As of 2022, the number of smartphone users was 6.64 billion, and the number is projected to increase to 7.5 billion by 2026. Another study reveals that almost 5 billion people use social media today.
This figure hugely impacts mobile advertisement, as it means there’s a wide audience for social media marketing campaigns done by businesses. By 2028, the global social media advertising market is expected to be worth $262.62 billion.
Going by these figures, social media marketing is an in-demand and lucrative business. In fact, the number of jobs for advertising and marketing managers is projected to grow by 10% from 2021 to 2031.
Starting a social media marketing agency can be a smart business move. This article provides practical insights and expert advice for establishing a thriving agency.
What is Social Media Marketing, and Why Do Businesses Need It?
Social Media Marketing is the use of social channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to promote a product or service by creating platform-specific content. Companies use this type of marketing to spread the word about their brand, attract potential customers, and get to know them.
Social media marketing is different from other kinds of advertising because it lets brands and their customers talk to each other. It allows businesses to build communities and get to know their customers more personally. Ultimately, this helps to drive traffic to their websites and increase revenue.
Because most social media platforms have built-in data analytics, it is easy to figure out how well a brand’s content strategies work and how engaged people are.
Social Media Advertising is vital for businesses for several reasons, the most important of which is the amount of brand exposure it gives. Unlike other types of marketing, this one is not limited by geographical boundaries. With it, brands can convert prospects even in international markets.
How to Set Up Your Agency
You can’t possibly wake up on a Monday morning, fancy rendering some social media services, and then set up a social media marketing agency. Many processes and plans go into it, and some of them have been outlined;
Define Your Niche
Before you can set up shop for a social media marketing company, you must adequately define the niche you would love to work in. You can narrow it down to an industry or one social media channel you are familiar with.
For instance, some marketers strictly work in the beauty, entertainment, fashion, or real estate industries, while others focus on LinkedIn or Instagram.
You must play to your strengths to find the one that fits you. Your asset might be a large following on Instagram, or expertise on how LinkedIn works as a marketing tool.
On the other hand, you might just dig the cryptocurrency crowd.
These are pointers on what aspect to focus on.
When choosing a niche, you need to do research to find the best social media platform to reach your audience. You also have to think about content strategies for how best to appeal to them.
Some marketers provide social media services in more than one niche, but it’s best to start small if you are a newbie. Each industry and social media platform has its own rules and ways of working, and so the marketing strategy to be used would have to be different for each. As such, doing content marketing for different industries at the same time can be stressful and lead to burnout.
On the other hand, choosing a niche will help you focus your time and energy on an area of business or social media where you already have a large following. When you think you’re a pro at your chosen niche and have mastered it, you can add additional services.
You have nothing to lose by focusing on creating a specific piece of content. Instead, it helps you grow your knowledge and expertise until you become an authority in your chosen field. With that kind of expertise, it is given that clients will appreciate you more, which ultimately will improve your pricing.
Finding a niche also helps you have a clearly defined list of your target clients. This helps you know how to find, attract, and convert them into paying customers.
Determine Your Services and Set Your Pricing
After choosing a niche, the next thing on the list is to define the kind of social media services your proposed agency would render. Social Media Marketing is an umbrella with various segments under it.
Some services offered by agencies include;
- Content creation
- Account creation and Branding
- Campaign and Community Management
- Strategy Planning
- Social Media Consulting
- Content Publishing
No matter what service you choose, it’s best to tell clients up front about the marketing services they’ll get from you and give them a good deal.
After you decide what services you will offer as a social media marketing agency, you need to set your prices. You don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot by underselling yourself; you also don’t want to push away potential customers by being unaffordable.
You must thus conduct your research, consider your factors, and set a pricing method.
While setting your pricing, endeavor to create a draft contract defining the agency-client relationship. The terms of the contract would specify the method of payment, the extent of your responsibilities, as well as their obligations.
Create a Business Plan
As the adage goes, “Proper planning prevents poor preparation.” This shows that you need much planning to make anything work well, including a social media marketing business.
You have to sit down to determine your goals. What do you intend to get out of a social media advertising agency? What kind of services would the agency render? How do you attract your clients? What parameters would you use in employing workers? What is the long-term goal? What is your growth trajectory, and how do you achieve it?
Your answer to these questions will form part of your business plan.
A well-written business plan will help you better understand your proposed agency and help you predict and keep up with ever-changing industry trends. Because you have a clear picture of what you want your business to be, your steps and decisions will be more defined. You can devise working strategies to achieve your business goals and objectives.
At its core, a business plan is a compass that states what decisions you’re to take regarding every aspect of your business, from employee relations and finance to marketing.
Your plan must also properly evaluate the resources you have at your disposal. What is the estimated amount of venture capital the agency would need to come alive? How do you get sponsors for it?
If the type of marketing you’re going into is content creation, do you have the technical know-how? If not, how do you get it? Is your budget big enough to cater to an employee who is creative for that role?
Basically, it is at this stage that you ask all the questions: the whats, whens, and hows.
Since you’re new to the field, you might not have an exhaustive list of what to include in your plan. You can get help from tools like Upmetrics, Growthink, and Smartsheet, which have business plan templates for social media marketers.
Build and Nurture Your Clientele
At this juncture, your business plan must have clarified who your ideal client is and how to attract them. When you have made a list of brands you would love to work with, you have to strategize how to pitch them.
Cold pitching is one method of reaching out to potential clients. Studying the brand and its social media marketing techniques is an interesting way to go about this. When you appraise their style, try to find genuine loopholes.
Highlight these loopholes, the impact on the business, and what you’d do differently in the cold email you send. If you can market well, the email should grab their attention.
You can also build your clientele by attending conferences and networking events to meet people and expand your network. Tell people about your agency and why they should trust their marketing to you.
Utilizing social media channels like LinkedIn and Instagram to identify and connect with prospects is another way to go. These platforms give you a chance to engage them since there is hardly a brand that does not have a social presence. If you can sell yourself well, then you shouldn’t have trouble.
Meanwhile, some businesses seek the services of social media marketers on freelancing job sites. Even though these contracts usually only last for a few months initially, they can turn into long-term partnerships.
You can build your clientele through partnerships like this. When you deliver, ensure that you produce results beyond their expectations.
As a newbie social media marketer, you can also win the hearts of potential clients by offering them pro bono or discounted services. You can use this to establish relationships, build brand values and gain experience.
Create Brand Visibility and a Strong Portfolio
In the media space, the greatest sin is not to be seen. This is even worse if you advertise businesses for a living. How do you want a brand to trust you with marketing if your agency is not even on the social web map?
As a new social media agency, you must know how to position yourself strategically on the web. You can give your agency a presence online by making a website where you post blog posts on a regular basis. You can also open a Google My Business account or use other social channels that enhance your social presence.
When you pitch to potential clients, they need to determine that you’re the right person for the job by checking your digital footprint. The kind of content you put up on your blog posts can help convert them, inasmuch as it is strategic.
A top-notch portfolio also goes a long way because it explains why brands should choose you even though you’re just starting. The saying, “Seeing is believing,” is possibly more emphasized in business. For people to work with you, they must see what you’ve done in the past and are capable of.
Potential clients are interested in seeing the brands you’ve worked with and their testimonials about your service. So, let your portfolio do the sales talk.
Consider volunteering if you’re starting from scratch and have never managed a brand’s social media presence. You might want to consider volunteering for non-profit organizations and offering specialized services. You are free to experiment as much as you like in order to improve your skill sets.
You will not only get to include this in your portfolio, but you will also gain hands-on experience in social media advertising. Your portfolio should go on your website and social media accounts, along with its performance analytics. The analytics show the return on investment of your services.
Meanwhile, more is needed than just to create an online presence; you must also learn to maintain it. You must constantly upload quality content and interact with your audience.
Although social media marketing is a numbers game, don’t get too hung up on the size of your audience. Sometimes, the quality of the audience matters; Paul Brunson will tell you that much. You never know who is watching.
Join Communities
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
In the business world, especially for entrepreneurs, you can’t say enough about how important communities are. Participating in communities broadens your exposure. You get to meet marketers who have gone ahead, and they could educate you on their experiences and mistakes to avoid.
You may also meet other creatives you can collaborate with. Building a business from scratch is a challenging feat. You will need every bit of help and encouragement you can get, and having a network of people in similar fields makes the journey easier.
When you relate to people, you get more clarity about your social media agency. You would decide whether you want to run a sole proprietorship or rely on the resources of others.
Communities are a powerful tool for creatives. Never underestimate it.
Learn Automation
No matter which aspect of social media marketing you decide to delve into, chances are that you might need help to keep up. This is because the business involves implementing social media marketing strategies, creating content, handling social media marketing campaigns, generating leads, post-scheduling, tracking user engagement, etc.
With the workload, it is only natural to look to technology for support. Work automation is the use of computers to carry out jobs requiring specialized and in-depth knowledge. With the right automation technologies, you won’t need to keep a constant eye on the work being done.
One benefit of automation for a new business owner is using others’ expertise without paying for extra hands. As a result, it helps to keep your overhead expenses low, which you would mostly need because of your budget.
Another thing automation does for you is that it makes for easier and faster processes. Because you’re just getting started in new waters, you may become quickly overwhelmed or discouraged, particularly during downtimes.
Automating the social media marketing process also helps you enhance productivity. Since you can outsource tedious and demanding tasks, you can concentrate on high-value tasks and make room for innovation in your business.
How Do You Pitch Social Media Marketing?
You can pitch social media marketing to prospective clients by sticking to this guide;
Get to Know Your Potential Clients
As much as it can be tempting to create a general pitch deck, don’t do it. No two brands are the same, not even businesses that sell the same product. Although they serve the same market, they are guided by different principles and may have different goals.
Hence, you should get to know your prospective client on a personal level so you can know how to pitch to them. You must study and understand their service or product, past marketing efforts, and social media goals.
You should also look for weaknesses in their current social media strategies and come up with solutions to those weaknesses.
A pitch that is tailored to the person is more likely to work than one that is based on general factors like price and benchmarks.
Assess Their Competitors
The presence of competitors underscores the need for brand promotion. Although marketing helps raise awareness, there may not be as much emphasis if there is a monopoly.
Because competitors are so important, evaluating your potential brand’s competitors and how they operate only makes sense. What is their selling point? What is their weakness, and how can you exploit this to benefit your client?
You must look into their marketing strategy, brand tone, and content pillars to do this. Whatever information you get from this research will shape your pitch deck since you can show your clients how to make them stand out from their competitors.
The point of this is not to copy the competitors but to identify the gaps in the market and their strategies and exploit them for your client’s benefit.
Show How You Can Help
While identifying market gaps is an excellent way to get a client’s attention, it will be short-lived if you can’t provide solutions. The main idea is to show clients how your service offerings would tackle the social media challenges you have identified.
First, you start with an introduction to your agency and area(s) of expertise. You can then follow up with the importance of social media advertising and why brands need to prioritize it in their marketing plans.
After this step, you discuss what went wrong with the brand’s media strategy and how to fix it. You will give them a detailed list of the services you offer that you think they should use to improve their social media presence.
Describe Your Working Method
Lofty ideas are attractive, but potential clients want to see the skill sets that would bring those ideas to fruition. Far beyond painting a picture, you must highlight your working style and process, which will bring the picture to life.
If the service you’re recommending is content creation, discuss how you would do it and the main ideas. How often would you create social media content? What social content tools are you using?
Define what the relationship would be so that the strategy can be effective. Who would be responsible for the ideation, creation, review, and approval?
Also, how would you measure the success of your marketing strategy? What are the metrics for measuring the return on investment? How often would you send in your progress report?
Showbiz
Giving prospective clients insight into why you are the best person for the job would be the icing on the cake. Since this is showbiz, you want to support your talk with social proof and statistics of successful projects you’ve undertaken in the past.
Including past clients’ testimonials will help you further make your point. This is an easy way to build your clients’ trust in your social media marketing wizardry.
Meanwhile, the testimonials and case studies you highlight must be relevant. This means they should be from clients within the same industry or offering similar products or services.
What are the Top 3 Social Media Marketing Tips?
There are several social media marketing tips you want to pay attention to in your service offerings as a social media marketer, but we’ll focus on three;
Create a Social Media Posting Schedule
This would inform you on when to upload some piece of content on a brand’s social media. You shouldn’t always be in their faces. In the same vein, don’t be so scarce that your followers lose interest.
Define Social Media Voice and Tone
Is the brand strictly professional or laid-back? The social media tone you invent should align with that of the brand. Also, make the tone interesting; consumers want something they can relate to.
Double Check Hashtag Before Using Them
As a brand, you don’t want to make the same mistake DiGiorno made in 2014. Do your research.
FAQs
The 80/20 rule states that 80% of your social media posts should benefit your audience. It should either entertain them, educate them, or address their problem(s). Only 20% of your posts should be social media ads that explicitly market your product or service.
This rule considers that most people use social media for entertainment rather than to be sold. When the audience is always entertained, it is easy to build long-term relationships that lead to brand loyalty.
A Social Media Marketing Agency is a business initiative that helps brands grow their businesses through social media channels. Companies hire these agencies to make sure that their social media campaigns and strategies are in line with their business goals and objectives.
The goal of hiring these agencies is to set up and improve a brand’s online presence, build brand loyalty among target markets, and, in the end, make more money.
With about 2.9 billion active users, Facebook is still the best social media for marketing. It is the most popular social media platform in the world, meaning people are loyal to it.
These figures make it easier to reach a larger audience, whether your market is B2B or B2C. Clients can easily obtain a quick return on investment this way.
You can pursue an interest in social media marketing as a newbie if you can live by this;
1. Take courses on Social Media Marketing.
2. Volunteer to manage social media accounts for non-profits and small businesses
3. Join a community
Conclusion
The impact of social media on brands’ marketing strategy cannot be overemphasized. With almost 60% of the world’s population on social media platforms, there is no denying that it’s the one place companies can boast of a wide reach.
Starting a social media marketing agency is a great way to capitalize on this growing trend. By following the tips and strategies outlined in this post, you can set yourself up for success in this competitive field.
From identifying your target market, to creating a strong brand and building a solid team, the key to success is preparation and hard work. So, take the first step today and turn your passion for social media into a thriving business.
