Digital marketing consulting is the work of deciding what a company is trying to change in social and digital channels, which of those channels can actually do it, and how the result will be judged. We sell that decision, not the execution of it. Vivaldi has worked on social and digital channel questions for companies including Hyundai, Allianz and Hendrick's Gin.
We do not run social accounts, buy media, manage communities or produce content at volume. Those are real jobs and other firms do them well. Ours is the layer above: what each channel is for, what it is capable of, and how the pieces connect. Saying that in the first minute saves a wasted meeting.
- Since 1999brand and demand strategy
- 200+published case studies
- 10 officeson four continents
- 5xWirtschaftsWoche Best of Consulting, Strategy and Innovation
When companies bring us in
The trigger is almost always a specific disagreement rather than a planning cycle. Someone has looked at the channel plan and cannot explain what half of it is for.
- Social is busy and nobody can say what it returns. Posting volume is high, engagement is reported monthly, and none of it appears in a number the finance team recognizes.
- The channel mix was inherited, not chosen. The plan funds the platforms the category funds, and no one has tested whether this audience is reachable on any of them.
- Brand and commerce teams are arguing in the same feed. Two briefs, two agencies, two arguments, one customer who sees them back to back.
- Discovery has moved and the plan has not. The category used to be found through search and is now found through video, creators or a marketplace, and the budget still reflects the old route.
- A platform change broke the reporting. Attribution shifted, the numbers moved, and nobody can tell whether the business changed or the measurement did.
Why the measurable half of the plan ends up running it
The reasonable case for how digital gets planned today is that it is measurable, and measurable spend is easier to defend. A channel that reports its own return wins the argument against one that cannot.
The trouble is what that selects for. Channels that convert demand you already have report well, because the effect lands close to the click. Channels and formats that create demand report badly, because the effect lands later, somewhere else, in a number nobody attributes back. Fund on reported return alone for several planning rounds and you own an efficient machine harvesting a market you stopped replenishing.
So the useful question is not which channel performs. It is which channel is capable of the change you are after, and whether anything in the plan is responsible for creating the demand the rest of it converts. The shift from an attention internet to an intent internet makes that distinction sharper, not softer.
What our digital marketing consulting services include
1. A digital objective stated as customer behavior
Before any channel question, what is the company actually trying to make people do differently, and is that behavior worth what the plan costs.
- The commercial job of social and digital, written as a change in customer behavior rather than as a budget split or a reach target
- The demand the company is competing for in these channels, defined by what customers are trying to get done rather than by platform audience taxonomies
- An explicit split between the part of the plan creating demand and the part converting it, so each is judged on what it is for
2. Channel roles, and what each channel can actually do
Most channel plans are allocation tables. A channel role is a sharper object: a statement of what this platform is in the plan to achieve, and what it will not be asked to prove.
- What each platform is capable of in this category, including the ones whose only honest role is to convert demand created elsewhere
- Creator, partner and community roles where they genuinely change what the brand can say, rather than because the category expects them
- Which channels to stop funding, named, with the reason written down
- CreateDemand that did not existThe formats and channels that make people want the category, not just your version of itUsually underfunded
- CarryThe argument across formatsOne claim that survives a feed, a creator edit, a product page and a search resultUsually inconsistent
- ConvertDemand that already existsSearch, retargeting, marketplace and the rest of the harvest layerUsually strong
- ReadWhat the channel taught youEvidence about what customers want, returned to the plan rather than to a monthly deckUsually discarded
3. The argument that holds across channels
A messaging architecture for digital is not a tone of voice document. It is a decision about what claim is being made, what evidence supports it, and what has to stay true when the format compresses it to six seconds.
- The claim itself, and the proof the brand is entitled to use for it
- What travels between brand content and commerce content, so a customer who meets both does not meet two companies
- What is deliberately not said in these channels, because it needs more room than they give it
4. Where social meets commerce
Discovery, decision and purchase increasingly happen inside one interaction. That is a strategy question before it is an infrastructure question, and the two get confused constantly.
- Which points in the interaction can carry a transaction, and what has to be true of the brand at each of them
- What the interaction should remember, so context travels with the customer instead of being rebuilt at the checkout
- Which questions belong to us and which belong to the commerce build, named explicitly so neither team waits for the other
5. Measurement that survives a planning round
Engagement and follower counts do not survive contact with a CFO. The work here is agreeing, in advance, what evidence each half of the plan owes.
- Preference and consideration movement for the demand-creating half, so it has evidence of its own rather than borrowing the conversion half's
- Acquisition cost read against brand investment rather than in isolation, since the two move together
- A reporting line that survives the next attribution change, because the question is what changed in the market, not what a platform claimed
Not sure which half of your plan is funding which job?
Start with a working session with one of our partners. We will take your current channel plan, split it into the part creating demand and the part converting it, and establish what each one is actually being judged on.
How a social and digital engagement works
- Diagnose. We read the current plan, the channel reporting and the customer research, and interview the people who own each channel. The output is a map of what every line of the plan is for, and which lines nobody can explain.
- Decide. The objective stated as customer behavior, the demand worth competing for, and the split between creating and converting it. Options are stress-tested with finance, not only with marketing.
- Assign. Channel roles, the argument each one carries, and the measures each one owes. This is where channels get dropped, which is the part that needs a decision rather than a workshop.
- Hand over. Briefs the agencies and in-house teams can execute against, and a measurement model that still answers the question after the next platform change.
What this has looked like in channel work
Three published cases sit under this service. We name them here for the channel judgment in them, not for a headline number, which belongs on the pages that lead with that work.
Hyundai is the clearest. The brief was to show the Hyundai N, a rally-inspired car, and the category convention was a static car tour: a presenter beside the vehicle, or in the cabin talking through the features. That is a channel mismatch. A car built to move, shown standing still, in feeds that reward motion. The answer was a car review filmed from a high-speed couch, with a BAFTA-winning presenter strapped to it, running across social and digital channels. The point is not the stunt. It is that the format was chosen from what the channel could carry, and the convention was rejected on those grounds.
The other two make the same point elsewhere. Allianz had little brand equity to trade on and needed to reach a consumer audience in social, so the work took one shared and slightly miserable moment, the school run, and built episodic content around it rather than making insurance claims in a feed that ignores them. Hendrick's Gin took an annual occasion, World Cucumber Day, and made it something people could join in on and carry into bars and festivals, with social and digital distribution doing the reach. Both are reported in full on their own pages and on our campaign development page, which leads on that creative work.
Where this stops, and who picks it up
Two boundaries are worth stating plainly, because getting them wrong is the usual reason a digital program stalls.
The central idea for a campaign, and the creative work that makes it exist, belong to campaign development. We decide what the channels are for; that page decides what runs in them.
Paid efficiency, bidding, and the question of why spend has stopped scaling belong to performance marketing. Vivaldi buys no media on either page, and anyone telling you the fix is a better bidding strategy has not looked at whether there is demand to bid on.
Why companies choose Vivaldi for digital marketing consulting
We have no media to sell you and no production capacity to keep busy, so a recommendation to spend less in a channel costs us nothing. That is not a moral claim, it is a structural one, and it is worth checking in any firm you shortlist.
We also come at channels from demand rather than from platforms: what customers are trying to get done and how brands earn preference for it is the question underneath a channel plan. Our partners are the people in the room, and the work that follows is briefed to your teams and your agencies rather than retained by us. The firm has worked this way since 1999, across 10 offices on four continents.
How to evaluate a digital marketing consultant
Worth asking of any firm on your shortlist, including us.
- Ask what they sell: strategy, execution, or both. Both is legitimate and common. It also creates an interest in recommending more activity, so know which one you are buying.
- Ask how they treat demand creation. A firm that judges every line on last-click return will optimize you into a smaller market very efficiently.
- Ask them to name a channel they would cut. A plan with no subtractions in it is an allocation table, not a strategy.
- Ask how the result gets defended in a planning round. If the answer is engagement rate, the work will not survive the first budget challenge.
- Ask who writes the brief the agencies work from. If nobody does, the channel roles will be decided by whoever shouts in the next status meeting.
Strategy consultancy vs digital agency vs in-house team?
| Criterion | Digital strategy consultancy | Digital or social agency | In-house marketing team |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it decides | What the channels are for, which ones to fund, which to drop, and how each is judged | What runs in the channels, and how well it is made and distributed | The annual plan, within the structure and budgets already in place |
| Typical output | Channel roles, messaging architecture, a measurement model and briefs others execute | Content, campaigns, community management, media plans and reporting | Calendars, budgets, agency management and monthly performance reviews |
| Commercial interest | No media or production revenue, so cutting a channel costs it nothing | Revenue usually scales with activity and spend | Neutral, but structurally attached to the channels it already owns |
| How success is judged | Preference movement and acquisition cost, split between creating and converting demand | Reach, engagement and campaign performance | Delivery against the plan that was approved |
| Best when | Nobody can explain what half the channel plan is for | The plan is settled and the execution needs to be better | The plan is settled and the question is throughput |
Related work
Channel decisions rarely arrive alone. Four connected pieces:
- Campaign development if what the plan is missing is a central idea rather than an allocation.
- Performance marketing if paid spend has stopped scaling and the bidding is not the reason.
- Segmentation and targeting if targeting is still built from platform audiences rather than from demand.
- Marketplaces and social commerce if the question has moved from what to say to how transactions actually run through these surfaces.
This is part of our brand acceleration work, which turns brand meaning into demand, and it sits alongside marketing strategy, which sets the plan these channels live inside.
Digital marketing consulting in the US and worldwide
We work with US headquartered companies from New York and with international businesses from our other offices, 10 in total across four continents. Channel questions are rarely confined to one market: a format that carries the argument in one country can be unavailable, saturated or culturally wrong in the next, and a centrally written plan tends to assume otherwise.
Engagements usually run six to ten weeks for the objective, demand, channel roles and measurement, and longer where the underlying proposition is unresolved, because that has to be settled first. See also our writing on building brands without mass media and on cultural trends in social and digital.
Start with what your digital plan is actually funding
A working session on the split between demand creation and conversion in your current plan, which channels can do the job they have been given, and what each one owes you in evidence.
