Top Struggles Facing Social Media Marketing Agencies

The digital age has revolutionized the way that marketing works. It goes on an ever-changing pace to the point that what might be relevant a few months ago is obsolete today. It created ease for the world as consumers can digest a heap of content in a short amount of time.

This has also changed general buying behavior. Social media has become the new marketplace. Customers can pick out different variants of a product from different stores in less than an hour on social media. Compare this to a whole day’s worth of shopping in a traditional mall.

This phenomenon resulted in the rise of social media marketing agencies. Some professionals also used their expertise and became social media consultants. They take the stress and hassle of handling the new marketing frontier from businesses, helping entrepreneurs focus on core competencies. Agencies go through major challenges, however.

1. The Inability to Keep Up with the Trends

Consumerism has drastically changed over the past few years. This also resulted in a speedy change as to how people interact and consume content.

As the attention span of the general consumer population decreased, social media marketing should be able to adapt to changing times. Add to this the changing trends in business and industries and agencies can struggle to determine when to keep up or stick with the old.

2. Choosing the Wrong Social Media Platform

Creating a marketing plan and hoping that the right market will respond positively to it no longer works in this day and age. Internet devices are becoming more and more portable, thus companies have the new responsibility of bringing the store to the consumer and not the other way around.

Different social media platforms also cater to different kinds of people. Your target audience might not be present on Instagram but is usually on Reddit. It is important to know how your target niche responds to the different kinds of social media platforms.

3. Failing to Create a Personalized Social Media Strategy

Social media marketing agencies should be able to create a different marketing plan for different clients. What may work for one client may not be effective for another.

Creating a customer-centric website may be more effective for some businesses. This is especially true if their target niche prefers long and detailed information to consume. Some companies may only require pure social media content for their fast-paced consumers. Make sure to optimize your content for every social media platform.

4. Social Media Presence Gets Lost

Social media statistics show that there are an estimated 3.6 billion people in the world who are on social networks. This makes it easier for any business to get lost in all the noise and the mix of old and new companies. Given the shorter attention span of online users, staying relevant and in the forefront of other people’s minds are a challenge that social media agencies have to deal with.

Creating your social media presence is just like a race. There is no time to rest because a moment of latency creates an opening for your competitor to grab the attention of your target audience. It is also the longest race as getting the consumer to patronize your business is not enough. Maintain your social media presence in order for them to buy repeatedly.

5. Not Maintaining Good Customer Service

As a social media marketing agency, creating a quality business plan for a client is a constantly developing business.

There should be constant communication between the client and the agency for updates and developments in the implementation of a business plan. At the same time, continuous relay among the members of the staff is very important in order to keep all actions consistent and all implemented strategies up to date.

Proper time management is very important in order to be able to juggle many tasks in a short span of time. Being able to handle the tasks efficiently gives clients ease and comfort knowing that their business is in the hands of the right social media marketing agency.

6. Miscalculating the Budget and Return on Investment

Economics dictates that there is no such thing as free lunch. Every Facebook ad placement and every blog sponsorship comes with a price. Facebook, for example, defines advertising cost as the overall amount you spend on ads and the cost of the results you get. So it’s not just the budget that you need to analyze but the returns on investment as well.

You need to know how far each dollar will go in terms of reaching customers.

For example, a $20 ad placement will get a maximum reach of 500 people. It is important to factor in how much of that total amount is your target market. Beyond that, you also need to consider the rate of conversion from consuming your ad to actually buying the product.

In the example of 500 people, only 100 out of that is included in your target audience. Given the statistics of the platform that you used, it is estimated that only 10 people will actually click on your ad and buy your product. This becomes a $2 additional cost of production per product. The total return on investment for that specific marketing strategy dictates the value that it will bring to the client.

Conclusion

A social media marketing agency has a lot of responsibilities. You are, basically, in this day and age, handling the whole marketing campaign of a certain business. A well-crafted social media marketing plan can skyrocket a business to new heights. Thus, it is important to take every step of the creation and marketing process with thought and precision.

Larry Corbi
Owner of More Buzz Online, LLC., an internet marketing consultant, and blogger. With 10+ years of digital marketing experience, he’s passionate about leveraging the right strategic partnerships, content, and software to scale digital growth.

Larry lives in Southern California and writes about internet marketing for small businesses and professionals as well as blogging like a business owner, not another writer at More Buzz Online.