Get to Know Social Media Marketing Agencies

Social media marketing has rapidly become the de facto way for businesses to reach out to customers, but there’s still often some degree of confusion – and even reticence – about beginning a social media marketing campaign. That’s understandable. For business owners who have relied on proven marketing techniques for years, the thought of adding another expense to their marketing budget can be a concern. Other businesses have to ask the question as to whether they should get an outside agency or look to handle their social media marketing themselves. Whatever situation you’re in, you don’t have to go in blind. Let’s get to know social media marketing agencies.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is deceptively easy, and deceptively straightforward. Fundamentally, a social media marketing campaign is simply a marketing campaign that’s delivered across social media channels rather than conventional channels like radio, television, and mailers. But the approach to marketing via social media is dramatically different than conventional models. Conventional media is all about making the most of limited viewer attention to make a direct pitch for their product or service. But the social media landscape has created a marketplace that’s instead driven by one primary currency: content.

To be more specific, social media marketing is about delivering content that has value outside of a direct sales pitch. Because while a social media marketing campaign will likely involve a good deal of direct messaging, it’s also about creating value-driven content. By offering articles, blog posts, and social media outreach, a good marketing team can offer high volume links with reliable conversion, and they can do so while improving the reputation of your brand as a knowledgeable and user-friendly industry leader.

A Business of Metrics

Many marketing firms bill themselves as creative agencies, and that’s a perfectly valid interpretation. There’s a great deal of creativity that goes into a genius marketing campaign, but there’s a mountain of number crunching going on beneath the surface as well. A good social marketing campaign is a constant work in progress. Good analytics and reporting are a necessity if you want your marketing campaign to stay competitive, and that means bringing someone on board with the right tools and the knowledge of how to employ them.

Traffic, conversion rates, and SEO rankings are all factors that marketing agencies have to take into consideration when managing a campaign, and they’ll continue to have to adjust those vectors to improve the quality of the campaign and to shift along with the constant tides of the social media landscape. Any quality social marketing agency can bring you knowledge of the market from the start, but the best will continue to tweak that performance even after you’ve hit the sales numbers you’re looking for.

Is It That Important?

The general consensus right now is that social media marketing is the most important marketing channel you can focus on for your business. That’s because digital word of mouth has upended the conventional outreach between businesses and consumers. While only half of Baby Boomers are active on social media, that number skyrockets to over 90% for Millennials. It’s a shift that’s unlikely to slow any time soon.

Social media marketing works because it reaches people where they are. But it’s a necessity for almost any business because of the wealth of actionable data it offers you, the relatively low overhead to hire a social media marketing agency, and the ability to shift your campaign on a dime. Social marketing creates a more competitive marketplace for businesses of any size, but it’s increasingly a necessity for any business that wants to thrive.