Grow Your Brand and Refine Your SaaS Design with Product Consulting Services.

Hiring a design and product consultant brings fresh perspectives, expertise in best practices, and tailored strategies that can enhance product development, UX (user experience), and market success. A design and product consultant can also help you identify your most critical areas for improvement and create a prioritized product roadmap that aligns to your overall business goals and is both time and cost efficient.

Hiring a consultant can feel like a high upfront cost, but ultimately save your business money by helping you optimize business processes, identify cost-saving opportunities, and improving overall operational efficiency. Additionally, many consultants (like me!) offer staff augmentation services, essentially acting as a temporary resource to help you complete a project. This allows you to avoid the risky onboarding costs of hiring a permanent staff member without knowing the LTV of the role, while also benefiting from a consultant’s expertise.

Consulting supports the development of innovative products by providing expert guidance on best practices, market trends, and creative problem-solving techniques that drive product differentiation and market success.

A consultant offers expert advice and strategy. A freelancer executes specific tasks or projects independently. Consultants focus heavily on working with clients to understand their specific needs & goals, providing advice and guidance on business decisions. Freelancers typically deliver tangible works (landing pages, prototypes, etc.) that fit into an organization’s existing strategy.

Consulting provides access to expert knowledge and creative problem-solving techniques, helping businesses innovate more effectively and create products that stand out in the market.

Product design encompasses the entire lifecycle of a product, from initial concept to prototyping, testing, launch, and continuous iterations. Product designers partner closely with product managers to gain a deep understanding of user behavior, market trends, and the technical aspects of product development.

A successful product designer also partners closely with market & UX researchers. They leverage data and align a product’s form & function with the overall competitive landscape, business goals, and user expectations.

Product management is overseeing a product’s lifecycle—from idea to launch to continuous improvement cycles. It involves market research, strategy, development, and collaboration with business stakeholders & technical teams to meet customer needs and business goals.

Product marketing is the process of bringing a product to market, promoting it, and often supporting it with materials for sales or even users. It involves understanding the target audience, crafting the product messaging, positioning, and launching campaigns to drive demand and adoption. Product marketers work closely with product management, sales, and marketing teams to ensure that the product meets customer needs and that its value is communicated effectively.

Marketing is a broad discipline that includes all activities related to promoting and driving sales for a product or service. It covers market research, advertising, public relations, and overall brand strategy. Product marketing is more focused on the product/service, itself; is a specific subset of marketing that focuses on the strategies and tactics involved in bringing a product to market (see “what is product marketing?”, above).

Effective branding ultimately builds emotional connections with your target audience, leading to increases customer trust & loyalty, and an ultimate end-goal of more repeat business. Clear, user-driven branding also differentiates you from competitors with a stronger value proposition & better market positioning.

Look for consultants with experience in your industry, a strong portfolio, and a holistic & collaborative approach. A good consultant should ask many questions up-front instead of immediately jumping into solutions. Focus on those that understand your goals and can help you articulate them clearly, delivering a cohesive brand strategy.

Full cycle design is a holistic approach to any design project—from it’s initial concept through implementation—it considers everything from consistent branding across all touchpoints, enhancing customer experience, ongoing optimization, and alignment with overall business goals.

NN/g defines service design as, "Planning and organizing a business’s resources to improve experiences." Essentially, service design focuses on creating seamless, user-friendly experiences by aligning people, processes, and props (technology). It goes beyond feature delivery to consider all steps that may be impacted by this new/updated feature—closely minding how the system operates behind the scenes—with the ultimate goal of improving the overall experience

These terms are often used interchangeably but are not the same thing. Service design is a portion of fully cycle design that zeroes in on improving service delivery and UX, whereas full cycle design addresses every stage of a branding or product journey, ensuring cohesion from start to finish. Both enhance branding but focus on different aspects of user interaction and execution. strategy.