The Importance of a Social Media Presence

If you’re a digital marketing agency, you’re well versed in the business of marketing for others. Whether your speciality is B2B, B2C, or caters to both, you may already be aware of why your digital marketing agency needs a social media presence. You may also be aware of the positive impact that a strong social strategy can bring to your business. It can boost your brand awareness, show your agency’s value in the space, and raise your overall conversion rate.

In this article, we’ll be examining the benefits that a strong social presence can have for your agency.  We’ll also look at how to use your social channels to increase brand awareness and perception, as well as exploring how you could be inspired by strategies other agencies are using! 

Social Media Marketing is The Best Marketing Strategy for Your Agency 

Is your digital agency taking full advantage of the benefits of social media marketing? According to Hubspot, there are 4.55 billion people active on social media, and they’re spending roughly 2.25 hours per day on channels and social apps. This consumer group is growing rapidly, with around 1.3 million new users joining daily through the course of 2021. 

Both B2B and B2C organisations can harness the power of social media in their businesses. By using it as another channel to highlight their unique brand offering, a strong social marketing strategy can lead to a return on investment that you can share with potential clients through your channels.

How Many Clients Really use Social Media? 

Strategies for B2B and B2C agencies differ dramatically⸺and with good reason. Different business models require different approaches on social media to highlight your brand promise and unique offerings to potential clients. To answer the question, we need to examine statistics and results based on the type of business that you run. 

For example, B2B agencies do exceptionally well on LinkedIn. It is considered to be the top paid organic channel for this type of business and, according to LinkedIn Marketing solutions, reports an 82% success rate. B2C does well on both Instagram and YouTube channels, as they allow consumers to experience products in a new way ⸺ through interactive posts and video content. 

Honouring these fundamental differences between types of business structures in your marketing strategy can get you a higher return on investment.  It can bring your clients a more personalised approach that speaks to them via your social media channels. 

With over 420 billion active users, you can go to almost anywhere your ideal clients are. To determine the most effective outreach strategy, including the best channels for client outreach, consider doing additional research. 

Determining how many of your clients are using social media and where they choose to use it is something that requires extensive research and versatility from your marketing plan. It may also be helpful to look up other companies competing in your market to see their strategy and channels of choice. 

Below, we’ve compiled some interesting facts and statistics regarding clients in both the B2C and B2B space:

• 46% of B2B companies use account-based outreach, according to WebFX. 
• Hubspot reports that 32% of B2B companies plan to invest in personalisation techniques for their marketing strategies. 
• Join the majority: Statista estimates that 96% of B2C companies are on platforms such as Facebook. 
• No matter your niche, Influencer Marketing Hub states that 93% of marketers have landed a client through video content on social media channels. 

Thinking about these differences and referencing current research, here are some examples of what your clients may be doing on social media⸺and how you could consider using outreach to speak to them:

Optimising Your Social Media Presence With Analytics

Social media analytics can provide you with valuable insight for how individual posts are performing on each channel. They can also be expanded to offer you performance-based statistics for your marketing strategy and advertising campaigns. 

Other information that you can harvest from your analytics includes: 

• Impressions 
• Engagement 
• Follows 
• Page or Content Likes 
• Profile Visits 
• Page or Content Shares 
• Comments 
• Open Rates
• Click Through Rates 
• Cost Per Acquisition 
• Click Rates 
• Form Submissions

The type of information you can harvest from your analytics programs and dashboards will vary depending on the channels you choose. Getting to know your analytics dashboards can provide you with valuable insight into the performance of your current social media strategy. It can give you an idea of what content flows well with your demographic, and how you could further optimise your channels. 

Information on your current strategy’s performance is not the only benefit that you can gain from utilising and analysing your social media channels. Being active on social media also allows you to take part in social media listening. This is a more involved process than the simple metrics of monitoring and analysing your reach and engagement. 

The process involves you virtually “overhearing” your demographic, core audience of followers, or competition. From here, you have the option to take multiple courses of action based on what you’re hearing. For example: 

Your B2B social media strategy and B2C digital marketing strategies do not have to be solely created to sell your products or services. While this is likely to be the main pillar of your content strategy, social listening can inform other focuses.  It can bring to light new categories to focus on such as activism, associated topics of interest, industry changes, and new ways of bringing value to your community. 

Taking action in this way on your agency channels shows clients that you are abreast of the latest trends. It also shows that you will implement the same level of care and attention for their accounts. It can reinforce your authority in the industry that you serve. 

Creating a Social Media Marketing Strategy for Your Agency Increases Proof of ROI 

When you encounter clients in the B2B and B2C spaces, they may often not have a social plan in place⸺which is why they are coming to you to secure your services! 

Creating a social strategy that highlights your proficiency as an expert marketing agency reinforces the proof of return on investment. You have the opportunity to showcase different types of strategies that you can create and execute on your own channels.

Your social channels can provide a wealth of marketing tips, as well as proof of your ability and expertise when it comes to optimising a social media presence across a variety of channels. 

Marketing agencies may consider setting up and maintaining accounts on: 

• Instagram 
• Facebook
• TikTok 
• Pinterest 
• YouTube
• Twitter 
• Snapchat 

This list may also extend to any other industry-relevant platform where your followers are. Each of these platforms requires a different approach, careful optimisation, and attention to detail in order to effectively increase engagement and reach.

As you never know where your potential B2B or B2C clients may be trying to market, maintaining a strong social presence across multiple platforms can also assist you in procuring leads and boosting your conversion rates. 

Perception is Reality: Boost Brand Awareness and Perception With Optimised Socials 

Are you aware of how your brand is perceived by a general audience? Whether you’re a new marketing firm or a seasoned veteran in the field, brand awareness and perception can be heavily influenced by your presence on social media channels.

If your agency is not prevalent on social channels, but markets and caters to those who are in need of social channel services, potential clients may not feel confident to engage your services. They might hesitate because they don’t see strong social proof from your agency. They might not believe that your agency values social marketing as it is not utilising it for its own business. 

While content marketing is well known to boost your authority in a given industry space, social media marketing can be included as part of a comprehensive marketing vision to help you accomplish many of the same goals. For example, creating a strategy that incorporates and repurposes content marketing blog post content into digestible chunks on social channels. 

Taking the time to create a complimentary brand-specific social media marketing strategy can go a long way in boosting your brand awareness and engagement.  It can also enhance the perception of competency across all of your social channels. 

You may also want to experiment and optimise your brand “voice”. Awareness and perception aren’t solely about the imagery and copy that you put out.  They are also about the tone and style in which your brand presents itself on social media. 

When it comes to examples of this ‘done right’, we’d suggest taking inspiration from Reward Agency. The agency rebranded in late 2021 to reflect their commitment to sustainability and ethical marketing. The new look is simple, yet packs a punch, and is instantly recognisable.Y

Their posts are eye-catching, offer value to the reader, and invite interaction. Critically, they also always reflect Rewards’s culture and values. Their methods are effective, and they utilise these for client work too ⸺ including a 30% ‍increase in average order values, ‍320% ‍ fan growth in target demographic, and ‍104% ‍increase in website visitors all from social for one e-commerce client.

Building Your Brand Voice

Personification, use of the second person when writing copy, and consumer inclusion are techniques that have risen in popularity over the last few years. These can all help inform your brand voice and, in turn, the perception of your brand. For example, modern and consumer focused businesses often take on a more playful tone. Depending on the industry that they serve, they may use greetings such as: 

1. Hey!
2. Attention readers: 
3. Guess what? 

If you work in more seriously-minded industries, such as banking or investment, you may consider changing the tone. You may aim for a more traditionally professional voice, but still want to be relatable and digestible. 

Relatability, and knowledge and commentary on industry happenings, can go a long way to creating a credible brand perception. This can help you ascend through the ranks of current industry authorities, and put you amongst the top relevant voices to follow. 

If you’re feeling unsure about where to start when it comes to creating your brand’s voice, whether that’s creating the right perception across your channels or about following through with plan execution, consider the following steps: 

1. Evaluate what current industry leaders are doing. This may provide helpful information as to what your consumer base finds acceptable and favourable, versus other examples in the industry that may not be as popular. 
2. Commit time and resources to social listening. By doing this, you are going above and beyond the basic analytic summaries. Listening to current trends, industry voices, and needs in the industry means that you can address these in your content creation plan. 
3. Consider outsourcing your marketing tasks. Social media marketing and content marketing can be time consuming. Consider outsourcing this to experts who make brand perception and reinforcement their job, and who can stay on top of the latest trends in the field. 
4. Craft a complementary strategy across all channels. Your brand marketing efforts will work best when they come across as intentional and unified across your outreach channels. This is true for both social media marketing and content marketing. Ensure that the goals and voice are clear and consistent throughout your strategy. 
5. Optimise your outreach by channel. No social channels are considered the same. Each channel requires its own optimisation process in order for you to maximise the benefit gained from each. 
6. Keep evaluating and be flexible. The world of social media is constantly changing. For that reason, adopting a dynamic and flexible approach when it comes to implementing your marketing strategy can save you time and money. It also shows your range of skills to potential clients looking for similar services. 

Optimising Social Presence can Lead to Increased Social Proof and Reach 

Social proof is something that was popular in marketing long before there was an official term for it. Social proof is any public-facing example of times that others claimed that your business added value. Often, you can see examples of this in the Twitterverse as users comment on things that they love (or hate) about B2B and B2C offerings. Alternatively, many B2B or B2C companies take to Instagram to show testimonials and five-star ratings from past clients. 

You may be asking yourself: Why does social proof matter? 

Social proof is worth the investment of procuring it through nurture campaigns and client surveys. It can differentiate your voice from the crowd of other agencies and services, and can be the element that sets you apart and keeps you top of mind for your ideal client. 

Depending on how you choose to show your social proof pieces on social media, you can also use this as a tool to shape your brand awareness and perception. It gives your followers something to agree on⸺how amazing your service is, and what results you can bring to companies like theirs!

Using your social proof strategically can dramatically increase your engagement and take your conversion rate to new heights. People want to purchase and invest in what they can trust⸺and often, marketing services overpromise and underdeliver. You can help cautious business owners feel that they can trust you, just as your other past clients have. If you do this in a way that resonates, and is crafted to have maximum reach on that specific channel, you will open up the possibility of engaging with a new, larger base of prospects. 

These elements of social proof are vital to establishing your business’ presence and expertise. Ideally, you’ll want them to be shown and seen as much as the algorithms will allow. You can also take the opportunity to repurpose testimonials or social proof pieces across your channels.

When you take the time to optimise your social presence in order to showcase your gathered social proof, you gain an additional two benefits: 

1. You have the opportunity to create additional social proof. Clients may love what you’re doing for their client accounts personally, and take that moment to comment and keep the love going! You’re creating an opportunity for them to shout in agreement and add to your credibility as an agency. 
2. You have the opportunity to broadcast your expertise on a larger scale. If you strategically craft and showcase your content in an optimised fashion across platforms, you have the ability to potentially go viral⸺and show your social proof to a broader audience. There are a million marketing agencies and marketers out there, but you can highlight what your agency specifically brings to clients. 

If you aren’t sure where to begin, you can always consider outsourcing this process to an agency. Alternatively, you could evaluate the potential value in automating your business processes when it comes to gathering feedback via client surveys and follow up emails. 

Starting Your B2B Social Media Strategy Doesn’t Have to be Difficult 

While it can feel overwhelming to create your own B2B social media strategy, it’s very much worth it for the benefits. Marketing agencies can get higher return on investment, reach, engagement, and conversions if they invest the time and resources into creating an effective strategic social media marketing plan. 

Social platforms require ongoing learning and optimisation in order to get the highest return on investment. Your ideal clients may be favouring LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Stories, Reels, or TikTok. Ensuring that your brand is presented in a cohesive and complimentary way can help you to gain client trust. 

Investing the time and resources into creating a unique social media marketing strategy can help your business to create a strong brand perception and voice. This helps your agency to stand out from the crowd. You can take this opportunity to speak clearly to your ideal customer in a way that they will understand best, optimised for the social channel of outreach choice. 

Social proof and tailored posts can assist you in this goal. Post creation and strategy can be outsourced to a knowledgeable social media management agency who can help you meet your goals. Free up your time and still gain all of the benefits!

If you’re starting out on your journey to creating your brand’s social media marketing strategy, consider doing some research. Look at hashtags, keywords, and other accounts in the same market in order to get an idea as to what’s relevant, popular, and performing well by channel. 

Expert Social Media Management

The bottom line is that social media marketing is vital to growing your business. However, for small companies, keeping on top of social content can be a huge time investment. 

This is where we can help pick up the slack. We specialise in affordable social media management and blog articles for B2B businesses.

If you’re interested in expert help with your social media marketing take a look at our plans and arrange a demo call to speak to our expert team.