Social Media is booming. Since the world went into lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic, consumers have understandably been spending more of their time online and brands have redirected more resources to marketing on those channels.
But as social proves to be a lucrative channel for brands, they increasingly need help from agency partners in this space, because they lack the in-house resource or skills to deliver social campaigns at the scale and pace required.
There exists, therefore, a growing opportunity for agile agencies to position themselves as trusted partners, providing brands with the support and consultancy they need to refocus their marketing efforts on social media.
These are some social media services that your agency should be offering to clients:
Social Media Reports
It’s surprising how often brands don’t have a clear picture of how they’re performing in both owned and earned social. In fact, the bigger the company, the greater the chance that it has a sprawling network of social channels managed in different silos with no clear reporting lines.
This is where you can help. It’s sometimes easier for an external agency to do a complete audit of an organization’s social channels and create comprehensive one-off or regular reports on how those channels are performing.
Research & Analytics
Right now, brands are flying blind in a rapidly changing world. They desperately need to get their hands on reliable insights about consumer behaviors and attitudes, and social data is currently one of the best sources of those insights.
Agencies can help with deep-dive analytical reports into specific topics that the client needs to understand better, whether they’re looking for new market opportunities or just seeking to get a clearer picture of what’s happening in their industry.
Social Media Management
If you want social to be a serious marketing channel for your business, then managing it needs to be somebody’s full time job. Unfortunately, the practicalities of making that happen in a business can sometimes be difficult, so it often makes sense to outsource to an agency which has the right experience and skills to bring the company’s social channels to life.
Campaign Planning and Execution
Understanding how to plan, create, and activate successful campaigns in social media is a high-value skillset. Well executed marketing campaigns on channels such as Facebook and Instagram can deliver great returns, but to get the best results you really need to understand how the platforms work, what kind of content performs well, and how to optimize campaigns on the fly.
Even if your clients don’t need your help with ongoing management of their social media profiles, there’s always scope for a well-crafted creative campaign.
Content Creation
A key element of ongoing social media management, as well as ad-hoc campaigns, is the ability to generate creative, social-optimized content at scale and speed. Few but the biggest brands have this kind of capability in-house, and agencies which can earn a reputation for delivering high quality, engaging social content, are likely to have clients beating a path to their door.
For agencies, there are economies of scale at play. If you have people who are skilled at social media management, content creation, analytics, and so on, all equipped with the right tools to do that work effectively, they can service multiple accounts profitably.
Working with a technology partner like Meltwater means you can scale as required when you win (or, regrettably, churn) clients, and not worry about being locked into expensive software licenses that are not helping you generate revenue.
