8 Questions To Ask Before Hiring A Social Media Marketing Agency

If you’re running a business in this day and age, one of the things that you must learn to master is social media marketing. Creating a strong social media presence is very important, given the worldwide presence on the Internet today. 

While you may want to attempt to manage this on your own, the truth is it’s often easier said than done, especially with the multitude of responsibilities that you also have to face in running your business.

Hence, agencies like The Influence Agency exist to be able to help businesses with social media promotions and online presence. These are experts in the field who will personally manage all your business’s social media accounts on your behalf. 

Aside from merely replying to comments, this also involves scheduling content, images, and whatnot.

With a social media marketing agency, you’re guaranteed that every single thing you give off on your social media accounts is of top quality. The experts know what they’re doing, so you can expect nothing less than the best from them. 

To achieve the best results, however, it’s also important that you’ll learn how to filter and choose a competent social media marketing agency. 

Hiring one will cost you money, so you’ve got to make sure that you’re working with nothing less than the best. To do this, you’ve got to be rigorous with the selection process—which begins by asking the right questions. And that includes the following:

1. What Are Your Goals?

As a social media marketing agency, this team should have a specific set of goals they’d wish to achieve for their clients. These goals will comprise the marketing plan that you’ll also come up with for your business. 

Asking about what these goals are can give you the means to decipher whether or not it aligns with the goals that you’ve also set for your own company.

Remember that before the online marketing agency would be able to come up with strategies, they must first have their respective set of goals. This can help determine a straightforward guideline, such that all the strategies you’ll employ are geared towards the goals you intend to achieve.

Generally, your chosen social media marketing agency should be able to abide by the SMART goal metrics. To wit:

• Specific: When your goals are specific, you can iron out whatever confusion that might arise on what the result should be.
• Measurable: You have to be able to measure your goals, so you can check as to whether or not it’s working.
• Actionable: When your goals are actionable, this means that you’re also setting up steps that are geared towards achieving your goals.
• Realistic: The goals that you’ll set should make sense for your brand. For instance, if you’re still a start-up, then you obviously can’t expect to have an increase of a million subscribers overnight.
• Time-Bound: The time boundaries that you set for your goals will avoid the situation of delaying these goals, just by sitting on the strategies that’ll help you achieve your goals.

2. How Do You Measure A Campaign’s Success?

After setting your goals with your social media marketing agency, you’ve then got to ask how they measure a campaign’s success. A good agency should have Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in place as to what constitutes a successful campaign. Then, they should also be able to communicate this information with you. 

KPIs aren’t something to come up with or decide at random. Rather, it should come from numbers, analytics, and statistics that’ll show you that success with the social media marketing campaigns is now achieved.

Most importantly, the social media marketing agency that you’re hiring should also be transparent about the results of the campaign with you. This can be done through periodic reports so that you will be kept in the loop.

3. Who Is Your Target Audience?

Social media marketing agencies are top-notch at the job that they do. So, among all others, they must also be able to come up with a target audience that’s the perfect match for your social media’s niche, or brand. 

As you’re still in your deliberation phase, it’s important to ask who their target audience is for you, so you can also cross-check if it’s the same or similar to the target audience that you personally desire for your social media account. 

In determining who the target audience is, the agency must consider the following: demographics and psychographics. 

4. What Can We Expect From Working With You?

Fourth, you should also lay down your cards on the table as to each other’s expectations. Because you’re the paying client, you’ll have your own expectations as to what you think and what you desire for the social media marketing agency to be able to do for you.

So, be frank about what your social media marketing agency can promise to be able to provide for you. Generally, it should at least meet the following standards:

• Being responsive to your needs and queries as the client.
• Delivering results on time.
• Providing you with good advice.

The last thing you’d want to happen is to have already placed your trust in a specific online marketing agency and then, later on, find out that they don’t even meet your standards or your expectations. 

5. Who Will Be Managing My Account?

Yes, the social media marketing agency is going to be the one managing your account. But you have to ask more specifically who in the team is going to be managing your account. This person will become your account manager.

You have to get this straight from the very beginning so that you know specifically who to contact for all of your concerns. You won’t have to keep jumping from one person to another when you’ve got concerns. It's the account manager that’ll be responsible for directly reporting to you when it comes to any concerns related to your account.

6. What Is The Current State Of Your Social Media Marketing Campaigns?

If you’ve long had social media accounts, this means that you’ve already started to apply certain strategies in your account. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that all of those strategies or campaigns are working well for your account. Precisely why you may have decided to take in the services of a social media marketing agency.

Before you even get started, you’ve got to do an audit of where your social media marketing strategies stand. Doing so can also give you insights into where your weaknesses are, such that you can start to improve these strategies.

Most importantly, when you’ve got a clear picture of where you stand, this can also give you a better idea of the gaps in your strategies that you have to fill, or those that also have to be changed, so that you can improve.

7. Do You Have Experience In This Specific Niche?

It pays also for you to know if the social media marketing agency you’re planning to hire has expertise in your specific niche. This is an added advantage that can work for you, as it means that the team knows specifically what to do to excel in your niche and capture an audience for it. 

It’s easy to be all over the place with your social media marketing strategies, but doing things that way will only hurt your propensity for success. You've got to be a little bit more specific with your strategies, as not all of these might work universally across different niches.

When the social media agency has extensive experience in your specific niche, this would also mean that they’re going to have a more robust line-up of the different kinds of content that they’re going to come up with. The content that your social media marketing firm puts out should be varied enough to avoid boredom but should also be consistent with your niche and your target audience.

8. What Software Or Technology Do You Use?

Each social media agency will have its own respective software or technologies that it is using. It's usually a personal choice as to what they’re comfortable with and what suits the strategies that they’re also going to use. 

Since there are so many different software and technologies that can be used today, it pays for you to know what that the social media marketing firm is using, so you can also do your own check. It's best if your internal team also knows how to operate that same software so that you’re on the same page. This means that you can give yourself a better understanding of how the social media marketing agencies you have partnered with are running your social media account.

Conclusion

With social media changing the marketing landscape, this means that you have to be more cautious about your decisions when it comes to hiring a social media marketing agency. If you don’t end up with the best for your needs and your business, then you might as well have just done your social media marketing activities all by yourself. 

When you entrust this job to the experts, then you’ve got to ensure that you end up hiring a team that can live up to expectations. Start by asking the questions above, so you’ve got a means to determine whether or not a specific social media agency is the right choice.

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