This Looks Like a Job for an Agency!
Smart marketers are constantly learning new and better ways to reach their audience. With the rise of countless social media platforms, creating a strong strategy for a business has become a challenge. Which is right for your business? How do you leverage that network? And, above all, where do you find the time to do it?
It’s estimated that there will be 2.67 billion people using some form of social media in 2018, which is up from 1.91 billion in 2014. Facebook alone boasts more than 1.7 billion active users worldwide, a number that seems to increase each quarter (Statista).
With those kinds of numbers still on the rise, having a strong social media presence is now more than ever a key to the future success and growth of your business. Social media needs to be part of your overall marketing strategy with goals that match those of the business. However, most business owners or managers don’t have the time to build a full strategy for multiple social channels.
So they are faced with a choice: Hire an in-house social media manager, or contract with an advertising agency.
What is Social Media Management?
An in-house social media manager often wears many hats in a business. They typically have a marketing background and can be put on several jobs throughout the day. However, it takes time to daily manage just one social platform, let alone several. This can stretch one person’s efforts too far, leading to less-than-optimal performance.
Agencies have a team of experts whose job it is to know and study social media strategies and best practices. It’s more than posting a few sentences here and there and waiting for a reply. It takes a team to strategize the best content for your business to post, when to post it and where.
The voice of the post changes depending on the platform because, to capitalize on the most users, you want to make sure the content is relevant to your target audience. An agency can help you target the right audience for your business at the right cost. At the end of the day, it’s all about ROI.
Experienced expertise
Marketing agencies have a full team of experts that excel in one specific area of digital marketing. Instead of having one in-house person learn every part of social media, which is highly unlikely, you work with that agency’s full complement of marketing professionals. They are up-to-date on new, fast-paced trends in social media, attend conferences and apply their knowledge every single day. Agencies also know what works and what doesn’t work to help you plan a strategy that will help grow your business exponentially.
Market research
Not only do agencies help you grow your business, brand and sales, they help place you above the competition. Agencies have tools to compare your strategies to the competition to know where to focus your goals. They are well versed with dealing with competitive environments and will help the business reach its full potential growth on social media.
Strategy and planning
Marketing agencies have the knowledge to create a strategy around your business goals. They look at your business model to first determine the best social channels to be on. Your social media channels are the online voices for your business. Once the right channels are picked, next comes your target audience. You’ll want to know your audience to create posts that are relevant to get more likes, shares and overall engagement. It can take up to a half hour to create a social media post that’s properly worded and targeted toward your audience. Agencies can streamline the posting process by creating a monthly calendar to know what content to post and when.
Because agencies work with many different marketing pieces and business types, they are able to mold a strategy that works for a specific business need. They can see the bigger picture of the business as they have an outside perspective of the company. Applying the right marketing tools to the strategy is their expertise.
Consistent content
Adding consistent content about your own business across all channels is vital to build your brand. Every social channel has an About Us section that should be consistent across all platforms. It should include your mission, history and specialties. Agencies are able to write, update and check for inconsistencies to save you time. Also, making posts consistently will engage more users.
Spend money to save money
Now that you have the strategy and consistent content, you’ll most likely want to advertise on one or two platforms. Agencies know how much money a successful campaign will cost you to reach your target market. They understand the difference between cost-per-click and cost-per-impression campaigns. Agencies are budgeting masters, and have the insight to know how much to invest and where to invest it. An in-house social media manager might add too large or small of a budget that can end up costing you more business.
Results to show
Advertising agencies are very analytical. They base the success of your campaigns on results, so performance data is analyzed at least once a week to help improve results. Agencies are more likely to change a strategy if they see a need to instead of keeping it the same. Weekly, monthly and annual reports help manage all channels and place budgets accordingly.
In conclusion, social media marketing can be a very successful part of your marketing campaign when done right. Make sure you have the right team in place to reach your goals.
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