Well, you have two types of marketing consultants. You have the big major firms that are stuck in the rut of what worked 10 years ago, and what works if you are Coke or K-mart or something, but that type of marketing is useless for CF.

A lot of marketing firms make the mistake of trying to do what's called "brand building" for smaller busineses who do not have (and maybe don't even want to have) the resources for true branding. The idea here is you make everyone aware of something, and when they need it they will come and find you because your product is the one they have been made aware of. Sam Adams is great at this... they have given themselves a niche (beer drinkers beer!) and educate the consumer as to why Sam Adams is the ####. The don't ask you to go to their website, take advantage of a sale, or place an order. They count on the fact that the next time you go to the pub you'll remember that Sam Adams is the beer drinkers beer, and buy one. Firms that do this cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range.

The other kind of marketing is called direct response, and this is what I specialize in. It's a lot simpler... I have a product, I want to show you an advertisement and get you to have a direct response - call me up and buy my crap. This is the type of marketing CF needs to do, because it won't be able to build a brand. (And if it did, it wouldn't be CF anymore.) If you were to hire me on a consulting job, I'd charge you $5,000 for a long day. Sun up to sun down, pouring over your marketing. You would pay my aifare, hotel and meals, but we would hash out a lot of stuff and set you up on the road to success. This is really cheap, because frankly I'm not the best there out there (yet.) In fact I'm often paying people who are more expert than me way more money than this to come pour over my stuff.

I digress.

The cheapest way to do this (and really the best) is to teach someone to fish. Dump a couple grand into educational resources (you can buy these from me, and I'll give you a discount) and give a staff member the know-how to do it themselves.