How to Start a Social Media Marketing Agency (SMMA)

A social media marketing agency (SMMA) is an agency that is positioned to help other people or businesses grow their online presence and traffic to their websites.

Social media, as we now know, is the prime example of what technology can do to an industry, because of how it has completely transformed the media and advertising industries.

Just like I wrote in one of my posts on how to grow a social media following, data has shown that billions of people around the world visit one social media site or another every day.

It makes good sense that if you want to promote anything, whether a brand ideology or a product, the best place to go is on social media.

Social media is not just a good platform for promotions because of its reach, but also because of its affordability when compared to other traditional medias like TV, Billboard and Radio.

However, promoting on these social media platforms requires some kind of skill, time, and understanding, something most people are not willing to get or do.

This is where the concept of the social media marketing agency comes in and becomes handy.

SMMA is simply an agency that is positioned around helping other people or business grow their online presence, increase traffic to their websites and increase their business sales through social media.

Social media marketing agencies handles a lot of things ranging from managing social media accounts, Running Ads, Doing SEO, Generating Leads etc.

However, in recent time many Agencies have focused more on getting quick results for different companies or individuals by leveraging their expertise to buy Ads on various Ads platform like Google Ads or Facebook Ads with the aim of increasing traffic to their client’s website or physical stores.

Depending on what a client needs, the agency can either drive traffic to their online ecommerce store in other to increase sales or to a portfolio website in other to increase bookings for a service.

Also, this same service works well for offline business, where an agency can drive foot traffic to a particular business by running Ads that are targeted to the people residing in the area where the business is located and inviting them to visit.

To start a SMMA you have to make sure that you understand how the social media platforms work and also that you have tried to use the ideas that you will be selling.

You basically need to know how to post contents and how to write captivating ad copy.

Writing good copy is a very critical skill that you have to learn if you want to succeed in this field.

There are certain things that need to be in place in order to operate in a professional manner and amongst these things are

Requirements for starting a SMMA

Choose a Business name

Choosing a business name is important in this venture because it helps to send a message of credibility to your to-be clients.

You can literarily call your business any name that you like, however, it is usually appealing to pick a name that can easily be related to your kind of business and that will be easy to remember by your clients.

Having a business name will make you sound more professional than someone else who doesn’t have one, and thus gives you an edge when it comes to getting customers.

Pick a niche

Picking a niche is an aspect of business that if done right will always pay dividend in the long run.

It is good that you pick a niche when you are starting off, because this will help you focus on a particular set of businesses or individuals (i.e. Gyms, Restaurants, Dentists, Clubs etc. )

However, if you don’t know what niche to focus on because you are not sure of the possible results you can get and how profitable it will be, then you can cast your net wide and cover as many businesses as possible.

As you progress eventually you will notice the one that is much easier for you to execute and get good results, by then you can branch off and focus on that business.

One of the many importance of focusing on a particular kind of business is that, when you do it over and over you will develop experiences that will make the work much easier and you will have enough resources that you can transfer between different clients since they all have similar businesses.

When you get to that level, you will be able to develop a system and then you will be confident to bring people in and scale it up without any hitch.  

Market yourself

For any business to be successful it has to be profitable and for it to be profitable it has to make sales.

If you don’t tell people what you do, they will not know.

The easiest and effective way to sell your business and a social media marketing agency is to go directly to businesses and tell them about your services.

This may be a daunting task to carry out, especially if you are just starting out, but it is very necessary.

You can either reach out to businesses online or offline.

To reach a business online, it has to have an online presence already like a website. Before reaching out you need to go to the website and study its contents and then try to find out the areas where they are lacking and that you can help them improve.

When you find out their weakness, you can make an analysis of the weakness that you have seen and how you can improve them and also increase their sales.

When you are done with the analysis, you will also include that you will like to have a meeting with them so that you can elaborate more.

If the business is interested they will replay your mail and set up a meeting. All you need to do is to explain what you have already discovered and asked the manager more question and again tell them how your social media marketing agency can help.

If you make a good case, they will ask for your price and if not, you will have to move on to another business.

In picking a price tier, it is good that you have different price tiers, so as to manage your work load; It could be;

• Package one: only running ads
• Package two: SEO and running ads
• Package three: Managing Social media accounts, SEO and Running Ads

Remember this is just an example, you can pick and choose what to do at any level.

However, what ever you do always make sure to include Running Ads, because if you don’t run ads and you are doing only SEO and you are not getting immediate results, the owner of the business we simply assume that you are not doing anything.

So even if you are going to be doing SEO, also include Ads to it.

You can price your package as you see fit, but make sure it is not too cheap and no less than $500 per month, you will increase your price as you gain more experience and have more clients.

NOTE: never run any Ads from your own money, but rather ask the business owner to connect their own credit card to the ads platform so you can run Ads off of their own card.

Outsource

Ones you start getting some success with this business you will quickly realize that it can be very demanding and you could easily get burn outs.

In other to overcome the issues of burn out, you will have to get extra hands to help you in the business ones the accounts you are managing starts to increase.

There are two ways to do this;

1. Hire permanent staffs to assist you in running the day to day activities of managing the different accounts under your care or

2. Outsource the job out to other smart people who have the requisite skills and experiences to handle the kind of tasks you carry out for the different businesses that you consult for

In deciding what hiring method to use, it will be worth it to say that many people have success in outsourcing the jobs to different people remotely who live in different countries where the cost of living is cheaper and thus they generally charge way cheaper to work.

Besides hiring and keeping a full-time staff can be expensive, so you could hire for the key areas and then outsource the rest as you grow.

Countries like India, Philippines, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria and many more countries tend to have some experts that can work for you at a cheaper rate (if you live in the US, UK or other more expensive countries) than whatever it is that you might have charged your clients.

Remember the earlier note that you shouldn’t price your services too cheap, this is to help you in the times that you will need to hire someone else to do the job for you.

Looking for where to hire experts for your jobs? Just go to Fiverr and you will get people willing to do your tasks for you at a cheap rate.

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