Short answer: look for a marketing strategist who starts with your business, not your channels: someone who asks about your customers, numbers and sales process before recommending tactics, has experience with companies like yours, and can show how their past strategies turned into results. Be wary of anyone who leads with a channel, a guarantee or a template.
"Marketing strategist" is one of the loosest titles in business. It can mean a senior leader who reshapes how a company grows, or someone who mostly schedules social posts. Here's how to tell the difference before you sign anything.
What a good marketing strategist actually does
A strategist decides what to do and why, before anyone decides how. In practice that means:
Defining who your best customers are and why they buy
Clarifying your positioning: what you're known for and why you win
Choosing the few channels and offers worth investing in, and the ones to stop
Setting goals and metrics tied to revenue
Making sure the team, freelancers or agency execute against the plan
7 things to look for
They ask before they answer. In the first conversation, a good strategist asks more questions than they answer: about your customers, margins, sales cycle and what's been tried before.
Relevant experience. They've worked with businesses at your stage and in your model. SaaS, eCommerce and service businesses need different playbooks.
Proof, not adjectives. Ask for specific examples: what the situation was, what they changed and what happened. Anonymized is fine; vague isn't.
Channel-agnostic thinking. If every problem looks like a paid social problem (or an SEO problem, or a content problem), you're talking to a specialist, not a strategist.
Comfort with numbers. They should talk easily about customer acquisition cost, conversion rates, lifetime value and pipeline.
A bias toward execution. A strategy that never leaves the slide deck is worth very little. Ask how they make sure the plan actually happens.
Honesty. The best strategists will tell you when something isn't worth doing, including hiring them.
Red flags
Guaranteed results. Nobody can promise rankings, leads or revenue numbers before understanding your business.
A template plan. If the proposal could have been written for any company, it was.
All tactics, no priorities. A long list of things to do is not a strategy. Strategy is choosing.
No interest in sales. Marketing that ignores how deals actually close rarely moves revenue.
Vanity metrics. Followers, impressions and "engagement" without a link to pipeline or sales.
Strategist, agency or fractional CMO?
These overlap, so it helps to be clear about what you're buying:
A marketing strategist or consultant usually delivers a plan or advice, often for a defined project.
An agency executes in specific channels and is accountable for its deliverables.
A fractional CMO owns your marketing function part-time: strategy, leadership and results.
If you need a plan, a strategist may be enough. If you need someone accountable for making the plan work over time, look at a fractional CMO. For a sense of the investment, see how much a fractional CMO costs in Canada.
Questions to ask before you hire
What would you need to know about our business before making recommendations?
Walk me through a strategy you built that didn't work. What did you learn?
How do you decide which channels to prioritize?
What will we have at the end of the first 30, 60 and 90 days?
How will we measure whether this is working?
Quick answers
Do I need a strategist if I already have an agency? Often, yes. Agencies execute well inside their scope, but someone still needs to own the overall plan.
Should a strategist have industry experience? Experience with your business model and stage matters more than your exact industry.
How long before strategy shows results? Early wins often come from fixing what's broken in the first few months; compounding results take longer.
Want a second opinion on your marketing?
If you're trying to figure out what kind of marketing help you need, book a strategy call. I'll tell you what I'd do in your seat.
