While social media is a great industry to be in, it’s highly competitive from the agency perspective. Social media firms are a dime a dozen, which means you face an uphill battle anytime you want to onboard a new client. In order to grow your business, you have to think outside the box.
The Stiffness of Competition
The social media industry is highly competitive for a number of reasons. But in order to understand why the competition is so stiff, you have to understand the following:
- Low barriers to entry. When it comes to launching some sort of social media business, there are virtually no barriers to entry. All you need to do is register a domain name, use a drag and drop website builder to create an online presence, and start looking for clients. While this is good news to some, it ultimately saturates the market with people who aren’t qualified to run their own business.
- Millennials entering the workforce. Today’s college graduates have literally been raised on social media. As such, they find it natural and easy to pursue careers in social media marketing, which further turns up the heat.
- Little client-side education. Honestly, most clients don’t know what they’re looking for in a social media firm. All they know is that they need social media, which often means the company with the biggest advertising budget gets all the clients.
- Lack of quantifiable value. In most industries, poor performing businesses get shut down pretty quickly. In this industry, many clients don’t know how to quantify the value a social media firm provides. This means you have to compete with both underperforming companies, as well as successful ones.
There are other factors that come into play, but if you want to understand why the competition has become so stiff over the past two or three years, these four factors carry a lot of weight.
Setting Yourself Apart
It’s easy to get discouraged when you see just how serious the competition is, but look at the competitive landscape as an opportunity to figure out who you really are. If you want to be successful, you must set your social media agency apart. Here are some suggestions for doing just that:
- Write an eBook and Collect Leads
You need some sort of lead generation strategy that makes people excited to give you their contact information. An email newsletter might be the industry standard, but it’s hardly effective in most scenarios. A better approach may be to write an ebook on a particular topic – ideally educating prospects on the value of social media – and use this resource to draw clients in.
- Use Social Media to Listen
You know the value of using social media as a listening tool. You can do this organically, by simply browsing your newsfeed and checking out individual profiles. You can also do this by leveraging specific social listening tools.
Whatever the case may be, social listening gives you the opportunity to understand the pain points of the marketplace and offer relevant solutions that fit their needs. If you notice a business struggling with their social networking, consider reaching out in a tactful way and offering your services as a solution.
- Deliver Face-to-Face Presentations
Very few social media firms move past the invisible curtain that exists between the online and offline worlds. Almost all client outreach is done via email, phone, and social media. While this might be convenient, it’s hardly personal.
If you want to create a competitive advantage, meeting with prospective clients face-to-face and delivering brief presentations might be the way to go. Something as simple as printing booklets with your services and handing them out can give you a leg up on the competition.
- Create Behind the Scenes Video Content
There’s a reason Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, and Periscope are so popular these days. People want a raw look at who you are and what your business stands for. If they want something heavily produced and edited, they’ll turn on their television.
In order to build trust with prospects and generate more leads for your social media agency, try creating some behind the scenes video content and pushing it out via the aforementioned channels. You might not notice a huge uptick in business right away, but this is a long-term branding play that will help you prove your talents and build your reputation over time.
Ditch the Status Quo
As a smaller social media agency or freelancer, you aren’t going to uncover much success subscribing to the status quo. Instead, you should be pouring your creative energy into developing a competitive advantage that sets you apart. There are plenty of opportunities to do so if you look in the right places.
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