How To Start a Social Media Marketing Agency

In our topic today, we will talk about how to start a social media marketing agency. It is very lucrative as clients are willing to pay huge money to make their brands known. We will also talk about how to market your business and the platforms you can use to reach out to customers. If you’re interested, read on to learn more.

How to Get Started

Let’s get started with learning what a social media marketing agency is. Social media marketing agency helps businesses, big or small, to grow their social media presence and reach their goals. They start with curating marketing strategies for your brand in line with your objectives. Then they manage your social media marketing from advertising to influencer campaigns. This includes brand or product promotion to different social media platforms and content creation.

A social media marketer earns anywhere between $50 to $100 per hour. But an experienced social media marketer can earn up to $120 per hour or more. On average, you can earn around $50,000 per year.

While a social media marketing agency generally earns around $20,000 monthly per client, which is on a contractual basis. The digital industry of social media marketing is the 2nd biggest digital advertising market. By 2021, its worldwide revenue reaches millions and is projected to grow up to $229.6 billion by 2025.

Market Research for Social Media Marketing Agency

Before we talk about how to put up our social media marketing agency, let’s do a little market research first. This is to determine its demand and sustainability.

Search Volume

Let’s take a look at its search volume. This will allow us to find out if the term “social media marketing agency” gets a lot of searches. And for this task, we will use Jaaxy’s advanced keyword search tool to help us. Here is what we have:

As you can see, the results from Jaaxy tell us that the average search volume that the term “social media marketing agency” is around 3K searches in a month. If you had a website with a good search engine ranking, you could get around 500+ visitors. These numbers are already impressive for a start-up social media marketing agency. But let’s see the term “social media marketing.” Let’s see what we will have:

By removing the word “agency”, we can see that the monthly average search is around 29K and around 5K website traffic if your website ranks high in search engines. Imagine how many possible clients you can receive from the 5K website visitors. More clients mean better income.

Search Trend

Let’s check the social media marketing agency search trend. Search trends allow us to understand the popularity of any keywords or terms over a specific time. In this task, we will use Google Trends to help us. Let’s check out the results:

Using the two terms we have earlier, there are differences between them in popularity. The term “social media marketing” is often used more than “social media marketing agency.” This is simply because the first has a broader definition while the other one is more specific. Nevertheless, social media marketing remains popular worldwide. With this, we can say that it can be a sustainable business for the years to come.

What exactly is the niche?

When it comes to the niche for your social media marketing agency, it can be anything from:

• eCommerce
• Fitness
• Health and Wellness
• Natural care products
• Keto supplements
• Pet Products
• Natural oils

And there could be more. Each niche also has multiple sub-niches for example:

• eCommerce – Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Etsy, Walmart, and so on.
• Fitness – exercise equipment, fitness supplements, gym wear, etc.

While having several niches could mean accommodating more clients, it may not be a good idea for a starting social media marketing agency. It is recommended to start with a place that you can specialize in. Or you can:

1. Check if the niche is something you are interested in – Do you like the niche you’ve chosen? Is it something you want to do for a long time? If possible, try to consider choosing a niche that is your passion or something you will be happy to do. Since you will manage your business for a long time, might as well choose a niche that you will enjoy.
2. Check if your niche solves a problem –This allows you to understand if your niche applies to your audience or if will it be something really useful for your clients. This brings us to the next part of this topic.

What Problem is being solved?

What problems will your social media marketing agency solve? Think about what problems your niche will provide solutions to. Pretend you own a business, and you need to increase your online presence and possibly get more customers. List down the problems you can encounter if you do this on your own. Here are examples:

• How to grow your social media presence?
• How to create captivating social media posts to increase engagement?
• How to improve your social media lead conversion rate?

You can list down as many problems as you can think of. Then analyze these problems and think about your niche and sub-niches. Will they provide the solution to some, if not most, of the issues you have listed?

How to Get the Audience to Purchase?

The next step is to get your audience to purchase the services you offer. First, let’s who your possible audience is or the clients that would most likely seek the services you offer. They could be any of the following:

• Business owners
• Entrepreneurs
• Social media influencers
• Content creators
• Institutions
• Schools and universities
• Organizations

And sometimes clients that you do not expect will come and request your services. You could provide complete social media marketing services, but what makes your agency or services unique from the others? This is quite challenging since social media marketing generally uses the same marketing strategies. Here are a few recommendations:

• Provide solutions to your paying clients – At the onset of your business, you probably would not have the data to identify which type of clients are your paying clients. But you can look at the data of those who inquired about your services. What type of clients are they? Can your services accommodate their social media marketing needs? Did they acquire your services? If not, why?

When you have understood what your services are lacking, you can think of how you can improve them. On the other hand, you can also determine the benefits and strategies that work and help acquire paying clients.

• Go the extra mile – When you’re starting a social media marketing agency, you could be competing with big agencies around your area. For a small and new agency, competing with the big guys can be intimidating and disheartening. But you can use your disadvantage to your benefit.

As a start-up agency, you can offer promotions, bundles, or add-ons to your services. Small agencies may not have the capacity to manage plenty of clients, but this also means that you can focus on the several clients you have. You can provide a more intimate and personalized approach to your clients rather than a generalized approach.

• Be updated with the trends – There’s always something trending in social media. This means that as a business that revolves around social media, you’re required to be updated with the new trends. You can use popular topics to make your marketing relevant to your audience. For example, promoting your products as a solution to a trending problem.
• Use quality apps – You will need apps to market your client’s brand on social media effectively. There are paid and free apps you can use to create posts or videos. Although using a free app can save you money, it is important that you carefully choose which apps will accommodate the needs of your clients.

Ways to sell Social Media Marketing Services Online

There are different ways how you can sell your social media marketing services online. It will be up to you what you would use for your marketing agency. This will also depend on your resources and workforce. Let’sLet’sk them out.

Affiliate Programs

There are affiliate programs that are open to social media marketing agencies. Companies can offer as much as 15% commission for each sale of their affiliates. If your agency has a good reputation and portfolio, you could strike a good deal with the company running the affiliate program.

To join an affiliate program, you need to apply first. Sometimes you will find a separate instruction or application link for marketing agencies on the company’s site. Before you send your application, check if they have qualifications too. It’s to meet the qualifications first to have a better chance of getting accepted.

We will use our niche example earlier and the Google search engine to look for affiliate programs. Here are the results we viewed:

Based on our Google search, you can see a list of affiliate programs you can check out. When you looking for a good affiliate program, consider the recommendations below:

• The company should provide you with many quality products for your niche
• They pay good commissions and they pay on time
• Their brand has a high trust rating
• They offer several payment options
• No monthly or sign-up fees involved

You should also consider the company’s tenure if you want a client you can work with for a long time. One example of a long-standing company is Amazon. They have been operating for many years. It does not look like their company will shut down anytime soon—Here’sere’sxample of fitness products posted on the Amazon website.

Dropshipping

With drop shipping, you can earn in two ways. You can offer your marketing services to dropshipping businesses or you can also build your own dropshipping business and market your products using your marketing agency. Many dropshipping companies do not have time to do their marketing, so they look for marketing agencies to do that for them.

Dropshipping can also generate a passive income stream for you aside from your social media marketing agency. If you can manage both, you can use the agency’s setting services for your dropshipping business. It gives you more freedom in which direction you would like to take your dropshipping business since you also take care of marketing.

When you start with dropshipping, you will need an eCommerce website. You also need to look for merchants who can provide you with the products that you will sell on your online store.

The best about dropshipping is that you have the power to regulate the prices of the products that you sell. Generally, you set the price higher than the merchants. Your profit will come from the difference between the merchant and the price.

We will use the Google search engine once again to look for dropshipping suppliers for our business. As you can see, there are plenty of suppliers you can choose from. But when you select your dropshipping supplier, you can refer to how we looked for a good affiliate program. Make sure that it is a reliable company that will supply you with products within reasonable delivery times.

Sell your Own products.

Aside from affiliate marketing and dropshipping, you can also make, sell, and market your products. Although this method requires high capital investment, it is the most rewarding since you will build your brand and a company your own company; if you are not ready to make your own products, you can look for wholesalers instead. Some of them can provide brandless products related to your niche. Then you can put your own brand on the products.

Using Google once again, we will look for a good wholesaler company to supply you with quality products for your business. When looking for a wholesaler, make sure that you speak with the right person who can give you the best deal. Wholesalers have low prices for their products because they do the manufacturing themselves.

If you notice that their price is almost the same as the price in the market, you might be talking to a drop shipper. You could end up with little or no profit because your products are too expensive.

Remember that with selling your own, you also have to manage the marketing, inventory, shipping, after-sales processes, customer service, and so on. That’shat’sit is important to find a wholesaler that will give you the best deal and quality products to sell.

Other potential methods of selling products

If you dislike any methods mentioned above, you can use other methods to sell your products. If you have writing skills, you can create an eBook related to your brand or your products.

For example, you can write an eBook about “Easy daily fitness routine” or “Food recipes to keep fit” for the fitness niche. You” can also create a video tutorial about different fitness workouts and upload them to your YouTube channel.

What You Need to Start Selling Your Social Media Marketing Agency

When starting a social media marketing agency, you need to have the right tools to help you launch and expand your online presence. There are several platforms you can use. But similar to choosing a niche, it’s to select a platform and work on building an audience in it. This will allow you to master how the platform work and have more time to engage with your audience actively.

Building a Social Media Marketing Agency website

Building a website is considered a requirement if you are making your social media marketing agency. This is where you will direct your potential clients and showcase your services.

Building a website doesn’t have to be expensive. You can find affordable and accessible website builders. Creating a website is also easy nowadays; thanks to ready-made website templates, you can import and edit your website.

Promote Social Media Marketing Agency on Social Media

Since your business is a social media marketing agency, social media should be your main platform. Social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn have their own share of massive audiences you can tap into.

It is recommended to find the platform you are most comfortable using or most familiar with. This saves you time and effort rather than trying to learn a new platform. Besides, you may have more friends or followers on the platform that you always use. Then it will be easier to market your social media marketing agency.

Start a Social Media Marketing Agency YouTube channel

I mentioned earlier that you could create a YouTube channel for your social media marketing agency. YouTube has millions of active viewers daily. You can create a video about your business and the services that you offer. You can also ask for video testimonials from your satisfied clients and use them to promote your business.

Join Social Media Marketing Communities

Being in a social media marketing community allows you to connect to future business partners and clients. Sometimes you get news about what is happening within your industry and with your competitors, too.

You can also find helpful tips from experienced marketers you can use for your business. Joining these communities can sometimes help you become more competitive because you can get insights into how you can improve your marketing strategies, processes, and tools to get more clients.

Final Thoughts

Before we conclude our topic today, I hope this guide will help you start your social media marketing agency. But if you decide that it is not the right path for you, perhaps you can try affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a low-risk money-earning opportunity that can also generate a passive income for you.

If you need help choosing the right Affiliate Program, check out my #1 recommendation on building a successful Affiliate business online. You can get access to hundreds of training videos, 24/7 support, professional consultations, private access to training guides, tools, personal private assistance, my personal help, and much more.

PS: Click here to review my #1 recommendation in detail.