What should a communications consultant actually do for my business?
This is a question worth asking before you hire anyone, because the answer varies enormously depending on who you hire and what they think the job is.
Here is what a good communications consultant should actually deliver.
An honest diagnosis before anything else
The first thing a communications consultant should do is understand your business well enough to tell you what is actually wrong. Not what you think is wrong, and not what they are best at fixing — what the evidence suggests is the real problem.
That requires asking difficult questions. Who are your audiences and how do they currently perceive you? What is your organisation's narrative and is it coherent? What communications activity are you currently doing and is any of it working? What does success look like and how will you know when you have achieved it?
A consultant who skips this phase and jumps straight to recommendations is telling you what they already planned to say before they walked in the door.
A strategy that connects communications to business outcomes
Communications strategy is not a messaging document. It is a plan for using communications to achieve specific business objectives — whether that is attracting investors, winning new clients, retaining talent, influencing policy, or building the kind of authority that opens doors.
A good consultant connects every communications activity to a business outcome and is honest when an activity cannot be connected to one. If they cannot explain why a piece of content or a media campaign matters to your business, it probably does not.
Senior judgment on the decisions that matter
The most valuable thing a communications consultant brings is judgment — the ability to look at a situation and know what to do, what not to do, and why. That includes knowing when to speak and when to stay silent. Knowing which media opportunity is worth pursuing and which will backfire. Knowing when an executive is ready to go on record and when they need more preparation.
That judgment comes from experience, and it is what separates a senior consultant from a capable executor.
Practical execution, not just advice
A communications consultant should be able to do the work, not just direct it. Writing a press release. Preparing an executive for a broadcast interview. Drafting a thought leadership article. Pitching a story to a journalist. Building a LinkedIn content strategy. These are practical skills, and a consultant who cannot demonstrate them personally is dependent on others to deliver what they have recommended.
Ask any consultant you are considering what they have done with their own hands recently. The answer will tell you whether you are hiring a thinker, a doer, or both.
Honest counsel when the organisation is wrong
This is the part that separates good consultants from comfortable ones. Your communications consultant should be willing to tell you when your instinct is wrong, when a strategy is likely to backfire, when a statement should not be made, or when your organisation's behaviour is the actual communications problem rather than the messaging around it.
Communications consultants who only tell clients what they want to hear are a liability. The ones worth hiring will push back, explain their reasoning, and let you make the final call — but they will not stay quiet to keep the relationship comfortable.
Measurable progress over time
Communications outcomes are not always easy to quantify, and any consultant who promises specific metrics before understanding your situation is being dishonest about the nature of the work. But progress should be visible and trackable. Media coverage in the right publications. Executive profile growth. Inbound enquiries that cite your thought leadership. Stakeholder relationships that did not exist before.
A good consultant agrees on what success looks like at the start of the engagement and reviews it honestly as the work progresses.