Businesses often complain that engaging their audience on social media is a real struggle.
The main reason for this is that most businesses have the wrong idea of social media management.
Contrary to what you've been told, social media management is not about managing interactions with a single customer or audience type.
Rather it is about building a relationship with all your customers over a long period.
So, how can you ensure effective social media management?
You can do it by finding the best media social media marketing agency for your company. The following are the 6 steps to find the best social media marketing agency for your company.
Define Your Social Media Needs and Objectives
The worst thing you can do when choosing a social media management/digital marketing agency is to make an impulse decision. Plan for the entire process by critically thinking about the digital marketing agency's role in your business objectives.
Consider the following to shortlist agencies:
- The time you're willing to dedicate to the partnership
- The amount you can realistically allocate to your social media activities
- The marketing skills your in-house team possess and the skills they lack (if you have one)
Doing the above will minimize the chances of your search misfiring.
Look for an Agency That Understands Your Needs
The biggest give-a-way that a marketing agency is serious about helping your business grow is their level of effort and commitment to learning your social media marketing objectives or the 'lack thereof.'
Most agencies only speak about their services and follow the same general process for every business.
One piece of advice would be to look for and shortlist agencies that show a genuine interest in learning your business objectives and create a social media strategy tailored to your business.
Prioritize Transparency
A good social media agency will keep you updated every step of the way. Moreover, they will value your feedback as much as the value you give to their feedback, all for coming up with the next award-winning social media marketing campaign.
The agency you choose must keep you updated on their efforts' key performance indicators (KPIs).
The following are the details they should provide you every month:
- Your social media reach
- Traffic to your website
- Your social media engagement
- Your social media growth
- Lead generation from social media
In addition to the above, hire a social media marketing agency with a clearly defined plan to hit all your metrics.
Get to Know the Shortlisted Agencies
Once you have gone through the above steps, you will be in a position to shortlist two or three social media marketing agencies that are best suited to your needs. To choose among them, find out the following about the shortlisted agencies:
- Their social media team
- Their capabilities
- Their social media marketing and management process
- How they run their own business
- Their success rates
- Their deliverables
- Their pricing
Ask the Important Questions and Enter into an Agreement
Once you examined the shortlisted agencies using the above criteria, you will be able to find a social media marketing agency best suited to your business. You can end the process by asking the following questions and then agreeing:
- When can we start?
- What budget should be allocated to social media activities initially?
- What is the ROI we can expect?
- What are the deliverables we can expect?
- What goes into the final contract?
Once the shortlisted agency has answered these questions satisfactorily, sign an agreement, and close the hiring process.
At Keystone Ad Agency, we have marketers with years of experience handling social media campaigns for businesses in different industries. They have the expertise and know-how to assess your target audience and develop the most effective social media marketing strategies to target and engage them.