A marketing consultancy should start by reading your numbers, not by reading you a pitch. Delivix is a Glasgow studio that consults the way engineers debug: audit the data, find the real constraint, fix that first. No open-ended retainers, no deck full of buzzwords, and a fixed written quote before any work begins.
We are two brothers, Saad Tariq and Sheikh Ahmad, senior specialists on Whitefield Road with more than 15 years of combined experience across SEO, paid media, web and content. That mix matters for consultancy: most marketing problems cross channels, and advice is only useful when the person giving it has actually run the channel they are advising on.
Returning readers may notice this page used to be a worldwide ranking of consulting firms. We have replaced it with the page a Glasgow business comparing consultants actually needs: what consultancy should look like, and how to test whether it is working before you pay for it.
Contents
- How we consult
- What we look at first
- Consultant, agency or in-house
- Proof it works
- What it costs
- Testing a consultant before you hire one
- Talk to us
- Frequently asked questions
How we consult
1. Audit before advice. We start inside your Google Analytics, Search Console and ad accounts, not inside a slide template. Sixteen months of your own data says more about your market than any industry report.
2. Rank by return. Every finding gets ordered by expected impact against effort. You get a short list of moves worth making, not forty recommendations nobody will ever action.
3. Execute only what the data supports. Because we also build and run websites, SEO campaigns and paid media, we can deliver the plan ourselves. But the consultancy stands on its own: the report is yours, and you can take it to your own team.
What we look at first
The same handful of problems accounts for most stalled marketing in the businesses we see, so the audit goes looking for them in order. Where does each enquiry actually come from, and does your tracking prove it? Which spend produces enquiries and which produces activity? Is the website converting the visitors you already pay for, or leaking them? And is your search visibility going to the pages that sell, or to pages that just get read? That last failure is one we know intimately: we rebuilt our own site this year after our data showed exactly that pattern, and we publish what we found because the lesson generalises.
Consultant, agency or in-house
These are different tools for different situations, and honest advice starts with which one you actually need.
| Marketing consultant | Marketing agency | In-house hire | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best when | Results stalled, cause unclear | Plan is clear, hands needed | Constant year-round workload |
| You pay for | Diagnosis and direction | Execution and volume | Salary, tools, management |
| Risk | Advice with no execution | Execution against the wrong plan | One person covering six skills |
| Typical structure | Project or day rate | Monthly retainer | Employment |
We deliberately sit across the first two columns: diagnosis first, execution when the data says it is worth it. What we refuse to do is the classic agency failure, billing a retainer for activity while the underlying strategy stays unexamined. If your marketing needs a rethink rather than more volume, start with the consultancy, then decide about execution with the evidence in front of you. Our full delivery capability is on the Glasgow digital marketing page. And if the diagnosis says you need an execution agency, our ranking of the best growth marketing agencies in the UK is an honest place to build the shortlist.
Proof it works
Consultancy claims are cheap, so here are engagements where diagnosis changed the outcome. Two of the three come with numbers you can check in the case studies.
- Research Prospect. The diagnosis was structural: content depth and site architecture were capping organic growth. The rebuilt programme lifted organic traffic 107.7% and put more than 30 keywords on page one. Read the Research Prospect case study.
- First Digital Media. A marketing agency whose own site undersold it. The rebuild focused on speed, structure and measurement, and conversions rose 50%. The full numbers are in the First Digital Media case study.
- AAG Foods. A traditional business that needed its digital foundations put right before growth spend made any sense. Read the AAG Foods case study.
What it costs
Three pricing structures dominate this market. Day rates suit short, well-defined questions. Fixed-scope projects suit audits and strategy work, because you know the deliverable and the price before you commit. Retainers are fine when they buy defined ongoing work; that is how our own SEO campaigns run. It is the open-ended kind, billing monthly with no defined deliverable, that pays for the problem staying unsolved. We quote consultancy fixed and in writing after a discovery call, sized to the problem, and the discovery call itself costs nothing. If the audit finds less upside than our fee, we say so and part as friends.
Testing a consultant before you hire one
Run these checks on anyone you shortlist, us included.
1. Ask what data they want before the first meeting. A consultant who can advise without seeing your analytics is guessing. The first thing they should request is access to your numbers.
2. Ask for one falsifiable claim. Real consultants make predictions that can turn out wrong: this change should lift enquiries within a quarter. Vague promises about brand visibility cannot fail, which is why they get made.
3. Ask who does the work. Consultancies love to sell partners and deliver juniors. Here it is the two of us or nobody.
4. Ask what they would not sell you. Anyone whose diagnosis always matches their own service list is selling, not consulting. We will advise against spend, including our own services, and the audit report shows the working.
Talk to us
If your marketing has stalled and nobody can tell you why, that is exactly the problem we like, whether you are in Glasgow or anywhere in Scotland. Tell us what is happening and we will come back with an honest read and a fixed quote for the audit. If the answer is that you do not need a consultant yet, you will get that answer free.