In recent years you may have heard of the term SMMA, especially if you are in the digital marketing space. SMMA simply stands for ‘Social Media Marketing Agency’. This is a service based business and it is when an agency (SMMA) helps businesses generate more revenue and sales using paid traffic or organic traffic with the use of social media.
Looking at the graph below you can see the trend of SMMA in the last 5 years has steadily increased over time.
Judging by the statistics and the number of success stories online there is an opportunity for anyone interested in SMMA to create a business from scratch
But what are the first steps?
For any business to succeed they need customers, and acquiring these customers can seem overwhelming. For SMMA this is the number one factor that will determine success. Never mind the market ring skills involved in getting results for your clients. If you can’t even get any clients in the first place then the skills you have will essentially be useless.
Reaching out to potential SMMA clients doesn’t have to be complicated. All it requires is a little bit of sales knowledge and a consistent attitude, even when being faced with rejections (which you certainly will).
Someone might say “cold calling is better than cold emails” or that “Facebook outreach is the most effective out reach strategy”. Don’t listen to the noise. The most effective strategy is going to be the one that resonates most with you, and one that you feel is best suited to your style/personality.
My personal opinion is to try them all and see what results you get. Then you can make a decision on what method to stick with. For me cold calling has been the most effective followed by Facebook outreach.
Below are a list of outreach methods.
Facebook outreach
Facebook outreach is becoming increasingly popular with over 2 billion users worldwide you can bet that nearly every business out there has a Facebook page. Facebook is a social platform therefore reaching out to businesses via Facebook messenger has a higher response rate compared to cold emails.
Facebook can act like a search engine where you type in the key word associated with your niche in the search bar.
This can direct you to pages related to your niche and from here you can start reaching out to them.
Before contacting a prospect I like to go through a check list to see if they could be a potential client I could work with:
- Are they active on Facebook?
- How many likes do they have on their page?
- Are they currently running Facebook ads?
- How many reviews do they have?
- Do they have a Facebook pixel installed on their website?
- If they are running Facebook ads can I improve their current strategy?
Depending on my answers I will either message them directly or I will move onto the next one.
Below is an example of what type of message I will send.
A tip I would suggest when using Facebook messenger outreach (or any outreach tbh) is to TEST TEST TEST. Testing allows you to see which methods are going to be most effective and which aren’t.
Check out the blog post from Shoe String 101. They give a really good in-depth article on how to Cold outreach on Facebook effectively.
Cold calling
As mentioned before this method was very effective for myself and it has allowed me to book multiple meetings with local business owners. That being said, you need to be very resilient as you will be getting rejected more times than not. As long as you realise this and can easily move past it then cold calling could be a great method for you.
Finding good quality leads for SMMA can be time consuming. But done correctly it can unlock a ton of potential clients needing your services.
When cold calling I like to use Google to find leads. I use Google search engine or Google Maps. This is simple yet effective.
If I want to work with gym’s and wish to find them in my local area then all I have to do is type “gyms near me” for google maps. Or “Gyms in (chosen area)” for Google search.
From here I can do a search for high quality leads and using the previous checklist mentioned we can identify them pretty quickly.
Once you have the companies details its now time to ring them.
Usually this is the part were people get nervous and procrastinate, then never pick up the phone.
If this is the case for you then I would set myself some realistic targets that will encourage you to push on when you reach them
Set a target to ring 10 businesses, or even 5, whatever your comfortable with. In the beginning its about just getting started and creating a habit of getting on the phone and saying the right things. It will be uncomfortable at the start but once you make it a daily practice you will find your feet in no time.
I suggest using cold calling scripts and watching youtube videos when stating out. There is tons of free content out there and it is so valuable.
I am a big fan of Jordan Platten as I believe he gives out the most resourceful information on SMMA, but there are literally hundreds of others. Below are a few more:
Freelancing websites
The big factor that separates freelancing websites from the rest is that it isn’t a cold outreach method. Meaning that any potential lead on a site like this is actively seeking someone for a service. This can be a goldmine for someone in SMMA with the right skills.
The downside is that there is fierce competition and it won’t be easy to get clients at the start. But there are thousands of freelancers making a lucrative living online so you can to!
In the UK alone freelancing has grown 14% in the last decade.
This number is only going to increase as the ‘Digital Nomad’ culture grows.
The main freelancing sites include upwork, freelancer, and Fiverr.
Withe help on how to get started on upwork I recommend Chris the freelancer. He is a web developer but he has a course on how to get started on upwork, which is on skillshare. Sign up and get your first 2 months free.
Next Steps….
These are 3 proven methods for signing SMMA clients and it is a brief overview of each. The steps I have shown are actionable and you should put them into practice right away. Don’t overthink it too much. It is better to sign a client and learn the skills as you go instead of constantly learning the skills and never signing clients. Just as long as your honest with your future prospect and don’t promise results you don’t think you can achieve. Put this as your number one objective and the rest will come after.
Hope you got some useful tips and information from this.