Consider your status check-ins, inquiries and of course, approvals. These everyday communications can make a huge impact on how your client understands your work. A few tweaks can completely transform a cumbersome process into an experience that positions your agency as a true creative partner.

Optimizing your internal and external processes will benefit your end-to-end social media approval workflows while still instilling confidence in your work. In this article, we’ll go over how these day-to-day interactions can strengthen agency-client relationships.

How approval workflows strengthen agency-client relationships

Some 92% of agencies offer social media management as part of their overall service package, according to Sprout’s Agency Pricing & Packaging Report. As social becomes a core part of agency offerings, you need to have the infrastructure to operate smoothly at scale.

Post approvals are a small but powerful step in any social media service offering. At their worst, they can involve a lot of follow-up, creating a time suck for you and your client. At their best, they can create client stickiness. Agency-client relationships get stronger when these processes become mini-opportunities for collaboration. Here’s how:

1. Demonstrate the value of social with a routine touchpoint

Social is your world, but for your clients, it’s just a fraction of their day-to-day. Approval workflows promote more active collaboration between you and your client’s teams.

Think of it this way: Your social performance reports summarize the results of all the hard work you’re putting in. Your social media approval workflow gives your clients a peek behind the curtain, providing a more granular view into your posting schedule without a heavy time investment.

This helps your client gain a deeper understanding of the strategy work you’ve put into developing their social presence. The more your clients understand your strategy, the better equipped they are to work as a creative partner to your team during content brainstorms.

2. Prevent mistakes with internal approvals

A good reputation is hard-earned and—given the speed of social—easily damaged. While successful client-agency partnerships are typically supported through your performance against deliverables, sometimes it’s what you don’t do that counts.

Maintain a strong foundation of trust by building quality assurance into your publishing process. In Sprout, this is done by adding an internal review step to your workflow to ensure your work is “agency approved” before its time for client review.

Adding an internal review step to your social media approval process can serve as a safeguard that prevents costly mistakes or off-brand messaging from reaching your client—let alone their social media profiles. These measures ensure your client only sees quality work which helps build trust and a positive rapport.

3. Communicate with external stakeholders fast

After your work has gone through quality assurance, it’s time to send it off to the client for feedback. Sprout’s external workflow feature enables seamless client communication.

Exchanging communication feedback on several channels like Google Docs, a spreadsheet or an email thread can cause important details or context to get lost.

When agencies and stakeholders are passing social content back and forth on these platforms, it’s easy context—like how a post will look with an image and copy once published—to get lost. But Sprout’s approval workflow shows network previews, so external approvers can see what posts look like once published.

Sprout also enables external stakeholders to review and give feedback on social posts directly in our platform—even if they aren’t a Sprout user. The external approver doesn’t need to learn how to use our user interface or log in.

They can simply verify their email address, review the posts, comment with feedback and approve/deny the posts.

If internal approvals and commentary are still underway, external clients can’t see the conversation, allowing agencies to only share relevant information that’s important to their clients.

Plus, Sprout will send external approvers automated reminder emails leading up to the deadline if an approval hasn’t come through yet. This not only saves time and effort, but it alleviates the common pain point of remembering to follow up.

Social media marketing agencies also benefit from this external workflow feature because it simplifies managing multiple clients and stakeholders. Instead of using multiple platforms to communicate and review deliverables, agencies have one source of truth for execution.

4. Promote collaboration in times of crisis

Typically, you’ll be working with a set approval and publishing schedule. But when a crisis strikes and your schedule is thrown out the window, post approvals help support sudden shifts in content production.

When COVID-19 shelter-in-place mandates took effect in March 2020, Communicators Group had to revisit all of its clients’ social calendars. The agency had to work quickly to establish a strategy for publishing timely updates, many of which were being announced by the hour.

To publish important updates quickly and accurately, their team used Sprout’s Message Approval Workflow to draft, review and schedule new content.

“For several months, we completed 100% of our posts directly through the Message Approval Workflow feature simply because I could no longer plan out a month in advance,” said Raven Gill, Social Media Manager at Communicators Group.

“We’ve gotten to a better position where I can go back to monthly planning. But for some clients, we’re still working out of approval workflows because of how consistently things are changing.”

Communicators Group was able to act as a true partner, simplifying an already stressful situation for their many clients. Designing your approval workflow with crisis prevention in mind can help you do the same.

With Sprout’s external approvals, agencies can get client feedback on crisis communication posts fast. After client approval, the agency can make the changes and publish without leaving Sprout’s platform. Workflows like this during times of crisis will strengthen your agency-client relationship because they eliminate any risk of crucial messages getting lost in translation.

5. Retain and grow your business

Some 67% of digital marketing agencies say the reason clients choose them is because they establish themselves as strategic partners. By promoting collaboration, efficiency and quality, your social media approval workflow can strengthen your client-agency partnership and your business.

Strong client relationships drive referrals. Word-of-mouth referrals are one of the most popular ways agencies drive new business. Having operations that streamline collaboration within your existing client relationships can ultimately fuel your new business strategy.

Well-designed processes strengthen agency-client relationships by showing you can scale social efforts without sacrificing quality or brand voice. It may seem simple, but it’s also incredibly effective.

Creating a workflow that supports lasting agency-client relationships

Opportunities for agency-client collaboration can be found in surprising places. Take routine processes and use them as an opportunity to showcase the true value of your agency.

Sprout’s Message Approval Workflow feature can handle every step of your process in one integrated system. And with external approvals, communication with clients–especially during times of crisis– is faster and easier because your clients can provide commentary even if they aren’t a Sprout customer.

Build your approval workflow and see how else Sprout can support your growing agency by signing up for a free trial today.

Start your free Sprout trial

The post Strengthen agency-client relationships with social approval workflows appeared first on Sprout Social.

Agencies will need to ramp up their skillsets and toolkits to meet the needs of their clients. Whether you’re a social media agency that’s stepping up its game or a brand that’s looking for the perfect agency, this guide is exactly what you need.

In this guide, we provide you with an in-depth look at the value social media marketing agencies offer. We also give you a breakdown of what agencies need to do to help clients achieve their goals. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents:

• Why hire a social media marketing agency
• What services do social media marketing agencies offer
• Strategies for social media marketing agencies
• How agencies can prove the value of social media
• How agencies can collaborate with clients
• Sprout Social for agencies
• The Sprout Social agency partner program

Why hire a social media marketing agency

Modern marketers have access to a wealth of resources and information to manage their social media marketing. Comprehensive social media management tools (like what we offer at Sprout) further make their job easier. So why work with a social media marketing agency at all when brands could probably do it themselves?

Let’s find out the value that social media marketing agencies can bring. How can agencies help brands to fill gaps or level up their strategies?

Unparalleled experience

Agencies are capable of running campaigns and providing a level of knowledge that simply isn’t possible in-house.

Social media is so much more than just being present and posting the occasional photo. It also involves staying on top of the latest social algorithm updates. Not to mention the skills you need to navigate things like audience segmentation and social advertising. Again, that’s the benefit of hiring someone who’s been there and done that.

Agency professionals have years of real-life experience. They’ve also worked on an expansive range of client projects. These experiences have exposed them to social and marketing tactics that you just can’t learn through reading. As such, the expertise they offer isn’t easy to replicate in-house.

The same rings true when it comes to growing communities or engaging customers. Sure, you could do it yourself. But would it make sense in terms of your team’s time and energy? A campaign that might take months for brands to put together in-house might take just a few days for an agency.

Agencies have access to top-tier tools

Social media marketing agencies need to manage multiple campaigns at a time while doing so in the most efficient manner. That’s why they invest in the most powerful tools and analytics platforms in the market to achieve those results.

For example, let’s take the time to shine a light on success stories such as haarper. The Australia-based agency used Sprout’s tools to help their clients achieve impressive results. This included a 458% increase in Instagram engagement YoY.

Agencies can juggle multiple campaigns

Agencies have the bandwidth to run multiple campaigns at once that could otherwise bog down your team internally. By working with a social media marketing agency, brands can make better use of their team’s time and get more done with the people they already have.

What services do social media marketing agencies offer

Now another major question is what kinds of services can brands expect from a social media marketing agency. Based on our Agency Pricing and Packaging Report, let’s take a look at the most common social media marketing services.

Social media management

Agencies can manage a brand’s entire social media presence, allowing it to save time and stress. Agencies can help brands plan their entire social strategy–from deciding what to post to which channels to focus on.

Content development

Many agencies now offer content development services in-house. They produce content that aligns with a brand’s voice and social strategy. Agencies can help brands make sense of their social media performance, allowing them to take action accordingly.

Paid social media

With organic reach declining, more and more brands are turning to social advertising. Agencies help brands to create, execute and manage successful paid social strategies. Agencies constantly stay on top of the latest trends and algorithm updates. They use those skills and knowledge toward boosting social engagement for clients.

Community management

Creating engaged, active social communities can be rewarding yet time-consuming. For some brands, an agency is the only way to really make those communities possible.

7 strategies for social media marketing agencies

The following strategies will set your social agency apart from others and help your clients grow their business.

1. Analyze your clients’ audiences

Analyzing each client’s audience may seem obvious. Gone are the days of pure qualitative research and good old intuition. If you have access to data-driven insights, you should be leveraging them.

One thing to consider is the age of your clients’ target audiences. In fact, the 2022 Sprout Social Index™found a major difference in how different generations respond to brand marketing. For example, younger generations are more responsive to collaborations with influencers and celebrities. Meanwhile, only 9% of Baby Boomers value this type of content collaboration.

Additionally, Facebook still sees significant usage from consumers as a whole. TikTok has also surpassed Snapchat as one of the top platforms consumers prefer to use.

If you’re unsure of the demographic makeup of your client’s audiences, you can easily find out with social media analytics software.

Another way to analyze your client’s demographic audience is through social media listening. This will show you the demographics of your client’s social media followers. It also gives you a demographic breakdown of the people on social media who are actively discussing the brand.

Additionally, you can also find their most engaged followers and get an overview of their profile. This information is invaluable to research when trying to determine not just who follows the brand, but who engages with it.

Using a tool like Sprout’s Twitter Trends Report, you can even see which topics and hashtags people frequently mention with the brand. This can give you a better understanding of what the target audience is interested in discussing.

2. Coordinate with other agencies

The world of agency marketing is incredibly competitive, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t collaborate with your peers. Agency marketers who team up with other social agencies reap benefits over those that seclude themselves.

Your inter-agency team may be your best bet for optimizing your social media efforts. What with social being the glue that holds disparate channel campaigns together? For instance, you may not be your client’s activation agency. But coordinating with whoever is allows you to collect and repurpose user-generated content (UGC) from your client’s events.

Let’s face it, your agency won’t be a perfect fit for every single client. Or maybe you have a contact at a social media agency whose specialty is exactly what you need to make your client’s social media strategy better. Or, by passing leads that you can’t take on or that aren’t a good fit to a different agency you strengthen the relationship and chances they return the favor.

Looking for some agencies to team up with? Check out the Sprout Social Agency Directory to find some of the leading organizations in the space.

3. Join partner programs

Joining partner programs is a great way to connect with brands that can help you scale your business. In many cases, these brand partners may even be able to get your agency in front of potential clients. The Sprout Social Agency Directory, for instance, consists of companies that are part of our Agency Partner Program.

Sprout Social’s Agency Partner Program offers exclusive benefits to help you scale your agency. Some cool perks include:

• Access to co-marketing opportunities with established brands
• Hands-on training and custom reporting to ensure happy clients
• Introductions to other agencies around the world
• Specific resources created to help you succeed on social media

Look around for all the programs relevant to yours and if it seems like a good fit, try and join.

4. Pull data for case studies

To close a deal as you’re pitching a client, it’s essential that you showcase past successes. So, it’s important that you have something to show for your expertise. Start by featuring a list of clients on your website, organized by name or vertical in so it’s easy to digest at a quick glance.

From there, build out case studies and customer videos, featuring as many of your top clients as possible. An effective case study tells the story of your agency’s project with a client. It highlights the challenges the client faced and your strategy for addressing them. Eventually, it shows how your agency provided a tactical solution and shares data points around the results of your efforts.

Keep in mind when creating case studies to include as much data as possible. Your potential clients want to know how you helped others succeed and the results that came with that success. If you’re using a social media tool it should be simple to pull data to show how you improved social presence month over month.

Sprout’s Cross-Network Reports, for instance, makes it easy to visualize your clients’ performance over time. You can extract these Reports and include them in your case studies.

5. Co-market with other companies or agencies

If you have an “in” with a large company or agency, look for co-marketing opportunities to tap into each other’s audiences. You could work with them on a piece of content that both organizations can promote for a mutually beneficial lift in reach.

Here at Sprout, we always make it a point to work with our agency partners to create joint content that we then share with our audiences.

Once we’ve co-created a piece of content with our agency partners, both organizations get to work promoting it.

6. Scale content with your clients

Some agencies may spend a good deal of their team’s time coordinating with clients on what to post on social channels. This is often the case if your agency offers services for strategy and content development. Stay ahead of your content calendar with these two strategies.

Get Pre-Approved Content in Bulk
Work with your clients to identify a cache of approved creative assets. You can then look for opportunities to repurpose that content when creating a content calendar. This content can live in an Asset Library for quick access to appropriate imagery.

Give Clients Access to Your Social Tool for Approvals
Use the right social media tool to invite your client stakeholders into your account. This gives them visibility into your content publishing workflow so they can be a part of it.

7. Get clients into the reports

Clients want to keep their finger on the pulse of what’s happening with their social media campaigns and to have easy access to the data. So, it helps if you can give them direct access to social media reports by inviting them into your social media tool.

How agencies can prove the value of social media

Social media marketing agencies need to establish value by showing their clients real results that matter to them. So how exactly will you prove the ROI of social media?

The first conversation to have with your clients is ideally about their social marketing goals. You can then assess the feasibility of those goals and what social success looks like.

No campaign can (or will) succeed if you don’t know what success looks like, and you will never be able to scale your agency if you can’t satisfy client goals. Now, this may sound harsh but bear with us as we walk you through an ideal process to start your client relationships and campaigns on the right foot.

If you can’t determine what your customers will achieve from your efforts, then you won’t be able to prioritize those strategies. You’d be merely throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

That’s not how you create a great Italian dish, and that’s not how you create a strong agency-client relationship.

Table the ROI discussion

“What is the ROI of social media?”

It’s a question all agencies and in-house marketers inevitably face, but one that is incredibly complicated to answer.

Other digital channels like paid search, SEO or email may have a clear path to revenue generation. Meanwhile, telling that story with social is more complicated.

If you’re frustrated with having conversations around ROI with your clients just know that you’re not alone. According to the 2022 Sprout Social Index™, proving ROI is the second biggest challenge for social media teams.

Don’t get us wrong, social media is definitely a channel you can generate leads and revenue with. It’s also one of Sprout Social’s strongest channels for driving growth.

But know that social media is so much more than a place to blast messages. Marketers struggle to quantify ROI on social media because as a channel it plays so many roles.

How can you successfully navigate the question of “What is the ROI on social media?” Start by defining your client’s goals and then discussing what impact those goals have on their organization as a whole. Ask them: What do you want from social?

Choose goals with your clients

We say that social media is more than a place to blast messages and hope for revenue. So what else is it for? Your clients may want to build their presence on social to increase their brand awareness. While most clients may focus on sales and lead generation, others may also want to build an engaged community.

Get clarity on what your clients want to achieve through social. More importantly, provide a guiding light on what goals might be relevant to them based on their overall business goals.

Choose key performance indicators based on goals

Key performance indicators (KPIs) vary depending on the goals of the campaign. For example, a campaign to raise brand awareness will need different KPIs from one that aims to generate new sales and leads.

Here are some solid goals and the KPIs you can optimize for.

• Increase brand awareness: Impressions, reach, audience growth
• Increase community engagement: Inbound messages, replies sent, audience growth
• Increase web traffic: Clicks, website visits
• Generate sales and leads: Clicks, website visits, use URL tracking to track social traffic
• Distribute content: Messages sent, potential reach, responses, clicks
• Increase brand advocacy: Following, social trends reporting, reach, clicks
• Support customers: Response rate, response time
• Grow influencer marketing: Following, social trends reporting

Once you’ve chosen the metrics that indicate success you can set more quantifiable goals. However, those goals should also depend on historic values and a baseline. A client may tell you they want a million new impressions. But if you don’t know how many impressions they typically see, then you have no idea if that goal is realistic and achievable.

Pro Tip: Use a social media analytics tool to audit your client’s social media performance. This will include past impressions, clicks, growth rate, response time, response speed and more. Only then will you be confident in accepting, negotiating or rejecting a proposal.

Navigating competitive benchmarking

Throughout the relationship, clients may ask you to benchmark their performance to others in their industry. This can be a challenging discussion if you’re not an expert in the specific industry they serve, but there are some things you can do.

1. Look to industry standard reports

Find reports that pull information on social media performance by vertical. This may not be as specific as comparing a client’s social presence directly to that of a competitor. But it gives enough information to compare their presence to the industry as a whole.

Ideally, you’d want to look at industry standards on the following metrics:

• Response rate: The percent of consumer messages needing a response that actually get one
• Response time: How long brands take (in hours) to respond to consumer messages that need a response
• Response percentage: How many messages brands receive on social that require a response
• Posts per replies: How many promotional messages brands publish vs. how many responses they give
• Brand engagement ranking: How responsive brands are to consumers
• Consumer engagement ranking: How vocal consumers are with brands

     2. Use deep listening tools

Powerful social media listening tools can look through social media data to pull competitive insights. You can find data on how often each brand gets a mention, the impression volume, the general sentiment around the brand and more.

   3. Use social media analytics

Once you’ve secured a client and set them up with social media analytics, you can start making a side-by-side comparison. Stack up things like audience growth, message volume, response rates and more.

Stay flexible and adjust your approach

As your campaigns take flight make sure to consistently review your social reports. Look closely at clients’ KPIs and gauge whether or not they’re on track to miss, hit or exceed your clients’ expectations.

Find ways to constantly optimize your strategy and take these lessons back to the client but go beyond just telling them what works. Show them how to keep evolving with each interaction and soon enough, you’ll be ready to set your next goals.

How to collaborate with clients

Maintaining collaborative relationships will increase a client’s trust in your work. It will also streamline your social media marketing and earn you loyal customers.

Figuring out methods for better collaboration is an agency pastime. But true collaboration can be tricky between juggling multiple clients, tools and social accounts.

These solutions can help improve collaboration across multiple channels and touchpoints. It will also keep you from scrambling to catch up with clients.

Get the clients involved

Many agencies are used to being the “doers”—doing the publishing, the community management, the reporting. But as an agency scales and brings in new business, being the doer for every client isn’t always an option. There are only so many days in the week.

Moreover, there’s a risk of disconnects and miscommunications when you’re the one handling everything. It’s important to get your clients involved with a strong communication strategy. Keep them informed about important updates and progresses. You could even get them to jump in on some of the more exciting conversations that are going on.

The clients will love to see the happy customers they have, and you’ll love not having to answer every single message that requires attention.

For example, let’s say you notice someone is frequently using a client’s branded hashtag. You can nudge the client with a message like, “Hey, here’s a good opportunity to interact.”

It’s an easy step that lets your clients know you’re right there with them and constantly seeking out opportunities for them. It allows you to provide them with actionable expertise, even in times when you’re unable to be the doer.

Take full advantage of a shared asset library

A shared asset library is a library of client-approved content that you can easily repurpose and publish. It minimizes the hassle of gaining client approval for each piece of content you publish on their account. You can do this with anything from Dropbox to Google Drive or a social tool with an asset library like Sprout.

The benefit of a social tool is that you can:

• Sort by media type
• Sort by tags
• Sort by authors
• Give different levels of access to different individuals

An asset library really simplifies collaborative publishing. It helps to create a collaborative workflow between client and agency. An asset library also lets you customize the experience of asset management.

Sometimes a client just needs to see what they need to see. So, you can sort different assets within a unique hierarchy to avoid overwhelming them. This could be with the help of folders or permissions.

A joint asset library makes social media publishing seamless and will inevitably save you tons of time on social media.

Align on customer communication with tasking

What do you do when you come across a message from a disgruntled customer? Perhaps that message needs a carefully crafted response or it needs immediate escalation. Regardless of the case, you need to establish a workflow with your clients for when these situations arise.

Create a process wherein you can submit problematic social messages to the client as a task to align on healthy, on-brand responses easily.

It’s not lazy to send things to your client. In fact, it automates and streamlines the sometimes tumultuous and lengthy process of manual damage control. Just make sure the client is set up to handle that message and include your suggestions for a response. Anything as easy as an email with your note can suffice.

Without fully handing over the wheel, you can ensure you and your client are making decisions together as a team.

Stay ahead of client requests and showcase value with reports

Clients seek different things when it comes to reporting. Some like to know how their audience size is growing. Others want to see how quickly their service teams are responding to requests. Regardless of what the client wants, there’s no limit to the amount of data you can pull from social media.

Carve out time within your week to create or update these reports for your clients and send them over before they even have to ask. You can also use social media reporting tools to automate the process. This would allow you to automatically send presentation-ready reports to your clients at a specified time.

It’s normal to automate processes during particularly hectic times for your agency. But to still have control in an automated process with customization is a real win/win.

Sprout Social for agencies

Maybe you’re providing full-service social solutions or stepping in for a specific campaign or project. No matter the range of services, agencies understand how to deliver results. And within a sole social agency, each client engagement can call for a distinct setup. While some may require one-to-many, others may need many-to-one or collaborative setups.

When agency teams need tools to implement these social initiatives for their clients, they use Sprout Social. With Sprout’s publishing, engagement and reporting tool sets, agencies can utilize one or combine all to meet their needs. In addition, Sprout offers a flexible account structure and custom permissions. This makes client management more scalable. You can customize your plan as client portfolios grow and objectives change.

Let us show you the different ways Sprout can accommodate your agency’s working style.

Agency use case 1: Full-service solutions

• Agency type: Full-service social media marketing
• Client engagement: One-to-many
• Agency set up: A mid-sized agency with a client portfolio of local and regional brands. Works in teams of social strategists and Community Managers. Each Community Manager is responsible for fully managing social programs on behalf of four client brands each.
• How Sprout powers the agency: Managing social media for all your clients is easy using Sprout. Your team can publish, engage and analyze all from one platform.

Community Managers use the Scheduler to publish time-sensitive messages at a specific time. This allows you to get the most out of published content. Or use ViralPost to ensure your client’s audience sees content at the optimal time for engagement.

Monitor and engage with incoming messages across all client profiles and networks using the Smart Inbox. Filter the inbox to concentrate on certain profiles, networks or message types. Then mark messages as complete as you work towards inbox zero.

The mobile apps enable each Community Manager to stay connected even while on the go; team members can publish and engage right from their phones.

Agency use case 2: Campaign solutions

• Agency type: Campaign marketing / Campaign management
• Client engagement: Many-to-one
• Agency set up: A large global agency with a client portfolio of international brands. Works in teams that are responsible for managing social campaigns on behalf of each client.
• How Sprout powers the agency: Sprout enables teams to gather strategic insights during the planning phase. It helps them manage customer engagements during execution and analyze results post-campaign.

The analyst uses the Twitter Listening Report to measure keyword volume. This helps to inform the campaign’s hashtag and creative strategy. It guides the ideation process for a client campaign. The Message Approval workflow helps to streamline client approvals. This allows stakeholders to approve or reject with feedback.

During campaign execution, the team makes use of tools such as the Asset Library, Message Tagging and Content Calendar. These tools allow them to plan and organize outgoing social posts. Throughout the campaign, the team also categorizes incoming messages with Message Tagging.

Once the campaign wraps, the analyst uses the Tag Report to track volume and determine sentiment. It also helps them analyze overall campaign performance to report back to the client.

Agency use case 3: Content strategy solutions

• Agency type: Content marketing
• Client engagement: Collaborative
• Agency set up: An agency with a client portfolio of national brands appoints a content marketing team to each client project. Teams help to plan and execute content marketing strategies for clients.
• How Sprout powers the agency: Content, context and audience are the keys to a successful content strategy. Sprout’s publishing toolset enables agency teams to create and publish content effectively. It allows them to tailor the content according to specific platforms and audiences.

As your content team starts to create content, they use Compose to draft messages. From here, they can add imagery from the Asset Library. Further, applying audience targeting helps to ensure the client’s messages reach the right audience.

The Message Approval workflow helps to streamline client approvals. This allows stakeholders to approve or reject with feedback. After approval and scheduling, the team can identify publishing gaps using the Content Calendar. They can then repeat the process to fill those holes.

The Sent Messages Report enables the team to analyze the content’s performance and adjust the content strategy as needed. Export the report to PDF for a presentation-ready version for your client. You can also select the CSV file to further analyze specific KPIs and data points.

Agency use case 4: Community management solutions

• Agency type: Community management and engagement
• Client engagement: One-to-many/Collaborative
• Agency set up: A niche agency that focuses on multi-location businesses and manages a portfolio of 25 franchise brands. These brands maintain hundreds of local, regional and national social profiles. Each project team is responsible for managing customer care on behalf of the client’s entire portfolio of social properties.
• How Sprout powers the agency: Reactive communication and customer care is vital to building and maintaining social relationships. Agencies use Sprout’s engagement toolset to discover, manage and address incoming messages on behalf of their clients.

The Smart Inbox is where your account team will monitor and engage with incoming messages across profiles and networks. Set up Brand Keywords so Community Managers can find and engage in conversations that are important to its client. This may include campaign hashtags, location check-ins or even competitor names, but not direct mentions.

As messages stream into the inbox, Community Managers collaborate with each other or with the client. They assign messages as Tasks to ensure the right person is responding to the message. Community Managers mark messages as complete as the account team works towards inbox zero.

Analysts use the Engagement Report to track response rates and times to meet the client’s engagement KPIs, as well as report on those efforts.

Agency use case 5: Analytics solutions

• Agency type: Social analytics
• Client engagement: Many-to-one
• Agency set up: An agency with a client portfolio of national brands appoints one team of analysts per client account. Each team is responsible for setting and analyzing social strategy on behalf of each client.
• How Sprout powers the agency: If your agency drives social strategy and execution for your clients, you need data to enforce its effectiveness. Sprout’s suite of reports enables your agency to prove its worth and use insights to tweak your strategy.

The Group Report is a high-level overview that provides aggregate data across social networks. This gives your client a better understanding of social efforts as a whole.

Pair the Group Report with the network profile reports for an in-depth look at specific social channels. Use these reports to demonstrate growth and audience behaviors across all channels and profiles.

Export the reports to PDF for a presentation-ready version for your client. You can also select the CSV file to further analyze specific KPIs and data points.

Agency use case 6: Customer service solutions

• Agency type: Customer service
• Client engagement: One-to-many
• Agency set up: A mid-sized customer service agency with a client portfolio of national brands. Appoints Customer Advocate teams to manage customer care around the clock for each client.
• How Sprout powers the agency: Creating a wonderful customer experience is important for agencies focusing on customer service. Sprout’s customer service toolset enables you to execute and analyze your efforts.

The Smart Inbox is where advocacy teams monitor and engage with incoming messages across profiles and networks. As messages stream into the inbox, the Customer Advocate Lead collaborates with the Customer Advocates or the client. They assign messages as Tasks to ensure the right person is responding to the message.

Account Directors use the Task Performance Report to analyze Tasks usage and completion. They use the Team Report in conjunction to track their team’s social performance. They assess performance based on reply metrics by individual. They also look at performance across all profiles and specific profiles.

Export the reports to PDF for a presentation-ready version for your client. You can also select the CSV file to further analyze specific KPIs and data points.

The Sprout Social partner program

Partner with Sprout Social to define and validate social ROI to your current clients. Be on the path to win new business for your digital marketing agency and connect with strategic social marketers.

Agency business is tough. While it’s rewarding work, #agencylife can sometimes feel like being on an island of your own. That’s where our Agency Partner Program sets out to bridge the gap and make things a little easier.

Everything’s better with a partner

This is a fast-paced industry and keeping a finger on the pulse of the latest and greatest isn’t always effortless. But there’s power in partnership. Doing so enables agencies to reduce inefficiencies by leveraging resources. With Sprout in the picture, they gain full-suite access to enterprise-level social tools.

“[Partnership programs] are a great investment for your agency,” Jared DiVincent, Founder of SocialCompass Marketing, said. “It provides you with invaluable resources, keeps your team on the cutting edge of what’s happening in your industry and puts you on a platform to speak to that many more prospects.”

Agency partners get early access to Sprout’s newest product features. They also enjoy the ability to voice opinions on product development. This allows an agency to get to know the product inside and out. It helps not only our agency partners, but Sprout’s own team.

Lucas Vandenberg, Fifty & Five Managing Partner, thinks the biggest value of being a Sprout Agency Partner is in having that extra access.

“For us, giving additional feedback on new tools that are coming out is hugely valuable in understanding that the tool is really created and customized specifically for our needs,” Vandenberg said.

Being a part of a program like this gives agencies like Fifty & Five a model for scalable pricing. They also have access to a whole team at Sprout who can really understand the intricacies of the agency business model itself.

A connected community

The Agency Partner Program goes beyond leveraging resources and beta-testing product enhancements. Partnering through a program like this boils down to growing together. It involves leveraging one another’s experiences as a community. It also enables you to gain insight into what others like you are doing in the industry. In short, it’s a relationship.

An open opportunity to interact and idea-share with other marketers like yourself is one community benefit. But Brooke Sellas, Founder and CEO of B Squared Media, feels it’s more the nurturing nature of the program that lends itself so well to creating a community.

“I can call [Sprout Social] on the phone and ask them how to do something for the 50th time and they’re not annoyed,” Sellas said. “They just honestly care about how we’re doing, where we’re going and solving things for us.”

But Sellas stresses that it’s not just about getting on the phone to talk product or roadmap.

“It’s also the camaraderie,” Sellas said. “Meeting other people, forming those relationships, getting to know what Sprout’s all about and really just forming that bond with your software partner, which I don’t know that very many people can say that about their tool.”

Building your business and growing your agency

Fifty & Five’s Vandenberg explains that his agency has gained exposure to new and great opportunities in the last year. This is all a result of being a Sprout partner and building brand awareness as a vetted agency.

“One of the ways the program has helped us grow is by giving us access to new leads and new prospects,” Vandenberg said.

DiVincent feels similarly: “Saying that we’re an agency founding partner and a Sprout Social partner definitely helps our prospects and helps us gain more clients. It helps us pitch easier and it just builds that layer of trust that we couldn’t do on our own.”

The Agency Partner Program believes that partnerships depend on mutual, sustainable growth. And it is Sprout’s goal to continually support that.

Sellas sums it up best: “Before joining the Agency Partner Program, I loved Sprout. After joining, I want to marry Sprout.”

Advance your agency with Sprout Social

Great ideas get clients in the door, but your ability to execute is what builds trust.

The building blocks of a successful agency-client partnership are similar to those of any great relationship: communication, flexibility, transparency, trust and attention. Sprout’s agency tools can help you meet those needs and exceed client expectations.

Try Sprout Social for free with a 30-day trial.

The post The social media marketing agency and services guide appeared first on Sprout Social.

Agencies are expanding their services and teams to keep up with the ever-changing social media landscape. And creators and influencers are working with larger clientele, creating ad-hoc agencies to keep up with the demand.

In this article, we’ll give tips for those looking to create an agency and agency veterans looking to grow and hire top talent.

Starting your own social media marketing agency

If you’re looking to create an agency, this section is dedicated to you. If you already have an established agency, skip to the next section.

Here are five tips for starting your own social media marketing agency:

1. Define your niche and services

Before you move forward, you need to determine your niche. Tailoring your niche will help you define your service offerings and your potential clientele. Your agency can be industry specific (B2B, tech, beauty etc) or platform-specific. For example, many TikTok marketing agencies specialize in creative productions and talent management.

Once you confirm your niche, begin thinking about the range of services you want to provide. Modern agencies offer services that include creative, strategic and tactical support across social channels.

Publishing, strategy development, social media contest management, performance reporting and advertising campaigns are just a few examples of social media marketing agency services. Since agencies can offer a variety of services, specialization is very common.

According to our Agency Pricing and Packaging Report, 33% of agencies describe themselves as full-service:

Defining your social media agency services will also determine the tools you want to use and your pricing, which leads us to our next tip: set your prices.

2. Set your pricing

As you grow, you’ll be able to charge more and adjust your business margins, but here’s a glance at average monthly pricing based on our data:

Think about how you want to charge your clients as well. You can offer a la carte services, value-based pricing, packaged services or standard pricing with customized add-ons. You can also change per client.

3. Create a business plan

As they say, a dream without a plan is just a wish. The same goes for creating your social media marketing agency. You need to create a business plan to lead your decision-making as an agency owner. More importantly, you need a solid financial foundation to get started and continue operating.

4. Build and nurture your clientele

This is one of the most important parts of building your marketing agency. Note that the amount of clients an agency can service depends on its size.

Here’s a quick glance at the average number of clients by agency size, according to our report:

• Nearly 40% of SMB agencies average between 5-10 clients, and an additional 32% average 1-5 clients.
• Mid-sized agencies most commonly (31%) average 5-10 clients, followed by 28% that average 10-20 clients.
• A quarter of enterprise agencies average 10-20 clients, 19% average 20-40 and 16% average more than 40 clients.

There are several methods you can use to help grow your brand. Here are a few ways to build your clientele when you’re starting your agency:

• Pitch to clients within your niche
• Use your current network to secure clients and projects
• Attend conferences so you can network and create connections in person
• Pay attention to freelance websites for potential clients/projects
• Embrace social selling and use online communities like LinkedIn to identify prospects
• Run events like webinars to increase brand awareness
• Volunteer pro-bono or discounted services for a non-profit to show your brand values and earn experience

5. Hire employees

As you grow, you’ll need more employees. You won’t have a full team starting out and that’s okay.

You might only be able to handle a team of two to three people at first because your hiring relies on your financial resources. If you already have a team, evaluate the skills they encompass, then consider which roles are non-negotiable for you at the moment. A content writer, graphic designer, lead generation marketer and an accountant are some examples of good roles to help launch your agency.

6. Track your growth and improve your portfolio

Learning how to start a social media marketing agency won’t happen overnight. You’ll need to track your high and low points to determine the next steps for improving and scaling your business. Even the biggest social media marketing agencies evaluate their performance, so get into the habit of reviewing and tracking your growth.

Along with tracking how far you’ve come, make sure to continue adding to your portfolio. A good portfolio will illustrate why potential clients should work with your agency. Whenever your agency closes out a project, add it to your portfolio. Consider adding testimonials or case studies to strengthen your experience even more.

A case for growing your social media marketing agency services

Social media has quickly matured over the years, requiring marketing professionals to create more sophisticated strategies with efforts tied to business impact. Brands are looking to agencies to help them tackle complex challenges and stay ahead of their competitors.

Modern agencies are also grappling with the challenges of more brands shifting their marketing functions in-house. Thus, the range of services offered by social media marketing agencies has exploded over the past two years, becoming more specialized to meet the needs of today’s clients.

According to our data, over half of agencies have added new services in the past 12 months and more than a third have prioritized core services. Those that haven’t already created new services plan to do so within the next 12-24 months.

To keep up with the landscape, many agencies are expanding their services from traditional executional work to more strategic advising and consulting. Although there’s still a need for executional work, three of the top five most offered social media marketing services lean toward strategy.

The most popular agency services include social media strategy (97%), content creation and publishing (94%), social media management (92%), paid social (87%) and social media analytics (86%). Hands-on services like social media engagement and community management are less popular compared to 2020.

However, expanding your services isn’t possible without the right staff on board. Once you have a talented team secured, your agency can grow and develop more social media marketing services.

Staffing your agency: 5 best practices to find and retain top talent

According to our data, during times of economic uncertainty, agencies focus on client retention and growth, refining agency expertise and lowering fixed costs. A whopping 80% of agencies say retaining clients is the #1 focus during economic uncertainty as well.

This is why retaining your current employees is so imperative. Your team can retain clients because they already have the experience required to do so. And strong, established relationships with clientele drive referrals—90% of agencies rely on word-of-mouth or referrals to drive new business.

Along with retention, staffing your agency with top talent is just as important. Expanding your team could help you address the growing amount of services clients expect and many agencies are incorporating. Plus, dispersing a workload across a large team can widen bandwidth and help your team avoid burnout.

Here are five best practices to help your discover and retain top talent:

1. Write relevant job descriptions

The good thing about hiring for a social media marketing agency is that your future employees are already online. The hard part? Crafting a job description that will attract ideal candidates and make your brand stand apart in the sea of applications.

A straight-foward, thoughtful job description will attract qualified talent because it shows you’re able to understand the requirements of the role. It also shows your brand has transparent communication.

Also consider if and how the job description includes inclusive language. We all have implicit biases that can sneak into the hiring process. Having a diverse team isn’t just about representation—it’s about having a diversity of thought, experience and skills necessary to build your brand. An inclusive description can encourage applicants from marginalized groups to submit their applications.

2. Take advantage of social recruiting and employee advocacy

Again, meet potential teammates where they are and utilize social recruiting. Job seekers are already following companies on sites like LinkedIn to find opportunities. Social media allows recruiters to find qualified candidates faster and can help narrow down the applicant pool too, so take advantage of it. Check out our guide on creative hiring post examples to learn how to set your brand apart in the marketplace.

Plus, if your agency implements social recruiting effectively, you give prospective candidates a glimpse into your company’s culture. Sprinkle in some employee advocacy content and you’ve increased your recruitment reach significantly. A current employee sharing a job listing while raving about working for your agency goes a long way.

3. Consider flexible working hours

Today’s job seekers are looking for positions that will allow them to work from home or work flexible hours. It’s the new norm in our post-2020 world and it isn’t going anyway. Potential candidates will be attracted to the flexibility, but it’s a win for your brand too. Widening working hours allows brands to cover different time zones, targeting a more diverse location range and hopefully more clientele.

4. Hire for specialized roles

The days of the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none professionals are fading away. Clients are requiring more specialized services and your team will need to follow suit to keep up in the current landscape. Agencies are notorious for high-stakes, fast-paced environments, but this type of culture isn’t effective or sustainable, which leads to our next tip: help avoid burnout.

5. Help current teammates avoid burnout

If you’re interested in retaining your top talent, this tip is very important. If your current teammates feel frequently overwhelmed with their workload or feel unheard, they’re at risk of burnout. In extreme cases, they could even pursue quiet quitting.

Only 29% of social media marketers say they’re comfortable talking about burnout with a direct manager. Creating a culture of transparency, trust and support can motivate your current team to continue doing great work.

Elevate your social media agency services with social listening

Understanding the current agency climate and how to attract and retain top talent is just the beginning of scaling your brand.

To learn more ways to grow your business, read our guide on how to grow a digital marketing agency using social listening.

The post How to start and grow a social media marketing agency appeared first on Sprout Social.

And with consumer preferences leaning towards short-form video, the demand for agencies who specialize in TikTok marketing remains high. In this article, we’ll walk through case studies from top certified TikTok marketing agencies to show how they use TikTok to grow their clients’ brands, building a business case for more agencies to expand their services.

5 top TikTok marketing agencies (with case studies)

Before we get started, here is a tip: learn from the agencies who’ve already branched into TikTok by looking at TikTok’s official marketing partners directory. The directory features a range of marketing agencies and other companies that provide a variety services, including popular ones like creative, commerce, sound and campaign management services.

To narrow down your research, we’ve created a list of some of the best TikTok marketing agencies and share how they’ve approached building successful campaigns with clients:

1. Byte/Dept

Who they are: Byte/Dept is a marketing technology agency based in London, New York and Berlin. Byte was acquired by Dept in February 2021.

They provide a variety of services for analytics, technology, creative and media services. Some examples of Byte’s services include chatbot creation and augmented reality. They are an official Snapchat Lense Partner as well.

Case study: ASO

Byte/Dept worked with ASOS to create the British online fashion retailer’s first TikTok campaign. The branded hashtag challenge #AySauce encouraged users to show off their outfits in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The three-week campaign featured a branded TikTok sound, in-feed ads, an interactive augmented reality experience and a diverse trough of talent including Holly H, the Neffati Brothers, Michael Le, Jordan Fisher and Luke Trotman from Love Island to name a few.

The #AySauce campaign resulted in 448,000 user videos and over 1.2 billion views in just three weeks. The challenge increased the brand’s engagement rate by 15.79%, which was well above the set benchmarks.

2. Incubeta

Who they are: Incubeta is an international digital marketing agency that provides solutions including consulting, media services and creative production.

Case study: Fantastic Furniture 

Fantastic Furniture is an Australian retailer that’s a favorite for furniture and bedding. The brand wanted to use TikTok to drive traffic to their website and increase their reach to a more engaged audience.

Fantastic Furniture worked with Incubeta to create TikTok influencer content. The agency collaborated with content creators @brookestyless and @georgieandzac to create DIY room transformation videos. Thanks to their unique content approaches, Fantastic Furniture could use these sponsored videos to reach a new, younger audience.

The TikTok videos were also repurposed for TV commercials, but proved to be more effective on their native platform. When both pieces of content were compared, the TikTok videos’ click-through rate was 8% higher. The highest-performing TikTok creative earned an impressive view-through rate increase of 108%.

When compared side-by-side, the influencer content cost per click was 10% lower than the television ads, allowing Fantastic Furniture to reach their target audience and drive more traffic to their site while being cost-effective.

3. Dash Hudson

Who they are: Headquartered out of Nova Scotia, Dash Hudson is a social entertainment marketing software company. Their digital and creative solutions help global brands optimize their social entertainment and commerce strategies.

Case study: Mecca

Australian beauty retailer Mecca wanted to identify long-term, high-performing TikTok content that would authentically connect with their current and prospective audiences to increase their ROI.

Mecca collaborated with TikTok and Dash Hudson to learn trend traction and craft a holistic, data-based content strategy for organic and paid creative campaigns.

The beauty retailer used Dash Hudson’s TikTok insights to pinpoint the highest-performing creators and content pillars to guide the direction of the videos. They then used this information to inform their content creation process.

With Dash Hudson’s data, the brand discovered using both organic and paid TikTok content within a campaign influenced its overall success.

After their first campaigns, Mecca saw incredible growth across several metrics including followers, video views and engagement. Followership increased by 64% and the creatives reached over 12 million views. Some 147,000 engagements were earned as well.

4. Whalar

Who they are: Whalar is an award-winning creator commerce company based in Australia, Germany, Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom. They offer services including talent management and brand partnership.

 Case study: Chupa Chups

Chupa Chups aimed to use TikTok to build a strong brand association between Halloween and the Spanish lollipop brand for a new audience in the United Kingdom.

Chupa Chups partnered with Whalar to create ads during spooky season and the outcome was delightfully frightful. Their Halloween campaign provides a great example of what can happen when content successfully aligns with a community or strong theme: brand recall was 42.6% and brand association was 5.7%, proving the campaign successful.

5. VMG Digital

Who they are: VMG Digital is an international creative services company that specializes in sponsored video ads and video content. They focus on using existing brand assets for repurposed content or mobile optimization, and also provide full-funnel marketing support.

Case study: Samsung

Samsung aimed to promote their new Galaxy Z Fold3 | Z Flip3 to Millennials and Gen Z in the Vietnamese market. The global smartphone brand sought to scale its exposure and engage with younger generations to show what their new foldable phone could accomplish.

Along with a series of ads, Samsung created a branded hashtag challenge, #VuDieuGapMo (Folding Dance). Popular TikTok creators like @hoaa.hanassii were used to drive more visibility to the campaign and encourage users to participate. To encourage participation further, Samsung offered chances to win prizes including the Galaxy Z Flip3.

The results of the campaign were astounding: in only two weeks, #VuDieuGapMo became the fastest TikTok campaign to reach 1 billion views in Vietnam. Over 259,800 videos were created for the challenge. Most benchmarks for the campaign were exceeded and Samsung saw a 14% increase in sales compared to its campaign target as well.

What TikTok marketing services can agencies offer?

TikTok marketing agencies typically offer services that can be split into two categories: strategy and content creation/execution. Here’s a brief summary of the two:

TikTok strategy

Agencies can help brands create a holistic TikTok marketing strategy. This can include defining a target audience and goals, performing competitor analysis, running analytics and reporting.

To carry out these tasks, it’s common for agencies to use social media management software like Sprout Social. We don’t mean to toot our own horn, but we’re an official TikTok Marketing Partner. And we’re one of the only social media management software companies that offers a TikTok integration. You can use Sprout Social’s TikTok management tools to manage, analyze and optimize your campaign.

Along with video scheduling, you can manage comments in our Smart Inbox and share presentation-ready analytics reports.

TikTok content creation and execution

Agencies can also help manage full content creation and campaign execution. Along with video production, this can include building partnerships with content creators and influencers.

There are also a variety of TikTok business solutions agencies can offer their clients, such as paid strategies using TopView and In-Feed Ads, or engagement strategies harnessing branded effects and hashtag challenges.

Next steps for TikTok marketing agencies

If you’re an agency looking to grow current services, expanding your offerings to TikTok marketing is a great place to start given its popularity and effectiveness.

And if you want an hands-on experience to learn more about how Sprout can help manage and analyze your new campaigns, sign up for a free one-month trial.

The post 5 best TikTok marketing agencies in 2023 appeared first on Sprout Social.

As more brands understand the impact social media can have on business outcomes, agencies need to reevaluate how they work with clients.

To understand how agencies are adapting to the changing digital landscape, we surveyed 228 agencies about their service offerings, client pricing and packaging and how they’re planning to build agency resilience in 2023 and beyond.

What you’ll find in this report:

• The most common agency pain points
• The evolution of agency service offerings
• Agencies’ approach to pitching and packing services
• Where to focus during times of economic uncertainty

Download this report to learn how to effectively price and package your agency service offering.

The post The Agency Pricing and Packaging Report appeared first on Sprout Social.

Agency expert and founder of Chatterkick, Beth Trejo, walks us through her agency’s journey, from inception to execution of offering TikTok as an agency service. Tune in to hear first hand experience on how to successfully:

• Spin up TikTok as a service
• Pitch TikTok to clients and prospects and
• Execute strategy on fast paced networks

The post TikTok as a Service [Webinar] appeared first on Sprout Social.

Founder and VP of Operations of Leadtail, Karri Carlson, and Sr. Director of Agency Sales at Sprout, Willie Mullen, discuss tips agencies can implement to navigate and thrive through uncertain economic climates. Tune in to our fireside chat on building agency resilience to learn how your agency can:

• Future-proof your service offerings
• De-risk agency operations and 
• Set your agency apart from the competition in 2023

The post Building Agency Resilience [Webinar] appeared first on Sprout Social.

Thankfully, you don’t need to start from scratch. There are quite a few templates you can use to guide you through the process, including ours. All you need to do is align on your project and goals. After that, it’s simply a matter of making a few tweaks.

Keep reading for a breakdown on what makes a great RFP. You’ll be sifting through proposals in no time.

What is a social media RFP?

A social media request for proposal (RFP)  is a formal questionnaire used to gather proposals for service or software needs. These documents help marketers make the best possible decision on who to partner with.

Choosing a software or service provider can be a high-stakes decision. Once a contract is signed, there’s little room to back out or make changes. RFPs give marketers the freedom to shop around, allowing them to make the best possible choice for their business.

What’s the difference between a social media agency RFP and a social media software RFP?

There are two types of social media RFPs: agency RFPs and software RFPs.

• Social media agency RFPs are used to assess how an agency might approach your specific need. These questionnaires focus on information focused on a project and bidder qualifications.
• Social media software RFPs are used to assess whether or not a software vendor can meet the needs of your organization. These questionnaires focus on software capabilities, data governance, product roadmaps and vendor information.

Both documents collect standard information: company profiles, terms of agreements and payment information. For the most part, that’s where the similarities end. The technical nature of software RFPs allows them to be more cut and dry. Social media agency RFPs, however, vary based on your project or business need.

Social media marketing agencies typically offer a variety of services. They might range from ongoing social media management to one-time strategy development. Your business needs can impact the overall structure of the RFP. As a result, that structure can affect the quality of the proposals you receive.

Why should you use a social media RFP?

Social media RFPs may take time to create, but they more than make up for that in value. In fact, they actually save you time in the long run.

A detailed RFP allows you to hit the ground running with your vendor selection process. It covers all the background questions, freeing you up to focus on big picture items. If you’re still not convinced, here are a few more reasons to use a social media RFP:

To outline specific project needs

Before you can outsource your social media marketing needs, you have to ask the tough questions.

Does your team share the same vision and goals for the project?

Do you agree on agency selection criteria?

Have you identified all the information an agency might need to get started?

Don’t assume all your stakeholders are on the same page. Drafting an RFP creates a much-needed opportunity to talk through project details as a team. Taking care of this before approaching an agency can save you both time and money.

To invite pitches from agencies and vendors

Finding the right agency is a lot of work. The research, outreach and introduction phases can extend your time to contract by weeks.

A social media RFP invites vendors to come to you with pitches, reducing that timeline into something more manageable. When you finally set up a time to meet, you’ll be able to dive right into proposed solutions.

To get multiple perspectives on your project

When you choose an agency or vendor, you’re choosing an extension of your team. You wouldn’t hire a new employee without interviewing at least a few applicants first. You need to screen other candidates to keep things above board. The same should go for your agency selection process.

RFPs are a key part of maintaining transparent and equitable processes. They also help guarantee you’re making the best choice for your specific project. By giving multiple vendors a fair shot at bidding, you access a variety of takes on how to approach the task at hand.

All you have to do is pick the one that aligns best with your vision.

What’s included in a social media RFP template?

There are many marketing RFP templates available. That said, not all marketing needs are created equal. Instead of tailoring an all-purpose template to the needs of your project, start with a template that’s social-specific.

Download the Social Media RFP Template

This will give you the frame for a solid RFP. Here’s what you need to build it into something great:

Your company profile

Think of this as the “About Us” section of your RFP. It doesn’t have to be a detailed account of your company history. It just has to give contractors an idea of what your company does and who it’s trying to reach.

Equip them with enough information to do their own independent research. Include information on your mission, values, average customer profile and industry.

Social media overview

This is where you can provide details on your social strategy and performance. Include links to all existing accounts, both active and inactive. Plus, you’ll want to include quantitative and qualitative information on past performance, such as:

• Quantitative: Follower count, average inbound messages per month, relevant analytics
• Qualitative: Overview of past campaigns, SWOT analysis by channel

Project description and goals

This is the most important section of your RFP. Social media services can include a lot of different deliverables, so be as clear as you can here. Do you need ongoing profile management? Audience engagement? Analytics? The more specific you are, the easier it will be to find the right vendor.

When it comes to social media goals, stick to broad objectives. Allow the bidder to come back to you with SMART goals, providing them with enough flexibility on how they’d like to approach the project.

Project milestones and deadlines

The vendors you approach will likely build out their own project timeline based on your request, but they will need details to do so.

Include an ideal project start date and any time-sensitive information. For example, if your project is tied to a larger marketing initiative that’s launching on a set date, vendors will need that context to create an accurate timeline.

If you’re looking for ongoing social media management services, review your current workflows. Where will the content approval process fit in? How quickly will you be able to provide feedback?

This also allows vendors who cannot meet your deadlines to remove themselves from the process to avoid wasting anyone’s time.

Proof of work

Proof of work (or bidder qualifications) gives vendors the opportunity to make their case for your business.

Request any specific experience information (testimonials, case studies, references, etc.) in this section. If you’re in a niche industry, you may want to ask for specific examples of previous work that relate to your business.

Agencies often keep this information on their website. Still, including it in your social media RFP can get you deeper insight into who you’re working with and how they work.

Terms of agreement

Choosing a new vendor is also a legal decision. The final contract will need to be approved by your legal team before you can sign it.

There’s nothing worse than being ready to kick off a project and running into a frustrating legal hurdle. By asking for terms of the agreement upfront, you can get a head start on reviewing the request. That way, you can address any issues during the selection process.

Payment schedule

Your payment schedule will depend on the scope of your project. For example, ongoing services may be billed by the hour, but campaign-based services can be billed by milestone. Typically, vendors will also require a percent-based deposit to begin a project as well.

Points of contact

A single point of contact can do wonders when it comes to limiting confusion. In this section, list a point of contact for the sales process and another for once the contract is signed. Leave space for the bidder to do the same. When it’s time to set a meeting, you’ll know exactly who you’re reaching out to.

Next steps

Ask the bidder to outline how they would like to move forward after the proposal has been reviewed. Each agency will have its own process.

To keep track of how the process is advancing, create a vendor selection scorecard that lists all your RFP criteria. Include columns for each vendor, so you can maintain a quick snapshot of who meets your different needs. You can also use this sheet to track where your team is at in the selection process.

Ready to create your next social media RFP?

The right social media RFP can land you great bids that lead to even better project outcomes. Create your own using this template alongside the guidelines above. You’ll be sorting through unique perspectives on tackling your marketing challenges in no time.

Get the Template

The post What you need to know before creating a social media RFP (template included) appeared first on Sprout Social.

After all, the expertise and time required to run social campaigns involves more than most companies can handle in-house.

This is especially true for smaller marketing teams struggling with social growth.

That’s why outsourcing social media is so common for brands big and small.

Because putting your online presence in experts’s hands ensures you’re seeing actual returns for your investment in social.

This guide breaks down the benefits, challenges and key considerations for anyone on the fence about social media outsourcing.

The biggest benefits of outsourcing social media

Defaulting to doing social in-house might seem like the right move.

However, consider these key benefits of contracting out your social marketing we’ve outlined below.

Instant expertise and more scalability

Much like you’d hire an SEO expert to improve your search rankings or a sales rep to close more deals, seasoned social experts can produce meaningful results for your business.

Although some critics might label social media an “easier” channel that any marketer can handle, they’re mistaken. Given social’s importance when it comes to lead generation and customer retention, you can’t afford to treat your presence as an afterthought or leave it in inexperienced hands.

Through outsourcing social media, you can:

• Identify opportunities and shortcomings from your current social presence
• Produce specific outcomes such as more leads, faster replies and greater brand awareness)
• Grow your presence on specific social platforms (think: getting more Instagram followers, managing a community on Twitter)

Seasoned social media experts have the resources and know-how to accomplish all of the above. With instant access to their abilities, you can scale your business faster.

Working with an agency isn’t just the work hours being allocated so your specialists can focus on business growth, but it’s also the tools, expertise, and knowledge. Particularly with social, it’s an intersection of design, writing, storytelling, and community management. Not to mention the platform-specific knowledge and nuances. All these moving parts come together as an ongoing conversation with your audience. As it changes and evolves, it can be hard to understand what’s lacking or where to go when you are too close to the business.

Bowie Fan
Social Media Marketing Specialist, NVISION

Access to premium marketing tools

Another added bonus of social media outsourcing is the chance to take advantage of some seriously powerful digital marketing tools.

For smaller brands, premium analytics, reporting and advertising tools are often out of reach. That’s because they require either a big budget or specialized knowledge to manage.

On the flip side, agencies rely on powerhouse tools, including Sprout Social, to encourage their clients’ growth. When you work with an agency, those tools become “yours” in a sense.

Gain crucial insights into your social presence

Piggybacking on the point above, agencies can provide invaluable insights via reporting and analytics tools such as:

• Where your most valuable social leads are coming from
• Top-performing content and social platforms
• Opportunities to optimize your audience targeting

Working with an agency gives you a sort of gut-check and a second opinion on your social strategy at large. They can tell at a glance what’s working and what’s not.

Increase your social media response time

If you don’t have the bandwidth to handle your customer questions and concerns, outsourcing social media can help manage these relationships.

Increasing your social media response time is essential for customer retention and standing out against competitors. Rather than let your most valuable interactions go unchecked, agencies have the ability to handle real-time concerns and set up automation to follow up with customers.

Free up time for your in-house talent

If nothing else, social media outsourcing can remove time-consuming and stressful tasks from your marketing team’s plate.

We get that marketing teams often juggle a variety of roles. That said, being an expert email marketer or content creator does not make you an expert in social media (and vice-versa).

It’s important for the sake of employee engagement that your workers focus on their strengths.

5 questions to answer before outsourcing social media

Let’s be clear: not every company needs to outsource social media.

Managing social in-house is obviously fair game for teams with the right talent and processes in place. Also, consider that outsourcing means much more than just handing over the proverbial keys to your social presence and expecting results.

Even if you’re fairly confident in your decision to outsource social media, make sure you answer the following five questions first.

1. “How much time does my business have to devote to social media marketing?”

Chances are you’re interested in outsourcing due to time or resource restraints, right?

But agencies aren’t mind-readers or miracle-workers. For starters, you should expect to provide them with:

• Brand assets and creatives
• New pieces of content
• Guidance in terms of goals and KPIs

Remember: as a brand, you’re responsible for establishing expectations and empowering whoever you hire.

2. “Have we defined our brand voice and values?”

Agencies work with clients of all shapes and sizes.

But how social experts approach any given client in terms of messaging varies wildly from brand to brand.

For example, a fashion brand targeting Gen Z on Instagram is going to be totally different than, say, managing a community of older small business owners on Facebook.

To establish your mission and uniqueness and to make any new hire’s job easier, defining your brand voice should be a top priority. So should hooking up your agency with a style guide that highlights how to talk to your target audience.

3. “What are our social media marketing goals?”

Simply put, you need to figure out what your end-game of social media outsourcing is.

Brand awareness? Better customer service and support? Leads and sales?

There are no wrong answers here. That said, your answer will ultimately influence both your budget and the strategy of the agency you hire.

4. “How much of our social media strategy is documented?”

Keep in mind that there are different degrees of social media outsourcing.

Sure, some brands might need an agency to brainstorm their social presence from scratch.

But others could benefit from integrating a freelancer into an existing workflow or approval process. The more you already have documented, the better.

5. “Has our social presence plateaued? Do we need a fresh perspective?”

The answer here should be pretty straightforward.

That is, are you moving the needle on your most important metrics of KPIs? If you’re not sure what those even are, you probably need a helping hand.

The challenges of social media outsourcing

Again, outsourcing social media isn’t as easy as flipping a switch.

And we’ll bite: hiring an agency can be a headache (but it definitely doesn’t have to be). Let’s quickly break down some of the struggles that businesses face when working with an agency.

Finding the right talent (at the right price)

There’s no shortage of agencies and freelancers out there.

But there’s a huge difference between hiring a freelancer on Fiverr for $15/hour and working with an established agency. There’s likewise a massive gulf in the required social media budget to see positive results from outsourcing.

Digging through profiles is daunting. When browsing agencies or freelancers, stick to the following pointers:

• Look at their portfolio, testimonials and track record
• Assess their specialties in terms of platforms and brands they work with
• Establish a realistic budget (but be wary of the lowest bidders)

The fact that businesses are spoiled for choice in terms of talent means that you can afford to be picky.

Maintaining your voice and values

The importance of conveying your voice and values to an agency can’t be stressed enough. This is particularly important if your hire works in any sort of frequently client-facing role.

Having someone speak on behalf of your company is a massive responsibility. Getting your voice across represents a collaborative effort and both parties need to be on the same page.

The ability to communicate what your brand is all about might seem straightforward to you. However, an agency bouncing between several clients can benefit from some much-needed direction on your part.

Delegating without micromanaging

Ideally, you can work with an agency in a positive, proactive way. That means clear communication and expectations.

Establish upfront how you’ll manage the relationship and what discussing feedback and expectations will look like. Whether it’s working via email, Slack or face-to-face meetings (or a combination of all of the above), you should ideally be able to delegate and communicate minus any micromanaging.

How to choose an agency (or freelancer) for social media outsourcing

Let’s say you’re ready to outsource your social media.

Excellent! So, where do you find your talent? And how do you choose?

Firsthand experience and recommendations can help you hone in on top-tier talent quickly. Ask around your own network on social media, for starters. You don’t have to look hard to find recommendations for agencies on LinkedIn.

When you’ve got your list of candidates, pay close attention to their areas of expertise and testimonials. If someone feels too much like a generalist or can’t back up their claims, you can likely move on.

If you’re just starting on your social media outsourcing search, look no further than our own Agency Partner Program that can match brands with agencies based on budget, skillset and necessary tools.

How could social media outsourcing transform your business?

Outsourcing social media may very well be your best route to scaling fast.

Whether you’re struggling with your own presence or simply don’t have the time or talent to budget in-house, there are so many social media experts out there that can help.

Just make sure that you take the time to document your strategy and define your social media goals so you get the results you’re looking for.

The post Is social media outsourcing the best way to grow your presence? appeared first on Sprout Social.