You’ve witnessed the remarkable success stories driven by social media and decided it’s time to elevate your brand’s online presence. However, effectively navigating the dynamic world of social media marketing can be incredibly challenging.
This often leads businesses to seek professional help from a social media agency. But what exactly can these agencies do for you?
Social media marketing serves a dual purpose: to articulate your brand’s message and to resonate with what your audience truly wants to hear. Social media marketing agencies excel at identifying the intersection of these two objectives.
Leveraging their expertise and resources, they create compelling content and strategically distribute it across various social media platforms to reach the right audience. When executed correctly, this approach leads to a lower cost per customer acquisition and a higher return on investment.
This comprehensive guide will explore the diverse range of services a social media agency provides to help your brand thrive.
1. Social Media Management
The primary goal of social media marketing is to drive more traffic to your website. Each social channel acts as a vital pathway for potential customers to discover your brand. However, optimizing for each platform and consistently delivering results is a complex undertaking.
For smaller businesses, dedicating the necessary time and resources to maintain a high-performing social media operation can be difficult. Social media marketing agencies step in to fill this gap, ensuring your presence is robust and effective.
Content Creation
Content is the cornerstone of any successful social media strategy. It’s what captures attention and ignites interest in your brand and its offerings. Agencies will brainstorm, plan, and produce a wide variety of content, from engaging text posts and captivating Instagram images to compelling videos.
Backed by a team dedicated to daily content creation, an agency brings a wealth of ideas. They also possess the expertise and strategic insight to consistently produce the right content for your brand, reaching the ideal audience on the most suitable platform.
Copywriting for Social Media Posts
Copywriting is the art of selling with words, forming the backbone of the advertising industry by converting readers into customers. In social media, effective copywriting encourages users to click on links. For instance, if you’re promoting a blog post on Facebook, the copy will entice readers to click through to read it.
Furthermore, brands utilize social media copywriting to entertain and engage followers, encouraging deeper connections. Crafting witty, insightful, or even quirky tweets can help brands achieve viral status, broadening their reach and brand recognition.
Content Scheduling
Timing is everything when it comes to social media posts. Agencies stay updated on the latest social media algorithm changes to pinpoint the optimal posting times for maximum reach and engagement.
A social media agency will streamline this process by scheduling your content at the most effective times on each platform, tailored to your product, industry, and customer location.
Community Management
Social media platforms offer the most direct and accessible way to interact with your customers. Users can send a message to a brand on Facebook and receive a quick response, or tweet about an issue and get it resolved swiftly.
However, providing this level of responsiveness requires a dedicated team to be online consistently. Social media agencies often include community management in their packages, providing essential customer support by responding to incoming messages and tweets.
2. Paid Social Advertising
Paid social media, or media buying, involves a brand paying a social media platform to display its advertisements or content to a specific, targeted audience likely to be interested. By utilizing paid social, brands can accelerate growth by reaching a larger audience and more precisely targeting their ideal customers.
A social media agency takes charge of this intricate process, meticulously running and fine-tuning successful social media campaigns. They ensure campaigns stay within budget, target the right demographics, and effectively achieve your marketing goals.
Advertising on Facebook & Instagram
Facebook stands as an advertising giant, being the most popular social media platform and considered by many marketers as crucial for both Social Media Examiner’s B2B and B2C audiences. Instagram, its parent company, closely follows, steadily rising as a top platform for B2C marketing.
Social media agencies are experts at executing Facebook’s Ad Policies campaigns, combining practical experience with deep social media marketing knowledge. An experienced agency will help you pinpoint the correct audience and optimize campaigns for superior results.
An often-underestimated advantage is an agency’s ability to navigate Facebook’s intricate advertising rules. This expertise ensures your ads are approved and prevents them from being flagged or taken down, maintaining campaign continuity.
Advertising on YouTube
After Facebook, YouTube is the world’s second most-used social media platform, with over a billion hours of content streamed daily. An impressive 70% of people report purchasing from a brand due to Google’s blog on YouTube ads, and the number of active advertisements on the platform has surged by 260%.
A social media agency will guide you through the process of creating impactful video advertisements and deploying them within YouTube’s advertising system to effectively reach your target audience. Some agencies offer only media buying, while others also provide scripting and video production services.
Advertising on Snapchat
Primarily populated by Gen Z, Snapchat is an excellent platform for engaging with a younger demographic. It’s particularly effective for capturing attention and driving quick sales, with Hootsuite statistics showing users are 60% more likely to make an impulse purchase through the platform.
Unique in its advertising approach, Snapchat offers video ads, story ads, and interactive lenses, allowing users to directly engage with your brand. If targeting Gen Z and leveraging video creative are your priorities, advertising on Snapchat is a must.
Advertising on Pinterest
Social media agencies help place captivating images of your products in front of the right audience through Promoted Pins.
Compared to a giant like Facebook, Pinterest is relatively underutilized, yet it hosts over 1.5 million brands connecting with users monthly, presenting a golden opportunity for increased visibility. With Pinterest for Business reporting that 50% of people buy products after seeing a Promoted Pin, it’s a platform not to be overlooked.
Advertising on TikTok
The newest entrant to the social media landscape, TikTok, boasts over 800 million monthly active users who are young and eager for content, with countless brands reaping significant rewards. TikTok is ideal for targeting a younger audience, as 69% of its users are aged between 16 and 24.
Advertising on TikTok differs significantly from other platforms; it’s highly interactive, creative, and encourages user participation. Agencies that stay abreast of trending content can assist you in producing engaging video creatives or challenges designed for the right audience, substantially increasing your chances of going viral.
Advertising on Twitter
Through Twitter, you can easily tap into trending events and topics, rapidly sharing content relevant to your brand. An agency will help you cut through the noise and ensure your voice is heard.
Promoted Tweets enable you to attract a broader audience to your brand or boost engagement with your existing followers. These promoted tweets function just like regular ones, allowing users to like, reply to, and retweet them, increasing their visibility across people’s feeds.
3. Video Production for Social Media
Smart Insights report indicates that 88% of marketers have reported a positive ROI from video marketing, underscoring its undeniable power in campaigns.
However, high-quality video production demands a substantial upfront investment. This includes acquiring camera equipment, video editing software, and a powerful computer to run it. Furthermore, you need skilled personnel to operate the equipment and software proficiently. The entire process—from scripting and planning to sourcing locations, filming, and final editing—can be lengthy and expensive if you lack expertise.
Relieve this burden by partnering with an agency that possesses the necessary know-how. Many agencies specialize in video production, offering in-house resources akin to hiring a dedicated film studio for your content needs.
Video Production
Beyond technical equipment and software, understanding how to structure your video to capture attention is paramount. Agencies have a deep insight into what types of videos perform well and which do not. Leveraging their expertise, you can develop a series of videos that effectively draw more eyes to your brand and message.
Video Editing
The work doesn’t stop when the cameras do. The footage requires professional editing and optimization for maximum impact. Video editing encompasses assembling clips to tell the most compelling story, integrating sounds and music, overlaying text, and much more.
Social media agencies are well-versed in best practices for optimizing video ads, including ideal length, storytelling techniques, aspect ratios, and other crucial elements. They also possess the robust hardware required to handle the demanding requirements of video editing.
Motion Graphics
Motion graphics infuse a dynamic burst of color and animation into your content, effectively capturing an audience’s attention. By utilizing motion graphics, you can bring your brand to life through engaging visual storytelling and present complex information clearly via explainer videos.
4. Influencer Marketing
Influencers have become a dominant force on social media, with a growing number of businesses capitalizing on their reach. Iconosquare’s guide reveals that 30% of businesses are paying social media influencers between £100-£500 per Instagram post.
However, there isn’t a universal approach to hiring influencers; some are far better suited to your brand than others. A social media agency excels at connecting you with the influencers who best align with your brand’s values and objectives.
Macro Influencers
A macro influencer typically commands a follower base of 100,000 to 1 million. These influencers offer a dual benefit: connecting you with a vast and engaged audience that often coalesces around a specific niche.
These influencers operate professionally, treating their partnerships with seriousness and dedication. Having cultivated their audience over years, they possess a keen understanding of what truly resonates with their followers.
Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers are smaller in scale, with follower counts ranging from 10,000 to 100,000. While their reach may be less extensive than macro-influencers, they compensate with a deeper, more personal connection to their audience.
Micro-influencers are ideally suited for promoting niche or specific products. As a result of their loyal and specialized audience, they are more likely to generate highly qualified leads for your business.
5. Social Media Reporting
Social media agencies diligently analyze the results of their marketing efforts and provide comprehensive reports. These reports transparently showcase the progress an agency has made and serve as a crucial accountability measure, ensuring they deliver on their commitments.
It is essential to partner with an agency that consistently delivers the results you seek. This places a clear responsibility on the agency to provide the highest quality service.
Typically, these reports break down statistics into an easily understandable format, packed with actionable insights. This insight empowers agencies to fine-tune your social media strategy for even better future results.
For example, reporting might reveal that your brand performs exceptionally well on LinkedIn but struggles on Instagram. Based on this insight, your strategy can be adjusted to concentrate more effort on LinkedIn to acquire more customers efficiently.
What do Social Media Agencies Report?
Agencies can track almost any metric. However, the most useful data depends entirely on your specific goals and the strategies deployed to achieve them. For instance, obsessing over the number of likes might not be beneficial if your primary goal is to generate more leads for your sales funnel.
Paid Social Reporting
- ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
- CTR (Click-Through Rate), CPM (Cost Per Mille/Thousand), and CPC (Cost Per Click)
- Creative performance
- Landing page performance
- Copywriting performance
Organic Social Reporting
- Engagement (comments and shares)
- Organic Reach
- Page & account growth
- Individual post-performance
- Boosted post-performance
- Content pillar performance
