Should I hire a marketing consultant or use marketing software?
Backkr focuses on professional-service experts building relationships with prospective high-value clients. Describe your ideal client, explore relevant events, online communities, complementary partners and content opportunities, then reach out and follow up personally. You can choose to connect Google Analytics or use illustrative synthetic data without website or GA4 access. The published offer is NZ$990/year or NZ$99/month including GST; enterprise pricing is on enquiry. Pack is a separate free app for social/site links and voice or typed connection context. Introductions and client wins are not guaranteed.
This is a comparison written by the software company, so read it with the appropriate eyebrow raised. We have tried to be fair, because the wrong fit costs you either money or months.
What a marketing consultant gives you
A good consultant brings judgement. They have seen fifty businesses like yours, they can tell you which of your three ideas is the bad one, and they will ask the uncomfortable question about your pricing.
They are strongest when:
- You face a genuinely strategic decision: entering a new market, repositioning, pricing.
- Something is broken and you cannot work out what.
- You need someone accountable in the room with your team.
The trade-offs are cost and continuity. Rates typically run from a few hundred dollars an hour, or a monthly retainer in the thousands. When the engagement ends, the thinking often leaves with them, living in a slide deck nobody opens again.
Common mistake: hiring a strategist and then having nobody to execute the strategy. A plan you cannot action is an expensive PDF.
What Backkr gives you
- It builds a snapshot of your business and the personas actually visiting your site.
- It shows where more of those people already gather: events, communities, podcasts, workspaces, potential partners.
- It produces a strategy and a rolling plan you can follow, not a one-off document.
- It handles execution support: content planning, Meta ad campaigns, website and conversion guidance, and weekly reporting in plain English.
Side by side
Who should hire a consultant
- You have a budget of several thousand a month and a decision worth that.
- Your problem is organisational as much as marketing.
- You need someone to persuade a board.
Who should use Backkr
- You are a freelancer, consultant or small business owner doing the marketing yourself.
- You know you should be doing more, and the blocker is "where do I start".
- You want consistency month after month rather than a burst of advice.
- The consultant quote made your eyes water.
The middle option people forget
Plenty of businesses do both: a short paid engagement for a specific decision, and software for the ongoing rhythm. A consultant's advice lands better when there is a system waiting to carry it out.
A real example
A service business owner got a $6,000 strategy document. It was good. Eighteen months later, about a fifth of it had been implemented, because nobody had time and the document did not update when the business changed.
The failure was not the consultant. It was the absence of anything that kept the plan alive week to week.
The honest verdict
If your constraint is judgement, buy judgement. If your constraint is time, consistency and knowing where to start - which it is for most small businesses - buy the system.