How to Start a Social Media Marketing Agency
Social media marketing rules the world of the internet. As a result, many entrepreneurs and freelance marketers want to dive into this colorful sector. However, starting a social media marketing agency has its benefits and challenges just like every other small business.
Starting a social media marketing agency is not hard if you work hard enough. There are some essential steps to take if you want to enter the list of the best social media agencies for startups and big companies. Here we provide you a guide that will enhance your entrepreneurship skills.
Keep Yourself Up-to-date
This is the most essential step towards success. Educating yourself to know enough about digital marketing is something you need during every single process of your business. Keeping yourself up-to-date requires dedicating time, energy, and money.
To be a successful marketer, you need to follow the sector very closely. You should have a holistic approach to digital marketing to grasp the dynamics of the basics such as PPC (pay-per-click marketing), SEO, e-mail marketing, online marketing, content marketing, and graphic design. Once you know the basics well, it is easier to follow the novel trends.
Determine Your Niche
To prevent yourself from being overwhelmed under harsh competition when you start your social media agency, it is quite wise to take small steps at the beginning. Before starting marketing on social media, you need to pick an audience that will be interested in what your agency is doing.
A niche means the focus of your agency. It can be the method you follow or the audience that you intend to target. Determining your niche will help you figure out the best platforms and industries for you while you are gaining some experience.
Before determining your niche, it is significant to pick a sector that specifically attracts you or a sector about which you have some familiarity. This will help you move quickly. Otherwise, it will be hard to get used to a completely unknown sector.
How to determine your niche? There are various ways to do that. For example, you can initially focus on a single social media platform instead of many. Remember that all platforms have different requirements and different users. You can start from Instagram instead of Twitter until you get used to the sector you chose. Then you can always branch out into other platforms.
After choosing a sector and a social media platform, you can continue creating your niche by determining the scope of your services. For example, at first, you can focus on some specific tasks like SEO marketing before taking content marketing projects as well.
Make a Business Plan
Deciding on your business structure will help you develop a solid foundation for your business. The first concern is choosing which type of business you will legally initiate. You can consider a sole proprietorship, a partnership, or a limited liability company according to the number of founders and the scale of your business.
Choosing a suitable name is another vital aspect that will determine your first impression. Your name should be unique and easy to pronounce. Before developing your business name, you should also consider a domain name for your web site. If the domain name is taken, you can consider other name options since your website should be easily accessible.
The next task is to check your county’s laws and arrange the legal complications including registrations and taxes. You should also open a separate bank account for your business to order your finances and increase your purchasing power and legitimacy.
Another important task to do is to get the right social media management tools that suit the specific needs of your business. The types of these tools are scheduling tools and image makers. Scheduling tools allow you to set your social media posts in advance. Image makers help you create catchy graphics and banners.
In the beginning, it is enough to utilize the essential tools according to the scale of your business. However, you will probably need more advanced tools as your agency grows. The examples above are just the essentials for starting smma.
Create Your Portfolio
As you know, the actual point of starting a digital marketing agency is to provide your customers with your useful products and services. Firstly you should think about the questions of what and why are you selling, and at how much cost these all will come to you.
While you are planning your products, you can consider the following aspects: high-quality and original content, audience acquisition through gaining followers and increasing influence, and lead generation. You do not have to focus on them all at once. Especially in terms of cost, you should keep your products at scale and take incremental steps.
Once you are done designing your products or services and putting them in use, it is time to prepare your portfolio including in-depth case studies, client testimonials, and upcoming goals for your specific clients. After all, you will need to get excellent reviews from your customers to attract potential ones. As a beginner, make sure that your portfolio is simple and honest, as you grow, you can expand your portfolio to include other pieces of work.
Present Yourself on the Internet
It is quite normal that you do not have much experience in the initial phase of your business. Yet, you can create a difference from the very beginning by establishing your online presence with care and attention. After arranging a domain name and hosting service, you can launch your website. You should be very attentive to its design since the website is quite important in your customers’ decisions.
As a social media agency, you want to be successfully invisible on social media as well. The most important social media platforms are completely free to use, you should definitely give it a try. By creating a social media presence, you can benefit from organic lead generation, engaging with customers and potential customers, and carry your business to a professional level.
To be convincing enough, you need to show that you know social media marketing well. You can use your platform and industry niche to ensure that you can reach your target audience. For example, if you are comfortable with using Instagram and your industry niche is tourism, you can focus on presenting your business as a tourism figure on Instagram. Furthermore, once you have established your internet presence, you can be a part of the Digital Agency Network to attract new customers.
Gather a Good Team for Starting a Social Media Agency
You need the help of a team of educated individuals to expand your business. Yet, initially, it might not be wise to hire a fully-fledged team. The question of who you will hire depends on your financial resources. You can start with a virtual assistant for administrative tasks, an accountant for financial processes, and a marketer for lead generation.
Once you start to settle down, it is ideal to hire graphic artist freelancers, content writers, and advertising technicians. A social media consultant can be quite helpful to present your brand too. Make sure that your team members have good communicative skills in addition to technical ones.
Having a harmonious, skillful team is one of the greatest achievements your business can have. Once your team is dedicated to creating valuable products and services, you can focus on the management of your business considering your clients’ specific expectations.
Track Your Progress and Generate Leads
Now you have your niche, business plan, portfolio, website, and social media accounts. Your excellent team is working for you. Your name is slowly being heard in the sector. Increasing your reputation and keeping it up is your final and vital task.
Starting social media agency requires constantly increasing the quality of your content with the help of new targets. You should have relevant targets for your business and carefully keep track of your progress. You should monitor your progress using the necessary tools. We are back to the first step: keeping yourself up-to-date. If you closely follow the developments in your sector, you can easily create a plan for your future considering what your competitors are doing.
Lead generation is the backbone that will keep your business standing successfully. For lead generation, you need to satisfy your existing customers to get impressive feedback from them. You need to demonstrate that hiring you was a good choice for your customers. Remember that new customers will reach out to you according to your previous work.
To increase your number of customers, you should follow LinkedIn closely to add new connections. You can also prepare a list of local businesses that you want to target and send e-mails to their decision-makers. Successful social media campaigns will help you grow your customer base.
We tried to provide a roadmap to dive into the competitive world of social media agencies. If you can maintain novelty and productivity in your social media agency, and keep your customers engaged, you can eventually have an unrivaled place in the marketplace.
