What to look for in your next social media agency

30 Aug

It’s mind-blowing the amount of times we hear the following from digital marketing teams when they’re looking at whether or not to hire a social media agency:

We can do all of our social media activity ourselves.
We can easily boost a few posts; we don’t need a targeting or paid media strategy.
We can’t find the budget for our social activity.
Influencer marketing is not for us as it’s too expensive.

Unfortunately, we find that the above not only proves untrue over time, but can actually set businesses back financially. In the end, trying to run social media activity without the right level of expertise can create much bigger problems when it comes to making existing social media activity work harder and more effectively.

If we delve a bit deeper into the reasons to hire a social media agency, it will become clearer that it’s an investment worth making and a step worth taking.

When considering a social media agency, here’s what to look for:

#1 - Expertise

Using your internal teams to put your social media activity out there can be tricky for many reasons, but one key thing that stands out is the level of expertise needed to effectively engage your audience and hit your KPIs. Finding a specialist social media team who live and breathe social is a much better bet; they will have wider knowledge across all of the social media services including influencer marketing, paid media, content marketing, community management, and creative.

#2 - Efficiency

Social media moves quickly, so your agency needs to be quick and efficient to keep up with the fast-paced nature of the industry. Delivery times need to be ensured, and response times are key to maintaining a good working relationship for any digital marketing partnership. It is important to hire a social media agency that’s agile and can think on their feet, and is able to deliver what you need, when you need it.

#3 - Strategic mindset

Any good social media agency will have strategy at the forefront of their offering. They will work with their clients to set objectives and KPIs and work towards not only meeting them, but exceeding them. They will have a robust test and learn optimisation strategy, where they use learnings from previous activity to drive future campaigns and content delivery. They will never rest on their laurels and will always try to push things to the next level and make an impact on ROI.

#4 - Innovative

The most popular social media channels may seem like they’re here to stay, however there are new formats and developments popping up all the time; it is therefore absolutely essential for any social media agency to be at the forefront of the industry. For example, Instagram influencers may be the basis of your digital marketing strategy to date, but TikTok could prove to be an essential part of your influencer marketing in the future. Ideally, you want your social media agency to be always thinking of new ways to reach your audience, and be clever in their approach to targeting, paid media and building a community and followers.

#5 - Comprehensive offering

It’s not enough for your social media agency to only cover social. That may sound counter-intuitive, but the best agencies will have an eye on how your social activity will interact with other parts of your business and digital marketing including PR, experiential, out-of-home, AR & VR, customer service, search, Amazon and more.

So before you hire your next UK social media agency, explore whether or not they fulfil the above five characteristics and ensure they’ll push your social media services to the next level.