer required the infrastructure and diverse skillsets associated with marketing tactics that involved large production activities and costs, some realized they no longer needed to hire a full-service large advertising agency — think the type of agency featured in the acclaimed TV series, “Mad Men,” or on “BeWitched,” as smaller marketing shops, like ours, could meet their digital marketing needs and/or traditional marketing needs related to activities that don’t require a lot of production, such as Public Relations (PR), or print advertising.

Getting back to whom your organization should consider hiring for ongoing marketing services or one-time/one-off marketing project work/help, here’s one Boston digital marketing agency’s, Boston SEO company’s, and Boston marketing consultant’s thoughts — yeah, we consider ourselves to be all of the aforementioned, and for clients who engage us for non-PR work, we can also be engaged for help with PR since our Principal has a great deal of PR experience.

This is a square gray image with our Boston digital marketing agency's logo (Results Communications & Research's) logo at the bottom. At the top of the image in big bold letters it says "Should I Hire An Ad Agency, A Digital Marketing Agency, Marketing Consultant, Or PR Firm?" Underneath That In A Dark Powder Blue It Says" Read One Marketing Professional's Thoughts."

How To Figure Out What Type Of Marketing Firm To Hire And Questions To Ask

Branding and Design Firm. A firm that refers to themselves as a branding/brand and design firm primarily focuses on helping you figure out the look and feel of your brand, including the logo, colors, and graphic elements that will be associated with your brand. They usually offer website design services, but not always. And, some do offer other digital marketing or traditional marketing services thru collaborations or partnerships with digital marketing agencies, advertising agencies, or marketing consultants, or marketing freelancers. So, if you know you will need particular digital and/or traditional marketing services after working with the branding firm to develop or execute a new brand identify for you, ask in advance if they offer those services, so you will know whether you will have the burden of hunting around after for someone to help with traditional and digital marketing services — particularly to drive traffic to any new site you engage them to design for you.

Digital Marketing Agency. Digital marketing agencies tend to offer both higher-level strategic planning services, as well as hands-on/execution services, related to any marketing tactic that is digital or electronic related, including: e-blast/e-mail strategy and execution services, social media strategy and voice (actually writing and scheduling of social media posts), online advertising (social media/display advertising, Google Ads or other search engine advertising), blog strategy and voice work (actually writing and posting of blogs to your website), and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Most will offer content marketing services as well to help you figure out what content your target audiences are most interested in, and an editorial calendar for serving up such content on your website. Website content writing services likely will be available as well.

SEO Company. Because paid search engine advertising/marketing (SEM) supports an organization ranking well in relevant search engine results, as our Boston SEO company does, most SEO companies offer strategy and execution services related to both organic search/organic SEO tactics, as well as paid search advertising services. Some will offer some additional digital marketing services as well.

Marketing Consultant. In the almost nine years since we launched Results C & R, we’ve met a large number of marketing consultants. The degree to which they offer hands-on/execution work vs. developing high-level strategic plans tends to really vary. Some offer a number of hands-on services, in addition to helping you develop a strategic marketing plan, while others don’t do the actual marketing tactic execution work. If your organization has a number of internal marketing people who can actually oversee or execute the marketing plan developed by a consultant, a marketing consultant may be just what and all that you need.

Public Relations Firm/PR Firm. The focus of public relations firms is to get your organization unpaid-for-advertising/marketing. By helping your organization develop a strategy for causing various reporters and media to cover your story, they help your organization get mentions and attention without the cost of an expensive advertising campaign. PR firms also tend to offer event planning services since an event may be the perfect way to create awareness of your organization and/or create good will among your target audiences. Keep in mind that if you only need help with putting on an event vs. getting regular/ongoing press coverage, you could consider hiring an event planning firm. Many event planning firms also have experience getting media/reporter coverage for an event as well.

In general, the biggest overlap between a digital marketing agency and a Public Relations firm is that they both tend to offer social media services, since social media posts — particularly organic vs. paid/boosted social media posts — can help to generate good will and create awareness of an organization’s products, services, and solutions.

Advertising Agency. Nowadays, when people think of, or decide to hire an advertising agency vs. a digital marketing agency, it’s related to the fact that advertising agencies can pull in the right team members or hire the right contractors for a marketing campaign that requires heavy-duty production. As we mentioned above, scripting and executing a radio, TV (network or cable) or streaming advertisement requires the collaboration of a bunch of individuals with diverse skillsets, the renting of studios and/or locations in which to film, the hiring of “talent” for the broadcast spot — whether it be aired on the radio or TV. Activities like the aforementioned are often the reason why, in our current day and age, an organization would look to hire an advertising agency vs. a digital marketing agency. Although, most advertising agencies offer digital marketing services, in addition to traditional ones.

Web Design/Web Development Firm. Web design and web development firms are exactly what their name indicates — firms who help design and develop websites for clients. Many also offer logo design or other graphic design services because of their web designers’ ability to successfully complete such work. All web design/web development firms DO NOT offer SEO services nor do they always understand SEO, so if you expect or want to receive SEO services as part of your new website launch, be sure to ask any firms you are considering to design and develop your site, what knowledge they have of SEO and/or who they have on their team that has an SEO background. Otherwise, as we explain in this blog post, you’ll end up with a website that is not easily found via search engine searches.

Unfortunately, we regularly interact with prospective clients who had someone develop a beautiful, effective site for them, but the site is not being visited/found by target audiences because SEO tactics weren’t put in place by the web design/web development firm as part of the site development and design engagement.

This image shows the back of a dark-skinned woman who is wearing a striped white and light blue shirt. She is holding a pencil or pen above a notebook on her right-hand side and her left-hand is hovered over a laptop computer keyboard. The screen of the computer says "Marketing" in big blue letter. The image is being shown in keeping with our Boston Digital Marketing Agency's blog post about how to know what type of marketing agency or consultant to hire.

What Should I Expect To Pay A Marketing Agency Or A Marketing Consultant?

Based, again, on our 9 years of marketing agency and marketing consulting experience at the time of writing this post, we’ve found that, in general, the bigger the agency/marketing shop, the more expensive their hourly rate and marketing project fees are. Why? It mainly comes down to overhead and the costs of maintaining and marketing a larger organization, offering a large number of employees benefits, etc.

If your organization doesn’t expect to need the type of traditional advertising production work outlined above under the “Advertising Agency” section, you’ll very likely fare better financially hiring a smaller digital marketing agency or PR firm or a marketing consultant. Plus, you may end up getting more personal attention than you would with a larger agency. And, most smaller shops can pull in a collaborator, freelancer, or other agency or consultant, as needed.

We’re A Boston Digital Marketing Agency, Boston SEO Company, Boston Marketing Consultant, and Boston PR Firm All In One!

Due to our Principal’s more than 30 years of corporate marketing and consulting experience, we offer all the services called out in the heading directly above! We regularly meet with both start-ups and long-standing organizations — both for-profit and non-profit — for complimentary discussions about their marketing challenges and opportunities, so feel free to use our calendar app to schedule a FREE initial consultation https://calendly.com/gail-moraski.

Acceptance of Circumstances, Consulting, Enjoying What You Do, integrated marketing, lead generation, Making Connections and Introductions, marketing consultant, staying current

What I’ve Learned From 5 Years of Running a Consulting Firm

comfortzone

Ninety percent of my blog posts cover marketing topics and trends, particularly digital ones. This, of course, makes sense as I want to be a resource for “all things marketing” for my existing and prospective clients, as well as demonstrate my expertise, and remind folks, in need of marketing help, that I’m here to assist them with both marketing strategy development, and hands-on, day-to-day execution of marketing tactics. That said, for a while now, I’ve been wanting to share with friends, colleagues, and particularly those considering starting a consultancy of any nature, the great, the good, the bad, and the ugly of being a consultant.

I know already I’ll be commenting on or editing this post as pros and cons of consulting come to mind that I neglected to include!

Let’s start with the GREAT!

  • New People, Partners, Connections: You meet so many interesting, knowledgeable, passionate and creative individuals — whether they be fellow small business owners/entrepreneurs/consultants or employees of small, medium, or large for-profit and non-profit client organizations. And, on certain client work, you get to partner and collaborate with fellow consultants who are experts in their particular field.
  • New Industries, Products and Services: You learn about so many different industries, and unique products and services, and you get skilled at getting up-to-speed quickly on various industries. You know the types of questions to ask and the information you want and need to hunt down.
  • Diverse Service and Solution Provision: No two clients’ challenges and opportunities are the same, so with each engagement, you are required to step back and think about which of the solutions and services you offer would most benefit a client and have the most immediate impact on whatever pain point they are struggling with. In my case, because of my line of work, this means I have the opportunity to oversee or assist with a large, diverse set of marketing activities and analytics.
  • Money and Time Savings: If you’re a consultant who works out of a home office — like me — or a local, shared work space, you save time and $$ commuting to an office. You also can spend far less money on work clothes and lunches.
  • Pajamas and Sweat Pants: I don’t do it very often, but yes, you can work in your pajamas and sweats and even attend phone meetings wearing the aforementioned. Before I hit my home office and computer, I prefer to get dressed for the day in something a little less comfortable than sweats or pajamas, so I don’t feel too relaxed and feel more professional and in “work mode.”
  • Flexible Schedule: For someone like me, where past cancer treatment left me with some chronic health issues, it’s nice to have the flexibility to take care of my health and work at a slower pace, if and when required, and to be able to go to doctors’ appointments when I need to. I can also take a longer break to meet up with a friend or colleague for lunch or coffee, knowing that I can make up the lost work time at night or on the weekend.
  • No Difficult Office Politics or Managers: I don’t think the former really needs explaining…keep in mind, though, you can end up with difficult clients, or clients with difficult office politics.

Now, the GOOD!

  • You Are the Boss of You — I’ve always been driven and self-disciplined, so I treat every week day as a work day and rarely run personal errands and/or do personal chores during that time,  but for some being their own boss and not having someone tell them how to use their time or what their deliverables should be, doesn’t suit them. That’s why I listed this as “good” vs. “great”, even though I personally love being my own boss.
  • Nobody Rains (or Snows) on Your Parade — Literally and figuratively. If you don’t have face-to-face or in-person meetings scheduled, you can stay warm and dry on cold or wet days, and you don’t have to deal with negative co-workers dragging you down.

And, the BAD!

  • You Have to Look Good in Hats — You’ll be wearing a variety of them — CEO/President, junior- or entry-level staff person, bookkeeper, business development/sales manager, and marketing person, to name a few.
  • Friends & Family Think You Don’t Work — Friends, family, colleagues, etc. will think they can call or visit you anytime on a workday or you’ll drop everything to meet up with them because “you aren’t working” – hah!
  • Support May be Lacking — No matter how long your consultancy has been up and running, you’ll still frequently get asked by contacts, including friends and family, when you plan to return to a “corporate” job. Your circle may struggle with the fact that running a successful consultancy isn’t a temporary or short-term choice, it’s an active, long-term decision you made.

Boo hoo for the UGLY!

  • Client Work Gets Pulled — Promised work doesn’t come to fruition or projects for which you’ve officially been engaged or you’ve even started get put-on-hold or shut-down completely for a variety of reasons, such as:
    • your contact at your client’s office leaves
    • your contact’s manager or manager’s manager isn’t on board with proceeding with a project even if your contact is/was
    • your client has budget cuts
    • your client has new senior leadership or your contact at your client has a new manager
    • your client’s priorities shift — something unanticipated happens at their firm, in their industry, etc. that makes your work for them less of a priority
    • your client gets bought out by or merges with another firm

One of the most painful and expensive, but also beneficial lessons I’ve learned in the past five years of consulting is never leave “capacity” for a particular client unless you have documented approval of engagement for the work in-question.

  • The 50/50 Rule — At most, you will only be able to spend 50% of your work time, actually completing “paid” work for clients, this includes attending client meetings or participating in client phone calls. The remaining 50% of your time will be allocated something along these lines, unless, of course, you out-source some of this work:
    • Creating and issuing invoices, tracking expenses in an accounting system, such as QuickBooks — 2.5%
    • Posting to social media — 7.5%
    • Staying educated in your particular area of expertise through reading, webinars, and other trainings — 7.5%
    • Responding to RFPs/Creating Proposals – 10%
    • Phone or In-person meetings with prospective clients — 10%
    • Following up with individuals and organizations in your sales pipeline — 5%
    • Reaching out to individuals via LinkedIn, e-mail, etc. for the first time to see if they are open to a meeting — 5%
    • Attending short phone calls or responding to e-mails for which you can’t charge a client, since you don’t want to be viewed as “nickel & dime-ing” them. It’s just expected that a consultant will provide some “pro bono” hours – 2.5%

In sum, if you’re going to run a consultancy, you have to accept that about 50% of the work you do, will be “unpaid” work, i.e., work for which you won’t be able to bill someone.

  • If You Don’t Work, You Don’t Get Paid — enough said, and as I described above, even when you do work, much of it is work you can’t bill for.
  • No Employee/Employer Perks and Benefits (Both Tangible and Intangible) — when you are self-employed, you don’t have access to the following perks and benefits of a “corporate” employer:
    • true “paid”/”employee” benefits like health, dental, and life insurance, 401K contributions and matching, paid vacation time and time-off, short-term disability
    • office parties and celebrations
    • friendships and socialization that an office provides
    • support of and ability to brainstorm with co-workers, plus the ability to delegate work if you’re a manager
    • coverage of training and travel expenses
    • in-house training opportunities
    • and more!
  • You Work 60+ Hours, So You Don’t Have to Work 40 — So, I revamped this phrase that I snagged from Shark Tank, “entrepreneurs work 90 hours, so they don’t have to work 40”. But, basically, when you own and run your own business, it’s very unusual to have a week where you only work 35 or 40. Even if you’re not actively doing client work, you’re constantly checking your work e-mail at night and on the weekends, and quite honestly, often you you do have to work nights and/or weekends to stay on top of your accounting, proposals you need to create and send, blog posts like this one that you want to write, and client work that needs to be completed. And, yes, most consultants I know are thinking about their business 24/7 — while they are lying in bed at night, taking a shower, going for a walk, etc. It’s hard to turn your consultant brain off, particularly the part that knows that you need to constantly be creating new leads for your business.

One factor that both a corporate job and consulting have in common — workloads fluctuates. There will be times when you have far too much work, and times, when you have too little.

Despite some of the more difficult consequences and challenges of being a consultant, there is so much upside, and I wouldn’t change my work situation right now. I so enjoy where I’m at in my career — serving as an advisor and extra-hand to both clients and fellow consultants and marketing agencies — and I enjoy the challenges that come along with it. They’ve pushed and continue to push me to step outside my comfort zone and develop or enhance skills like sales and public speaking. I so look forward to what lies ahead for me in the next five years as a consultant!

A special shout-out to my niece, Angelique Snow, who alerted me to the expression in the image at the top of this post — one that is particularly fitting to my situation and that of other consultants — and to Angelique, who lives her life fully by stepping outside her comfort zone.