How to Start a Social Media Marketing Agency in [2023]

Hey, I’m Michael Culp, and today, I’m going to teach you how to start a social media marketing agency step-by-step.

Social media is used by 4.62 billion people, which stands for half of the global population. This shows an extremely big opportunity for businesses to reach out to new customers. The problem is that most businesses don’t know how to use social media for that purpose.

That’s when you appear. By starting a social media agency you can help businesses reach more customers, help them make more money, and get paid as well.

So, without further ado, let me show you how you can start your SMM agency step-by-step!

Social Media Marketing Agency Overview

You can offer social media marketing services to your clients either as a service provider or as an agency owner. A service provider is just one person that offers a particular service.

A social media agency owner, on the other hand, can offer this same service, but with employees working under it. The agency owner has a management role and can or cannot directly do the service.

To be an agency owner you don’t necessarily need to have an office or a physical location. You also don’t necessarily need to provide all types of social media services, it’s okay to specialize in just one or two.

I’d argue that specializing in one or two is even better, as it will be easier for you to position yourself as an expert.

The first service you can offer is social media management. In this type of service, you manage your client’s social media page, helping them get more followers, more reach, and more engagement. By improving these 3 metrics you’ll increase your client’s sales.

The second type of service is paid to advertise. This is when you use Facebook or Google to drive traffic to your client’s website. The more traffic you’re able to generate, the more sales your client will make.

Paid advertising allows you to track every possible metric. This will make it easy for you to show your client how much money you’ve made for him.

How to start a social media marketing agency

Choose a Niche

Now that you’ve defined what type of service you’re going to offer, it’s time to pick your niche. Picking a niche is important because if you try to be everything for everyone it will be very difficult to stand out as an expert and to communicate with your prospects in your marketing message.

You must have a good understanding of the industry and know how it works. Just look at your past work experience and the things you like to do in your day-to-day life. Where have you worked? Did you have a college degree? What are your hobbies?

This will help you choose a niche that is interesting to you and that you have some expertise in.

Here are some examples of niches:

The options are many, you just need to be creative. Having experience with the niche will help you get better results for your clients.

How to find clients

Finding clients is the most important aspect of this process. If you don’t have clients, you don’t have a business.

The easiest way to find clients as a new agency is by cold calling. Cold calling is great because it doesn’t cost any money and the results are fast. You can start prospecting now and land a client in a few days.

It all starts with prospecting. Prospecting is the act of finding clients’ contact information and sifting through which of the options can be a good fit to work with you.

Here are some common ways to find clients:

The goal with these platforms I showed to you is to make a big list of contact information. You need to make a list with these prospects’ names, email addresses, and phone numbers.

There is a multitude of ways you can reach out to these businesses. You can call them, send an email, send a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn, and even go to their place in person.

So, it would help if you tailored your strategies based on the platform you’re using. If you’re using social media like Instagram, Facebook groups, and LinkedIn, your strategy will be to DM people.

If you are using Craigslist, Google maps, or Amazon, your strategy will be to find the contact information such as the email, phone number, or website. For example, with Google maps, you just need to select the area that you’ll be targeting and put the keyword that represents your niche.

It can be restaurants, dentists, lawyers, engineers, gyms, and a lot of others. Then you’ll be able to see all the businesses in this location and get their information. Your goal with the first contact isn’t to sell your services. Your goal is to get the decision-maker on the phone.

If you are outreaching via DMs, the goal of the first message is just to get a reply, the second message is about showing them that they have a problem that you can solve, and the third message is about making sure that they want your help and pitching the consultation call.

The outreach via email works by sending an email with a subject line that drives curiosity, and in the body of the email, you need to present the problem, present how you can solve the problem, and make a call to action asking them to jump on a free strategy session with you.

If you only have the phone number as the contact form, you need to cold call. Then you need to try to get the decision maker on the phone, briefly describe your services to them, and try to book an appointment to do the free strategy session.

Strategy Calls

The first step in the strategy call is to build rapport. Here you’ll ask where they are from, how long they have been in business, what they expect of the call and these kinds of things.

The next step is to start digging into the problem. The goal is to ask for more information and try to work out what their goals are, what they are trying to achieve, where they are right now, and what obstacles are standing in the way. It’s also important to get to know what they are currently doing to achieve these goals.

Then you need to provide your solution as the most logical step they can take to grow their business. You can show how Facebook ads can be profitable, and how you can grow their account organically with your management services. If you have client testimonials and case studies, it is a great time to show them.

In the close, you need to be calm and state the price. Try your best to not be nervous and anxious. Normally, they come up with some objections.

Your goal now is to handle the objections to closing the sale. As you start to develop experience you’ll see that the majority of objections you get are the same. This will allow you to develop some pre-made responses to deal with these objections.

It’s also extremely important to never leave the call without getting paid. Send them an invoice and wait for them to make the payment. You can use Stripe to send invoices, but depending on your country it will not be available. Then you can use PayPal.

Service Delivery

To provide the service you have two options, you can do it yourself or you can hire someone else to do it for you.

In the beginning, my advice is that you do the service yourself. You need to develop expertise to really get to know what means to deliver the service with proficiency.

After you develop your experience, you can choose if you want to hire contractors. This will allow you to judge their experience, and really see if they are providing a good service and if it’s worth the money you’re paying.

To find these contractors you can go to popular freelance platforms such as Upwork and Fiverr. You can talk to them and offer a percentage of the monthly fee you’re receiving.

Conclusion

Social media is extremely hot right now, and it appears as a big opportunity for those who want to start an online business. Today, you learned how you can start a social media agency in 4 steps. To recap:

If you are still unsure if you really want to start a social media marketing agency, make sure to check out my article com the best online business ideas.

AUTHOR BIO:
Michael Culp is a Business Master’s Student and founder at Ambition Yard. He is a business enthusiast and on his site, he teaches the best ways to make money online.