How to Make Money as a Social Media Marketing Agency

You’re passionate about your social media agency … but are you losing money or making money from it? Here’s an overview of the different ways you should be making money as a social media marketing agency.

If you’re starting a marketing agency or want to grow your current one, there are many ways to make money.

Discover how to earn money as a social media marketing agency and establish financial success for your agency.

Ways To Make Money As A Social Media Marketing Agency

If you’re new to the agency world, it’s easy to assume that yours should simply offer social media management. It’s important to consider what should be included and what clients expect when they hire your agency.

Here are some different services that your social media agency can offer to start making money:

1. Social media strategy

Do your clients need help deciding what to say, when to say it, and where to post it?

When assisting clients with social media, you can help them promote their brands. Additionally, you can assist them in growing their followers and connecting their marketing efforts with their business objectives.

2. Social media content creation

Do you have a knack for writing or design?

When you offer social media content marketing, you can focus on writing social media copy, designing photos and graphics, or both. Agencies often upload content to native platforms or schedule it in a social media tool to simplify publishing.

3. Community management

Are your clients eager to increase their brand awareness or improve customer loyalty?

By offering community management, you can help them accomplish both goals at once. Agencies that provide community management usually respond to social media engagement, answer questions, and run private groups.

4. Social media monitoring

Are your clients struggling to keep up to date with social media going-ons?

Social listening helps clients with brand reputation, customer insights, and industry news. Your social listening efforts can also allow clients to monitor competitors and stand out from their peers.

5. Influencer marketing

Could your clients use a creative solution for brand awareness?

With influencer marketing, you can partner with key figures to spread the word about your clients’ brands. Many agencies help clients build strong partnerships and execute both free and paid influencer marketing initiatives.

6. Lead generation

Do your agency clients need more customers?

When you offer social media lead generation, you connect clients connect with prospects and nurture warm leads. Some agencies incorporate paid social media, such as Facebook Ads, into their lead generation efforts.

7. Social ads

Do your clients want to amplify their social media results?

When you run paid social campaigns, you can help them reach new audiences, sell more products, and increase customer loyalty. Social media marketing agencies often manage ad campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and other platforms. Paid ads are a great way for you to make money as a agency.

8. Social media management

Would your clients prefer that you handle every aspect of their social media marketing?

By providing social media management, you can tackle strategy, content creation, community management, social listening, and reporting in one convenient bundle.

How to Set a Price Structure for Your Digital Agency

Once you’ve decided which social media services to offer, you’ll need to price your services right so that your agency will be making money, not losing it.

If you don’t know how much to to charge in order to make a profit, you can approach the question backward.

If you’re launching a solo agency, decide how much money you want your agency to make over the course of the year. For example. in the United States, social media managers earn an average of $50,000 per year.

Go a little lower if you’re new to the field or a little higher if you have years of experience.

Then work out how much you’ll need to earn each month to meet that goal. From there, you can calculate the hourly rate to charge clients. Alternatively, decide how many clients you can manage per month and divide your monthly income goal by that number.

Want to consider a different cost structure?

Let’s take a closer look at a few ways agencies typically price their services to make the most money.

Charge an hourly rate

Setting an hourly rate ensures that you get paid for all the hard work you do for clients. Yet charging by the hour doesn’t always add up.

For example, you’d charge the same fee for an hour of social media engagement as you would for an hour spent setting up an ad campaign designed to drive thousands of dollars of sales.

Be sure to charge a rate that reflects the type of work you spend the most time doing—or set a fixed fee for certain high-value projects. When you make an ad campaign that drives tens of thousands of dollars in sales, you deserve to be compensated based on the value or result you are providing your. Not just the time it took you to create the campaign. Most clients are happy to do this. As long as they’re making money, they’re usually pretty happy to help you make money too.

Package your services

Packaging your offerings lets you set a standard monthly rate for your services.

For example, you might charge a recurring fee for handling social media strategy and community management.

Although a monthly retainer offers more predictability than an hourly rate, it could end up costing you if you don’t budget your time wisely. When calculating a price, consider how much time you’ll actually spend on each client and how much value you’ll deliver.

Set a fixed fee

For one-off projects, such as designing an influencer marketing campaign or running a social advertising campaign, a fixed fee often works best.

If the project has the potential to scale, consider setting limits. For example, a paid social campaign might start with a fixed base rate. Then for every $1,000 of your client’s advertising budget, you might charge an additional 10% as a management fee.

Note: It’s important for you to consider any overhead that you may have as well, such as your employees wages, the cost of renting an office space or the need to purchase computers or other necessities for your employees to do their jobs.

And even if you are a one-person team, you still are going to have additional costs for your business that should be factored into your pricing to help keep your agency profitable. This might include things like costs for marketing your agency, the price of website hosting, any software that you use such as Canva, Adobe, or even your social media management tool. Failure to take these costs into account will result in less profits for your agency. And I think the goal here is for your agency to make money, right?

How to Grow Your Digital Marketing Agency and Make More Money

So you’ve launched your social media marketing agency and you’re ready to start raking in the big bucks. What else can your agency do to make money?

Let’s go over some ways to expand your agency’s earning potential.

Offer adjacent services

You may be a skilled social media manager. But what other aspects of digital marketing have you worked with—and what services have your clients requested?

Consider offering or contracting an outside expert to provide services like:

• Pay-per-click (PPC) ads: Run paid campaigns on Bing or Google Ads to complement your social media ads.
• Website or landing page design: Develop and update client websites or design landing pages for targeted social media posts or ads.
• Search engine optimization (SEO): Optimize client websites to improve their organic search rankings.
• High-end photography or video production: Create product photography or produce original branded videos for your clients.

Partner with other providers

If you don’t want to manage other types of digital marketing campaigns, partner with a provider that does.

For example, when your social media marketing agency clients need PPC or landing page design, you might refer them to a partner agency that specializes in those services.

Introduce a referral program

When you work with dream clients, it’s normal to want to find more of the same. While you can’t replicate your current clients, you can ask them to recommend your agency to their professional network. Consider offering a referral fee to incentivize them and show your appreciation for the new business.

Making Money As A Social Media Marketing Agency Is Simple…

But – that doesn’t mean it is easy! With some determination, and by following the tips in this post, your social media marketing agency will be on its way to boosting your profits and finding a path to sustainable long-term growth.  Whether you’re looking for your first client or you’re celebrating your first year in business, these tips can help you generate revenue or pursue more lucrative income streams.

Get started on saving time and energy on your own social media management! Check out a quick demo of Agorapulse to see how it can help your agency make more money.