Why work with a social media advertising agency?
Social media is a dominant force in the digital landscape to penetrate new markets and reach ideal customers where they’re already spending their time.
Why social media marketing matters
Whether you choose to focus on paid advertising (also called PPC advertising), organic social media marketing, or a combination of both – there’s plenty of scope to increase brand awareness and build trust with your target audience online. What’s more, the proliferation of data and analytics means social media is a more powerful tool than ever before, with 50 per cent of adults agreeing that it helps them discover products and services that interest them.
That being said, social media marketing isn’t a walk in the park. It requires skills and resources that not every company has access to in-house. For that reason, many businesses and organisations turn to social media advertising or marketing agencies to handle select aspects or all of their social media activity.
What is a social media marketing agency?
Social media marketing agencies are composed of dedicated teams of professionals that can manage all aspects of marketing across various social media platforms. The agency works with clients to ensure their social media strategies align with overarching business goals and marketing objectives they might have.
What do social media agencies do?
Social media agencies carry out various roles and responsibilities depending on the needs of their clients. They possess the knowledge and expertise to identify the best social media channels to help brands reach their target audience and to define social strategies.
Social media marketing services can include:
Organic social media marketing
This involves the creation and dissemination of content on your business’ social networks to boost engagement directly with the target audience.
Paid advertising
The creation, publication and management of ad campaigns, using tools like Facebook Ad Manager, Instagram for Business and other social media ad tools.
What does being a full-service social media marketing company mean?
A full-service social media marketing agency handles everything related to each of your social accounts, including organic and paid content creation, campaign management and strategy. Instead of focusing on a specific area of your social media marketing strategy or specialising in one or a few social networks, the agency handles it all.
What can a social media marketing company do for your business?
As mentioned above, social media marketing agencies carry out several different roles and responsibilities on behalf of their clients. Primarily, the agency outlines and sets campaign objectives and provides advice about which channels to promote on.
They have in-depth knowledge of social media platforms – including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok and even others such as Pinterest – and how to tailor strategies and content creation to achieve the best results across specific networks.
What are the benefits of working with a social media marketing agency?
What are the benefits of social media marketing? You’re likely already aware that there are plenty. From increasing brand awareness to building an engaged community of loyal followers – there are many reasons marketers are obsessed with social media.
With over five billion active users across social networks worldwide, people are spending more time than ever before on social media – an average of 143 minutes per day – making it a lucrative and affordable way for brands to reach their audience where they’re already spending their time.
Social media marketing yields numerous benefits for businesses of all sizes. By sharing content and engaging with your audience on social media, you can humanise your brand and establish a deeper level of connection with existing and potential customers.
You can work with a team of experts
Social media agencies are made up of skilled individuals with a broad range of expertise. From understanding the best-paid advertising strategies to knowing the ins and outs of influencer marketing – they work together to plan and execute social campaigns that drive ROI and build brand awareness. Some key roles that make up an agency include:
- Social media account managers
- Paid social managers
- Strategists
- Copywriters and other types of content creators
- Videographers
- Graphic designers
Access to the right tools and technologies
One immediate benefit of working with a social media agency is that they have all the essential tools for executing and measuring social campaigns – and they know how to leverage them for the best results.
These tools include reporting and analytics software, social strategy planning tools and high-quality video production equipment.
Instead of spending your budget on each piece of software or equipment, a social media agency that uses these tools daily will enable you to get maximum value from them.
Tailored social media management for your brand
One aspect of working with a social media agency is that you’ll have access to all of their skills and expertise that will be tailored to the unique needs of your brand. The agency team can design and execute campaigns that align with the results you want to achieve.
By understanding your target audience, the social media agency can tailor its content creation efforts to appeal to the customers you’re trying to reach. They’ll consider any briefs or branding guidelines they’re given to ensure that the campaigns and content they produce align with the business’ tone of voice, mission and values.
Dedicated social media advertising strategist
Another benefit of working with a social media agency is that you’ll have access to specialist skills required to get results through paid advertising on your various platforms.
Paid social ads are an effective way to re-engage with existing customers or attract new ones by reaching your target audience where they are already spending their time – on social media.
There’s a lot of strategising involved when it comes to social media advertising. So it makes a massive difference if you have access to someone who knows all things paid advertising and how to effectively utilise each social channel.
What to expect from a great social media marketing company
Any great social media marketing company knows how to plan, create and execute winning digital campaigns for various social network platforms. You can expect them to be experts in attracting and engaging followers across platforms, creating Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook ads that convert, and providing various other social media services to grow your brand’s online presence. Generally, agencies fall into one of two categories:
Full-service social media marketing campaign services
Some social media agencies will offer full-service campaign services including management and analysis. Most agencies outline different packages based on the size of their clients. This means the price of these packages can be scaled up or down depending on the specific needs and output expectations of the customer. For instance, smaller businesses will likely have a tighter budget, whereas large companies will have more to work with.
Platform-specific social network management
Platform-specific social media services focus on a single social media platform. Clients put their chosen social networks in the hands of the agency and won’t have to do a single thing themselves. For instance, if an agency is handling a client’s Instagram account, they’ll know how to do everything on the platform, from creating an engaging Instagram story to managing their Instagram eCommerce.
Each social media channel is unique and offers different benefits for various types of businesses. Therefore, the agency you choose must demonstrate experience and expertise in creating content for and managing the social platform in question to ensure it’s worth the investment.
What services does a social media marketing agency offer?
Depending on your specific needs, you should be able to tailor the services you require to suit your business. Below are some of the key services that an agency can provide.
Content strategy planning and management
Having a social media content strategy is essential to ensuring your online presence is successful. An agency knows how to plan, develop and execute a social media content strategy from start to finish.
This service involves the agency assessing your brand and current social media profiles and crafting a strategy that’s tailored to your exact needs. They’ll look at different types of content and choose the best ones for each platform to encourage engagement. They will develop an editorial calendar to map out the content strategy, including where and when posts will be shared to maximise their potential reach.
In addition to planning and managing your social content strategy, the agency will also take control of analysing social media campaign performance and audience sentiment to ensure future efforts are optimised.
Paid advertising
PPC advertising is a vital part of a business’s digital marketing strategy. Paid ads generate twice the number of visitors as SEO. Furthermore, they can increase brand awareness by a whopping 80 per cent.
Facebook is one of the most popular ways to advertise on social media, but it’s also important to focus on other platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram or TikTok depending on where your target audience is most likely to spend their time.
Knowing this is all well and good, but if you don’t know how to effectively execute a social advertising campaign, you most likely won’t see the results you want. That’s why handing over your paid advertising needs to an agency is a great way to ensure your ads are generating the revenue you expect.
Social media profile creation and branding
Another aspect of social media advertising and marketing an agency can help with is profile creation and branding. If you’re not familiar with social media, this can be a useful service to ensure you set off on the right foot and get the most out of your accounts. Agencies can help brands set up SEO-friendly profiles on the most effective platforms to get them discovered.
Influencer marketing and outreach
Influencer marketing is an important aspect of brand marketing and is a task that many agencies are equipped to carry out. This involves providing services such as:
- Discovering and reaching out to relevant influencers
- Engaging with them and organising collaborations
- Managing influencer relationships
- Tracking and analysing the performance of influencer marketing campaigns
Research and analysis
Social media services shouldn’t end once ads are run and content is shared. Agencies often utilise social media listening and analytics tools to track and assess campaign performance. This is an important step in the social media marketing process as it ensures your efforts are reaching the right audience, outperforming competitors and leading to more conversions.
These research and analytics tools are also essential for identifying topics that will attract and engage viewers, selecting the more effective hashtags and outlining which platforms will have the most potential for reaching your target audience.
Community management
This is another important social media marketing service that an agency can provide. Building a strong community around your brand is vital if you want to convert and retain loyal customers and increase brand awareness.
A strong online community can do wonders when it comes to increasing brand loyalty, so it pays to ensure this is done consistently. This service might involve the agency doing things like:
- Moderating community content
- Interacting with customers across social platforms, answering their questions and offering support and customer service when necessary
- Adding and removing community members
- Conducting brand events or organising communities (such as a LinkedIn or Facebook group)
- Gathering customer feedback
How much does an agency charge for social media marketing?
It all depends on the agency and the services you require. However, most agencies offer different charging models, including:
Predefined pricing packages: These are typically offered for social media management or specific platform management.
Retainer-based packages: Offered based on the formation of a continuous relationship with your company and handling of your social media needs.
Project-based arrangements: Prices are defined regarding the scope of work over a certain period.
Be sure to assess the services offered by the social media advertising agency against your budget and any costs you might incur if you were to handle it in-house.
Why do you need a social media management company?
Whether or not you need a social media management company depends on your unique business needs and the results you want to achieve. Even as a small business, it is feasible to manage your social media efforts in-house. However, it’s important to note that this requires more effort, budget and resources than if you were to put your social media strategy in the hands of an agency.
As mentioned above, there are numerous benefits of hiring a social media management company to handle the creation and execution of organic and paid advertising content for your social accounts.
Not only does working with a social media agency mean you have access to an entire team of professionals with a wide range of expertise – social media managers, copywriters, graphic designers, etc – you’ll also save plenty of time and resources that can be allocated to other aspects of your business.
Is it worth hiring a social media agency?
When weighing up the pros and cons of hiring a social media agency, it all boils down to your unique business needs and budget availability. Sure, you can choose to manage your marketing and paid social media yourself, but that takes a whole lot of time, effort and money.
Many companies do this because they don’t want to spend their budget and believe that they can achieve the same results an agency could. But, often this isn’t the case and – many times – their efforts won’t achieve the desired results and their social channels will fizzle out.
Choosing to put your socials in the hands of a team of experienced and dedicated professionals that deliver a social media management service is much less stressful and can result in more significant returns than if you were to go it alone.
With the expertise, resources and dedication of a social media advertising agency, companies ensure their future campaigns are tailored to the needs of their target audience and designed and executed with their specific goals in mind.
Although hiring an agency doesn’t come for free, in the long run, you might find yourself saving time and resources that you’d be spending if you were creating and executing campaigns in-house – not to mention the software and other tools you’d need to invest in to ensure your social media strategies are optimised.
Another option is to hire a full-service agency like Axonn to handle all your digital marketing needs. This includes everything from social media management to content marketing, technical SEO and campaign analysis. Often, businesses choose to work with a full-service digital marketing agency because these firms have the skills and tools to scale campaigns to suit their specific needs.
Working with a full-service agency also increases cohesion between campaigns and various departments of your business while reducing the need to manage multiple relationships with different agencies. Moreover, the marketing team can get to know your business better so they can cater to your needs more efficiently and effectively.