Many companies think a performance marketing consultant is "the person who switches on the campaigns on Google and Meta". It is the most visible work, but it is only one part, often not the most important one, of what really happens.
Before the campaign: analysis and strategy
Before touching any advertising budget, a serious consultant analyzes what already exists: historical data, if available, the structure of the site or e-commerce store, positioning against competitors, and above all whether the existing tracking is reliable. On this basis they build a strategy that defines which channels to use, with what priority, and with what budget, before even creating the first campaign.
During: management, tracking, continuous optimization
The visible part of the work, campaign management, includes creating ads, defining audiences, managing budget and bids. But the part that really makes the difference is the less visible one: constant monitoring of tracking (which can break because of a site update, an e-commerce platform change, a modification to the contact form) and optimization based on data, not on feelings or on what worked elsewhere.
After: reports, decisions and project management over time
A useful report is not a list of numbers, it is a document that explains what happened, why, and what will be done as a result. This phase also includes broader decisions: when to move budget from one channel to another, when to test a new advertising format, when it is time to review the overall strategy instead of limiting yourself to small tactical adjustments.
What a performance marketing consultant usually does not do
It is worth being clear on this too. A performance marketing consultant, unless specifically agreed otherwise, does not normally produce complex creative content such as professional videos or an entire social editorial plan, does not build websites from scratch, and does not replace an internal sales function: they optimize traffic and conversions up to the point where the lead enters the sales process, but what happens afterwards, in the commercial negotiation, depends on the company.
How to tell whether the consultant you are evaluating really does this work
A simple question helps you understand right away: ask to see, even in anonymized form, a real report they delivered to another client. If the report is full of numbers without interpretation, or contains only screenshots of platform dashboards without written reasoning on top, it is a sign that the analysis and strategy part may be weaker than it seems from the sales presentation.