Should You Hire a Social Media Agency? Infographic

Most companies nowadays are in a dilemma between hiring a social media agency and sticking to their marketing team to do their social media campaigns. But really, is working with an agency a more viable solution to promote your social media objectives?

First, let’s see how the traditional marketing department operates. In the general scenario, your marketing team takes charge of the forming and implementing a marketing and advertising plan for your brand using traditional and online methods (i.e. print, TV, radio, internet ads and social media). Yes, this set up provides integration and synchronicity, and you can gear your marketing objectives in a centralized manner. That would be great unless you realize that…

…every marketing tactic needs its own space to bloom.

Traditional marketing channels have their own distinct avenues, and they provide only a one-way form of communication with their target market. It’s like this: when you air a commercial, launch a poster or broadcast a radio ad, there’s no way for your market to respond to your promotions right on the spot. Rather, they would have to call or email your marketing agency if they have complaints, rants, or raves, whatsoever. Because of the one-way communication process, these tactics are able to take effect seamlessly without experiencing major issues.

However, apart from being just another marketing channel, social media also demands more focused support, and you have the double duty in promoting and caring for your brand. If you do not address negative publicity on social media right away, it may spread like wildfire and affect your different marketing campaigns altogether.

The problem with in-house marketing teams is that most of them have already built foundations on traditional marketing, and rendering focus on social media would be: a) novel, b) time-consuming, and c) high maintenance. Given the demands from their other marketing tasks, they wouldn’t be able to handle social media campaigns effectively anymore.

Here Comes the Social Media Agency

The social media agency is then hired to fill up this void, and to address the social media campaign objectives of your brand. Unlike being part of an in-house marketing department, an agency provides independent services, all of which are targeted in implementing and promoting a brand’s social media campaign.

This agency basically take cares of everything needed to place the brand’s name and voice in the social media environment, from setting up their accounts on different platforms such as Facbeook and Twitter, to posting content, launching ads, gathering fans and integrating the brand’s other marketing campaigns in order to increase the customer base.

Hiring an agency offers a different set of benefits because the campaigns they use attract audiences in an entirely distinct manner. In social media, you have to understand that you’re not only finding customers, but people who will support your brand and business through thick and thin, and this is what agencies are doing. They form brand-audience relationships, strengthen them and eventually push fans further down to the sales funnel.

Another very important aspect of hiring a social media agency is that it has better capabilities not only in providing content that matters, but in attending to the needs of your target audience. They have a more strategic plan of action when it comes to addressing complaints, handling inquiries, responding to both positive and negative publicity down to the littlest details which most in-house marketing teams tend to overlook.

Working with a social media agency is in many ways more convenient, as you can spend for a campaign package as a whole and everything you need is already included. Also, the agency provides a kind of creative strategy designed to attract the social media audience in a laser-targeted manner, and this is something you cannot put into compromise.