If you bring in an outside marketing consultant, you’ll often head down a rabbit hole of ambitious, expensive strategies for growing your business and expanding your reach. A large investment is not necessarily a bad sign–great things can take a great amount of effort to accomplish–but you should hesitate to make a big investment if you aren’t rocking the basics.
I work with a lot of clients, and I often enter conversations where the business owner wanted to talk about television ads or a big AdWords campaign only to discover that they don’t have an eye-catching sign outside their store or they don’t have a mobile friendly website.
The basics go a long way, and you can cover a lot of ground by doing the basics really well. Once you have the basics nailed down, then look for the next big thing. Your return overall will be much greater that way.