Marketing consultants plan campaigns, run channels and report results for clients on retainers or projects. Their team gets pulled between clients, deadlines and changing briefs, and creative staff burn out when feedback never ends.
Not sure what you need? Tell us about your business in six short steps and we will come to the first meeting prepared.
Share your requirementsA marketing consultancy advises and executes for client brands. The team usually has a founder who sells and sets direction, strategists or account leads who hold client relationships, content writers, designers, social media managers, performance marketers who run ads and analysts who report results. Some work is retainer based and steady, some is campaign based and spiky. Clients change briefs, ask for many rounds of revision and judge results quickly. People split time across several clients, and nobody sees the full load. Freelancers fill gaps in design, video and writing. Staff learn tools and platforms fast, and see better offers from larger agencies or brands. Reporting day each month brings its own pressure. See also HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in marketing consultants. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A client keeps sending changes, and designers and writers redo work for nothing while new tasks wait.
One person serves five brands, and urgent requests from the loudest client set the day.
Clients expect leads in the first week, and the team wears the blame for slow channels.
A freelance designer who knows the brand leaves mid-campaign, and no brief or files are in order.
Data from many tools is stitched by hand into slides at the last minute.
Designers and writers are promised development but get only a heavier load.
Staff must learn new features of ad platforms by themselves, in their own time.
A strong account lead is hired away with a larger title, taking client knowledge with them.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Performance Management; Learning and Development; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a marketing consultants business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A stated number of rounds in the proposal, with a rate for extra ones, and a log of changes.
A stated number of rounds in the proposal, with a rate for extra ones, and a log of changes. Use documentation to keep scope notes.
A weekly board of who works on which client and for how many hours, to level the load.
A weekly board of who works on which client and for how many hours, to level the load. Attendance and time tools help.
A shared folder, brand notes and file naming for every freelance job, so work can be picked up by anyone.
A shared folder, brand notes and file naming for every freelance job, so work can be picked up by anyone.
Fixed report templates, data pulled on set days and a named person for each client's report.
Fixed report templates, data pulled on set days and a named person for each client's report.
Stages from executive to senior, lead and head, with the skills for each.
Stages from executive to senior, lead and head, with the skills for each. See learning plans.
A weekly slot for platform updates and tool practice, treated as work.
A weekly slot for platform updates and tool practice, treated as work. Review pay at each stage.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Scope notes, briefs and handover standards that protect staff and clients.
A fair view of time across clients and cover for peaks.
Real hours for learning platform changes and craft.
Pay by stage that gives strong staff a reason to stay.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
7 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
State the number of revision rounds in the proposal, track each round and discuss extras at once. Unwritten scope turns into free work.
Show hours by person and client every week. Level the load before anyone complains, not after.
Give a clear brief, a shared folder and a named internal owner for each job. Do not let key knowledge sit only with the freelancer.
Give variety, a visible next step and learning time. Feedback should be specific and kind, not endless.
Keep client knowledge in shared notes, involve more than one person per client and review pay fairly. Check contract terms with a qualified professional.
How work is split across clients, how revisions are controlled, how freelancers are managed and why strong people leave. Revision limits, a load board or a growth ladder is a likely start. Scope, timing and fees are put in writing after that talk.
All 145 business types in professional services · Find another business type
See all HR topics for professional services, or another industry.
Tell us what is slowing your team down. We’ll help you find a practical way forward, starting with a conversation.
