Social media marketing has been making waves for over a decade.
What makes things more interesting is the millions of users signing up every day and the number of brands trying to capitalize on social media engagement.
There are about 3.48 billion social media users in 2019, with the worldwide total growing by 288 million (9 percent) since this time last year.
This fact tells why Social media marketing is gathering all the attention it has got and I mildly guess it will be ‘the marketing’ possibly in the near future.
Having sound knowledge and experience about marketing in all major social media platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram) is the basic thing.
If you are planning to start a social media marketing agency, here are the following guidelines to build your business.
[I have a feeling that these headlines can also be the secret behind any successful social media agency.]
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Find what your service offering is
Social media marketing agencies not only do campaigns for their clients on major social media platforms, but they also provide a variety of services like copywriting, web design, and content marketing.
Running advertisement campaigns on Facebook and pushing purchases through Instagram are becoming the future of e-commerce selling.
List the services your company can offer and make sure you gain the best juice from your previous work and focusing on results should be a priority.
If the services are not manageable by your team, work with experienced freelancers.
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Register your license or get LLC
Decide the type of company you want to register. These are the types of companies to register from:
- Proprietorship.
- One Person Company.
- Traditional Partnership.
- Limited Liability Partnership (LLP).
- Private Limited Company.
The formalities could be easier if you can find a registering agent. Having a bank account for your business is advisable.
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Name your company
The name of your business should be a trendy, catchy and a classic phrase which will be easy for the people as well as the clients to remember.
You can name your initials and excel at your work to prove your success or might as well name your brand Stratton Oakmont and go unnoticed in the market.
It all depends on what you and your partners decide. If the brand can depict the culture of your company, that would be a nice fit too.
Check out this helpful resource on how to come up with a business name from Looka.
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Choose the best industry suited for your services
Choosing an agency’s expert industry is not a choice. It happens over the success of campaigns run by them.
This process depends on three things.
- Experience of the agency
- Existing network of the core team members in the company
- Referrals from existing clients, friends, and family
It is always good to focus on the success of one campaign at a time. You can evaluate the success of your social media campaigns using Social Animal.
Just enter the URL of the article you have created and press search.
The social media shares of the article will be displayed. Find interesting insights about your article in the Insights tab.
You will have a lot of iterates and learn with these data parameters.
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Find your competition or the best players in the game
Learning about your competition can help you to learn more about your target audience and what makes these players make their clients happy.
One common thing among SEO campaigns, social media campaigns, and print campaigns is that creativity makes them stay on top.
An out of the box thinking is very common among marketers. But what makes a campaign click is the understanding of the business and its audience.
This learning never stops in marketing.
Having a smart approach towards competition monitoring can help your agency garner engagement for your campaigns, reach a similar audience to that of your competitors, and possibly land good clients.
Spyfu – Find your best competition based on traffic and organic rankings using this tool.
Social Animal – Monitor your competition, find what works for them online using content insights and more!
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Create social profiles on all online platforms
Many agencies miss this activity.
They are so busy marketing their client’s business that they forget about promoting their own business.
Publicity is no more in the newspapers. The internet usage is at its peak now and every listing to your agency is a new poster on the walls of the street.
Submit your website to as many business websites as possible. This also gives your new domain a pour of link juice that makes your website visible to Google.
Create profiles on all major social platforms. Most importantly, keep posting content for your audience.
Your first post might not get 100 likes. But it shows the world that you are there!
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Have a solid strategy in place
This step is essential not only to start your agency but also to keep your business journey intact.
Start with creating your mission and vision statements. Mission statements are about your day-to-day operations.
Your vision statement should be an outline of your business goals and where you’re headed in the journey.
Every company has these statements. So, what can make your words special?
Involve your style of work, your business philosophy, and what makes you stand out from your competition in the copy.
It is advisable for you to team with a professional copywriter on this.
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Approach businesses (probably SMBs)
Being new to the business and getting clients on a regular basis is hard.
Now that you have a social media presence and a website, start documenting your journey via a blog.
If the content is good and can help others like you, you will find your audience eventually. Having a Unique Value Proposition at hand can be benefitting in bringing the client on board.
Start by gaining referrals from your existing clients and mail them. Don’t hesitate to follow up.
LinkedIn is also a great platform to reach out to potential clients. You can also gain the attention of businesses in Quora, Reddit and as well as Twitter.
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Provide value first
Giving more and erasing doubts are the best ways to earn your client’s trust. Everything the client cares will their worth of time and money.
Businessmen don’t do businesses. You think I might sound crazy!
But, that’s true.
They work on building relationships. Relationships wouldn’t last if a company can’t hold on to their end of the deal.
Investing in learning more about sales and relationship marketing can help you in the long run.
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Take upon Jobs from online portals
Online portals like Crunchbase, Freelancer.com, and Upwork, etc have a lot of job opportunities that can bring in easy clients.
Find the best job descriptions related to you. Once you believe that the job is what you are made for, apply for it in the platform.
It is okay to negotiate the charges in your early days.
Hope these pointers have given you a broad idea of how to start a social media marketing agency.
If you think you have more to say, comment below.
