Keeping an active, engaged, and strategic social media presence can be frustrating and time consuming for you and your business. And in the ever-changing landscape that is social media, it can be hard to stay up to date with best practices and new features that come with social.
That’s why many businesses turn to advertising agencies like JH Specialty to help them develop social strategies and curate content & ads to help meet their business objectives.
But deciding to partner with an Agency is just the first step. There are still multiple questions and details that should be defined to have a successful relationship. If these questions go unanswered, it can cause obscurity and unnecessary problems for both parties. And no one likes more problems!
“Well Harrison, what are some questions that I should ask when I partner with a Marketing Agency?” I am so glad you asked that leading question, avid blog reader! Because today, we will cover some of the questions you should have answered when partnering with a Marketing Agency for social management.
Who is Doing What?
A simple yet overlooked question is getting clarify early on who will be handling the important aspects of your social management - Your company or the Agency? These aspects can include:
- Who will set/create social accounts?
- Who will monitor & respond to comments/messages?
- Who will be posting content?
Most advertising agencies are more than capable of handling all aspects of your social management with high quality content and graphics to back it up. But there may be some instances where you would want your team to handle some social media aspects.
Most agencies are flexible, and you can create a co-managing strategy that makes sense for your business. The important thing is defining these expectations from the get-go, so you are not caught saying “Oh, I thought you we’re going to do that”.
What Type of Content Will be Posted?
Having an agency handle your social content can be a big help as it frees up time on your teams’ schedule so they can focus on other more pressing tasks. If an agency will be handling your social content, it’s important to know:
- How often content will be posted?
- What kind of content will they be posting?
- What graphics will be used in these posts?
At JH, we answer these questions through monthly Content Calendars that outlines all post content, graphics, and platforms that we send to our clients BEFORE they are published. This process allows our clients to review, make edits to, and approve all social content that we produce so our clients can have the final say in what gets published to their social accounts.
If your agency doesn’t have a review process like this in place, be sure to ask how they will handle content review and approval on a regular basis.
What Social Ad is Right for My Issue?
The biggest appeal of partnering with an agency is using their knowledge of social advertisements to alleviate the problems that your business is facing.
The digital advertising landscape is always changing, and those changes usually come with new solutions on how to tackle problems facing your business. Getting more online or in-store sales, website visits, fundraising, and even acquiring new talent can all be achieved through social advertisement.
Since the scope of what social advertising can do for you is so diverse, it is best to simply tell your partnering agency what issues you are experiencing. During your initial call say something like “We are having trouble with X, what Social Ads can help me with this issue?”
An agency can’t prescribe the right solution if they don’t know the issue!
How Do I Measure Success?
So you’ve clarified who is doing what, and have a clearly defined how the agency will be executing on your social initiatives. Great! Now you have an agency posting content, responding to customer inquiries, and acquiring more leads on your behalf.
Now let’s fast forward a couple months. How do you know if these social initiatives are providing you the results you need? What are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you can look at to prove the value of your agency relationship?
Well… it depends! Your Key Performance Indicator for your business will vary depending on what your social media objective is (Website visits, calls, leads etc.).
It’s critical that you and the agency are on the same page when it comes to the KPIs that reflect your goals. This ensures that both parties know what success looks like and can call timeout when your campaigns start veering away from those goals.
Communication is Key
Whatever digital agency you choose to partner with, open and honest communication between both parties is the key in having a successful relationship. These questions will help get those assumed or overlooked details out in the open for discussion, so both parties are setup for success!
Eager to try these questions out? Give JH Specialty a call and see for yourself how we can help your business succeed!
