How to grow your social media agency: 10 proven methods from a CEO

As a founder, I went through the same process when building my agency. First of all, you need to know how to get social media clients and be sure that you can serve them right. Standing out from the crowd is crucial if you want to continuously grow. After gaining new clients, you still need to onboard them too.

What does a social media agency do? How can you boost your digital marketing agency and make it a successful venture? How to get clients for social media marketing? We’ve gathered some good practices for you.

What does a social media agency do?

Is every marketing agency a social media agency? The short answer: no it’s not.

However, every social media marketing agency is a digital marketing agency.

What does a social media agency do?

In brief, a social media agency is a marketing company specialized in crafting social media communication for clients and making social media one of their core businesses.

If social media accounts for just a small part of all their activities, then a particular agency isn’t necessarily a social media one.

One of the biggest challenges for marketing agencies is how to get social media clients.

It is not the easiest thing to do, especially when there are so many social media agencies competing over even a single project.

There are a few best practices and tips that you can follow, which we’ve compiled below.

How to get social media clients? Best practices.

1. Nail your niche

To be successful you need to stand out – and being specialized in a particular subject can bring you more clients on board.

For example, if you have a background in programming, then you could offer social media services focused on helping cloud hosting providers or a free salon booking software get the visibility they need.

However, don’t claim that you’re specialized when you’re not. That’s the fastest way to ruin your reputation.

Don’t be afraid of being an early adopter when it comes to new social media networks – who knows, maybe your early presence there can help you hit the jackpot?

2. Work on your social media presence

How to get clients for social media management? First and foremost, show them that you know what social media management is. 

There is a saying that a shoemaker’s children are ill-shod. It very often applies to social media marketing agencies.

While they may provide their clients with great social media communication, they often ignore their own activities on social media.

If your last post on Facebook was published in December 2017 and your profiles are outdated, it does not make the best first impression.

Would you trust anyone with such branding to run your social media channels?

Probably not. So if you want to gain more clients, take care of managing your own agency’s social media before you offer this kind of service to anyone else.

Allow any potential clients to evaluate your knowledge by looking at your social media profiles, so don’t forget about updating them on a daily basis.

For many prospective businesses, checking out the social media channels of a particular agency is hugely important.

It may help them determine whether they want to collaborate with your company or not.

3. Spend some time on personal branding

The importance of personal branding is undoubtable.

CEOs are usually aware of the power of social selling, but business development teams and social media managers should be active on social platforms too. 

With the right personal branding, your team members can strengthen their reputations as experts and reach potential leads quicker.

Since they will be recognized as professional social media specialists, your agency may quickly become the one that first springs to peoples’ minds. 

Preparing a personal branding strategy can be troublesome, but a quick set of tactics might be sufficient for the very early stages.

Define what you can share and in what context, as well as how to encourage your team to support your content.

Set up some KPIs – while the sky’s the limit, you should be aware that results may only come after some time. 

Sharing certain info about the company to demonstrate what you’ve already achieved or announcing new team members can be warmly welcomed by your clients and potential customers. It may also bring many other positive side effects. 

One of these is to enhance your employer branding. People who follow your footprints on social media and who see how engaged your employees are may want to become a part of your team too.

Update your LinkedIn personal profile and Company Page right away, since this is where potential employees look to find info about your agency. 

4. Invest resources in social selling

A strong personal brand makes it easier to gain interest in social selling. Social selling is definitely not a buzzword.

It is about building professional bonds on social media within the sales process. It is about selling, but via relations, content and value, rather than directly. 

You probably won’t master social selling from the very start, so firstly work on your branding and be sure that your expert position is reputable.

Then, join relevant groups and work on building your network.

Do not burn bridges with your contacts by sending cliched messages or sharing poor quality content. Instead, give them a reason to follow you, and eventually to make contact with you, and only then you can think about sending them a business proposal. 

It is good practice to take a look at your competitors. They have no doubt heard of social selling too, and some of them may already be practising it. Take a look at their communication that generates the most interest.

5. Focus on online coverage

You need to be regarded as a social media expert, otherwise building trust and gaining new clients may become a struggle.

Taking care of your reputation is one of the top answers to the question of how to get social media clients. 

It is not always about social only. Some of your future clients may not even be aware of the potential of social media, and so they are not yet present there (even if they should be!).

You need to reach such prospects through other channels. Some expert publications, articles or guest comments can increase the visibility of your agency, which in turn may help you to win some new clients or businesses.

If you really know a thing or two about social media, get involved in discussions and don’t be afraid of taking part in conferences or webinars. Such extra activities can really help in terms of how to get clients for social media management.

6. Active lead generation

How to get clients for social media marketing? Well, you need to approach them first of all!

Your potential clients won’t just come beating down your door overnight. It is you who has to make the initial step to generate some contacts and leads, before turning them into deals.

The first phase can be really difficult, especially when looking for your very first clients, but you need to make it happen to have any chance of success.

There are a few lead generation methods that you can use in your social media agency.

While cold calling or mailing may still bring some results, personalization has become the key to generating valuable leads. That is why you should be actively looking for clients on…social media.

This is where your clients are present, and is often where they ask for help too. Join relevant groups and research brands that could do with your help. Approach them with a customized message and describe how your services could support their social media communication. 

You can also use lead magnets: create handy checklists, e-books or whitepapers, and distribute them via social media or landing pages. Then, you can reach out to any leads and offer your services to them (upon their permission).

7. Build a portfolio 

If you are doing great things, you need to tell the world about them. No one is going to approach you and ask you whether you work for someone from their industry, or if you have ever run similar projects to theirs.

Creating detailed case studies that highlight your achievements can bring you more business. And that is what you want, isn’t it?

It is better to have even a limited portfolio than nothing at all. So, if there are any social media statistics that you can present or other evidence that proves your expertise, make sure to show to them.

If NDAs allow, include links to social media profiles that you currently or used to manage. Include important metrics, logotypes of brands that you’ve worked with, and a few paragraphs about your experience. A portfolio doesn’t have to be very long, even a few pages can be a great help towards gaining more clients.

8. Get testimonials from your social media clients

We all know that pulling case studies together is not a walk in the park and can take some effort. The same goes for testimonials, so getting them may be nothing but a time-killer.

However, testimonials work like social proof. If your potential clients see some nice words written by your current clients about your work, then they will be more convinced to get in touch with your agency and talk about a collaboration.

If you’re spending all day and night thinking about how to get social media clients through the door of your agency, asking current clients for some testimonials can really support your growth. 

This can start out with a small request to the clients you’ve been working with for the longest, or to those for whom you’ve already delivered amazing results. Getting your first customer testimonial video might be difficult, but doing so will encourage others to also share some kind words about you.

9. Use social media tools

If you’ve just landed your first client, you may think that all the work can be done manually – and for some time, you may be right.

However, you could soon discover that you need to automate some tasks and explore more trends. Especially when you have more people in your team, more new managers, more clients, more projects and more social media profiles to manage.

Kontentino takes care of all that. Since you can also assign tasks and exchange feedback in Kontentino, using it can help you build an effective workflow.

If you are still on constant lookout for more social media marketing and management tools, then look no further, since we’ve recently published an impressive list of social media tools. 

10. Analyze your competitors

There are surely some social media agencies in your surroundings. Copying and pasting their good practices is forbidden and unprofessional, but getting inspired by them is more than recommended.

Check how they communicate and what kind of communication generates the best results for them. You can also use some of our social media hacks to check out how their Facebook ads perform (if they run any).

You should always keep an eye on your competitors and try to draw some conclusions from them about your own communication. Peeping at your competitors can be a great source of ideas about how to get social media clients.

Good practices for growing social media marketing agencies

Developing some internal processes in your social media agency can help you grow and organize your work in the most efficient way. When your agency is healthy and growing slowly, you won’t encounter the risk of failure due to a lack of control. Before you get more clients on board, take care of communication inside your social media agency.  

Onboarding and procedures matter

It’s really important to put extra effort into effective onboarding and be sure that new additions to your team bring value and share the company ethics. 

Do not overwhelm your new social media manager from day one. When they join a new environment, it may be easy for them to become covered with many new tasks and procedures to follow.

Even just giving them access and showing them around can take a few days, and you should not require them to understand everything in a heartbeat.

Do it step by step.

Provide them with important access to company files, add them to your communication channels, describe each project to them and share templates. But give it time!

Onboarding can be stressful not only for new members but also for their employer, especially when there are no procedures in a social media agency, and the workflow is not structured. Having well-defined procedures and social media collaboration together in one location is extremely important for hassle-free and effective onboarding, as well as future work.

Optimize workflow

There is a lot of work behind each social media strategy. Its effectiveness depends on a few factors, including social media workflow.

If you have procedures in your social media agency in one place, your team can work more efficiently and deliver better results. What instructions are worth specifying? For example: where to send content for approval, what file transfer tool to use for different types of content, what template to use for social media reports, and how to assign tasks. 

If it’s quite the contrary in your agency (finding one password takes four hours, or no one knows how social media reports should be sent) then it can destroy workflow. Think about optimizing it with some procedures first.

Work on your customer service

Do your clients need to wait for hearing back from you for up to a few days? Do you prioritize clients who pay you the most and ignore those who do not spend “enough”? This needs to change now!

Even if you only serve your customers in the field of social media, you need to remember about providing a flawless customer experience. They want to feel “taken care” of, and poor customer service can leave a bad impression.

Remember: your customer service can always be improved. Maybe you can go the extra mile for your clients, or deal with their requests quicker than ever before? Giving them 100% can increase your customers’ satisfaction – and encourage them to recommend your services further. 

Be aware of scope creep

How to get clients for social media marketing? I heard an interesting answer once: quickly.

New clients, new office, new team members, new exciting projects. It all sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?

However, growing too fast can destroy some procedures and workflow, which will negatively affect the quality you deliver in social media projects. This unintended growth is called scope creep, and while it seems to be just perfect for growing agencies, it’s often a nightmare.

Before you start thinking about acquiring social media clients, rethink your resources. You need to be sure that you can adjust to growth, not just want it badly. 

Are you gaining clients like crazy, but your employees are overwhelmed with work and you have no opportunity to hire anyone else?

Well, this may result in being overworked and unhappy with your output. It can also lead to losing clients, since they may not be happy with the outcome and results you are generating either.

Learn to say “no” when it is needed. Grow slowly and responsibly.

Never stop learning

Running a social media agency is not simple, as we’ve already established. The world of social media is dynamically growing, and this is why you need to be kept in the loop about the latest updates and upgrades.

Follow media outlets and join social media groups to discuss the newest things with fellow social media managers. Long story short: never stop learning. 

How to get clients for social media marketing? Many of them may come to you if you are respected, being persuaded by your knowledge. To obtain that knowledge, you need to keep learning though. Simple as ABC. 

A lack of learning can cost you a lot: your clients may soon become more aware in terms of social media than you are.

Running your social media agency without increasing your own knowledge can lead to a catastrophe. Even when you are covered with tasks and projects, always find a few minutes to read some social media related news.

Grow your marketing agency with Kontentino

How to get clients for social media management? Use Kontentino. 

Do you know that Kontentino can save you up to 60% of time spent on operational processes (and therefore, you can spend that saved time on developing your business)?

You can automate so many repetitive tasks on a daily basis with our tool. 

Social media scheduling? ✔ Check, obviously.

Social media reporting? ✔ Check.

Task assignment made easy for your team? ✔ Check.

Handy post requirement checklists for your team? ✔ Yes, Kontentino has it!

Client approval feature? ✔ One of the most advanced ones on the market, with the ability to get approval using an intuitive mobile app. 

Boosting internal collaboration? ✔ Since you can discuss everything in Kontentino, you can keep your e-mail for newsletters instead of daily communication.

More than 4,000 brands and agencies use Kontentino daily. Check out why they love it. 

To wrap up

We hope that we provided you with some ideas about how to get clients for social media marketing and what to do to stand out from the crowd. Remember that it all starts with your internal organization and procedures, then you can take it further and get new clients on board.