A marketing consultation can be three different things. It can be a sales call with a free label, which is fine as long as everybody knows. It can be a paid session that answers a specific question. Or it can be a scoped engagement that produces a decision the business can act on. They cost different amounts, produce different things, and are advertised in almost identical language, so the useful skill is telling them apart before booking.
A free consultation is a sales call, and that is not a criticism
It is how agencies qualify prospects and it can be genuinely useful: you learn how they think, what they would look at first, and whether you would want to work with them. Treat it as what it is. Send the same three questions to everybody, take notes in a common format, and do not expect advice you could act on afterwards, because giving it away is not the point of the meeting.
A paid session should answer a question you wrote down first
Paid hourly consultations work well when you bring a specific question with the context attached: why has organic traffic fallen, is this proposal reasonable, which of these two channels should we fund. Send the material in advance, ask for the answer in writing afterwards, and expect to pay for preparation as well as the hour. Booking one without a written question produces a pleasant conversation and nothing else.
A scoped engagement should end in decisions, not a deck
The deliverable worth paying real money for is a small number of decisions with the reasoning: what to stop, what to start, what to measure, in what order, with what budget. A hundred-page audit that lists everything wrong is easier to produce and much less useful, because it does not prioritize and nobody acts on it. Ask to see a redacted example of a previous deliverable before commissioning.
Beware the consultation that can only end one way
A consultant who also sells the implementation has an interest in the recommendation. That is manageable if it is named: ask directly whether they would ever recommend doing nothing, or recommending a supplier they do not own. If the honest answer is no, either buy the recommendation from somebody independent or accept the bias knowingly and discount accordingly.
What to send in advance so the time is not wasted
Read-only access to analytics and the advertising accounts, the last two proposals or reports you received, what you spend and on what, and the one thing you would most like answered. Consultants who receive that produce something useful in an hour; consultants who receive nothing spend the hour asking questions you could have answered in an email.
Questions people ask about marketing consultation
Are free marketing consultations worth taking?
Yes, as a way to evaluate a supplier and hear how they think, provided you know it is a sales conversation. They are not a way to get free strategy, and treating them as one wastes your time and theirs. Take two or three, ask the same questions, and compare.
What should a paid consultation cost?
Independent consultants generally charge an hourly or daily rate, and scoped engagements are project priced. What matters more than the rate is whether preparation is included, since an hour with somebody who has read your accounts is worth several with somebody hearing about them for the first time.
What should I get in writing?
The answer, the reasoning and the recommended order, even if it is short. A consultation that exists only as a conversation is one nobody can act on a fortnight later, and a page of written conclusions is a reasonable thing to require for a paid session.
How do I choose who to consult?
Somebody who has solved your specific problem rather than a generalist, who will tell you what they would not do, and who has no financial interest in the recommendation, or who names the interest if they do. Ask for one client you can speak to who took advice that reduced their spending.