Features
Why Sked?
Sked Social is a third party app and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any social network platforms.
See our Terms & Privacy Policy.
See our Terms & Privacy Policy.
Download
follow us
© 2024 Sked Social. All rights reserved.
Sell social, get money for your skills.
We can all agree that social media is a fixture in all of our lives. From finding the perfect place to book for dinner to scoping out the latest fashion trends, social media is the go-place to discover new products and services.
With that in mind, it’s a no-brainer to be recommending social media marketing to your clients as an agency or freelancer.
Out of all the marketing channels on offer, social media offer a true full-funnel experience. No matter what audience or customer segment your client is trying to attract, social media can take users from brand discovery to conversion in just a few taps.
But don’t take our word for it. Want to see the facts?
- Nando’s UK Facebook page has close to 4 million likes and shapes its content experience to fit the interest of its young customer base.
- Nike has one of the most active customer service feeds on Twitter, operating to resolve product questions and technical needs. Their brand loyalty is constantly increasing, encouraging customers to buy more products.
- Red Bull has over 43 million likes on Facebook. Its page consists of images and videos of extreme sports and athletes sponsored by Red Bull, promoting its brand image as a lifestyle choice rather than just an energy drink.
If you’re struggling to convince your clients to tap into this gold mine, you’re in the right place. We’re going to strip back the layers, dig deep and showcase the many benefits of convincing your clients to hop onto the social media train - because it’s not slowing down anytime soon.
First things first, let’s get down to the facts. Right now, there are a whopping 4.26 billion people using social media (a figure projected to leap to nearly 6 billion by 2027).
That’s a huge pool of potential customers for your clients to tap into and leverage to skyrocket their business success.
To get even more specific, Facebook boasts 2.2 billion monthly active users, adding 6 new profiles every second. Twitter has 336 million, LinkedIn has 467 million, and Instagram has reached 1 billion and is still rising.
So how do you convince your clients that this is a marketing channel they don’t want to miss out on? Let’s dive into the top benefits your clients will experience from starting a social media presence.
7 reasons why your clients need to be leveraging social media marketing
There’s more than one benefit of using social media for business. At first glance, social media is a fantastic addition to any content marketing strategy, helping businesses and brands showcase their expertise and products to the world.
No matter what ideal customer your clients are trying to attract, they’ll be able to capture and convert them using social media marketing.
Here are the top reasons why your clients should be tapping into the world of social media marketing:
- Generating brand awareness: Social media is a top-level tool for building awareness around your client’s brand or business. The average buyer reports spending 20 to 40 per cent more money on brands that have interacted with them on social media. Without an online presence, your client is losing the opportunity to offer their customers a chance to buy directly from their social media accounts.
- Increasing site traffic and SEO rankings: Social media offers the complete sales funnel, from awareness to consideration and purchase. A social media profile should lead clients or customers towards a website, increasing the organic traffic from your posts. Therefore, enhancing the organic traffic and potential new customers to your client’s website from SEO searches.
- Sell products and services: This might seem simple, but without sales, there is no business. Social media helps to bridge the gap between reaching customers and closing the sale: it gives customer’s the opportunity to discover products and services they like along with interacting with the brand (something that customers couldn’t do a few years ago). Social media is also the perfect place for lead generation, with many leads coming through already warm and ready to purchase.
- Social media can reduce your overall marketing costs: Social media is, in fact, one of the cheapest marketing strategies out there. Creating an account is free, the organic reach is endless, and the only cost you’ll incur is social media ads, which you can set a specific budget for.
- Offer better customer service and build loyalty: Social media breaks down the barriers between business and customer. People feel a lot more comfortable reaching out to ask questions. When they get a reply, their trust in that business builds incrementally until they’re ready to purchase. This could be straight away or over time. Creating valuable content sets your client’s business apart by providing valuable and shareable content that users love.
- Recruit highly-skilled staff members: Not only does social media connect your business to customers, but it also connects you with potential staff members. Networking sites such as LinkedIn and even Facebook help you reach out, interview and discover new staff members. LinkedIn allows businesses to see past work history and easily connect via messages.
- Keep an eye on competitors: A competitor analysis is your client’s ticket to outrun their competition, and social media insights help you do this efficiently and effectively. You can see what campaigns they’re running, how many followers they have and even track different content they are creating. Keeping a close watch on your client’s industry competitors enables you to create content their target audience loves.
What’s the difference between social media marketing and social selling?
Hopefully, by now, your clients are hooked on the powers of social media. But we’ll dissect the difference between social media marketing and social selling if they aren’t convinced just yet. Whilst they might appear similar, they have two different purposes and outcomes.
Social media marketing is digital marketing that utilizes social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to deliver organic content and paid ads to your target audience. Social media ads are a quick and effective way to connect with your consumers and boost your marketing campaigns.
Social selling allows your clients to hone in on business prospects on social media and build rapport with a network of potential leads. Done right, social selling can replace the dreaded practice of cold calling.
Unlike cold calling, social selling is a more ethical approach to engaging and connecting with clients. Your clients will be looking for a way to build positive brand awareness, and helping them tap into social selling will allow them to build relationships now and into the future.
LinkedIn performed a social selling analysis in 2014. Here’s what LinkedIn has discovered:
- Social selling leaders get better results.
- Social selling leaders create 45 per cent more opportunities than peers with lower SSI (social selling index) scores.
- Social selling leaders are 51 per cent more likely to reach the quota.
Social selling is all about helping businesses grow and ultimately connect deeper with their audience. Gone are the days of cold calling, icky sales pitches and constant rejection: social selling bridges the gap for business owners to share their mission and relate to their target audience.
But in order to tap into the power of social selling, your clients will need to have an active social media presence! This is just another reason why your clients need to prioritize creating a social media marketing strategy.
6 ways to convince your clients to leverage social media marketing
Ready to pitch social media to your clients? We’ve outlined six simple steps that can help you close the deal and add social media marketing to your existing marketing retainer.
- Show them their competitors are thriving on social media: This is one of the best ways to elaborate on the success of social media to your clients. Showcasing different competitor accounts and how they reach customers is a sure-fire way to get someone to sign up for social media services.
- Show them that their audience lives on social media: With over 500 million people active every day, you can showcase the buying power of users on social media platforms. Harnessing the presence of people across multiple social media networks means that your clients get to tap into new audiences around the world.
Show them how you can help: when pitching your social media services, make it easy for your clients to recognize the potential of signing up. Explain set-up processes and how you can support them to can create campaigns and create high-quality content. The easier it feels, the more likely they’ll want to sign up.
Show them the potential of viral social media content: there are a lot of opportunities to go viral on social media networks. Whether from TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat, your client’s products or services could be seen by thousands, if not millions, in a short time frame.
Show them how cost-effective social media platforms are: this is a big one. Marketing budgets are usually tight, so showcasing a positive ROI to clients can feel like an impossible task. But social media is an easy sell. Clients have control of their ad budgets, can tap into various fun, original ad formats, and organic reach extends further than the local zip code.
Show them how easy it is to measure social success: tracking the data can seem like a monstrous task, but with social media, analytics comes integrated. Pretty neat! Your clients can see the success of their posts and campaigns directly from their business page insights. Every social media platform has analytics imbed, making it easier for business owners to see where they are succeeding (plus, it gives more profound insights into customer demographics, metrics and behaviors).
Top 7 social media marketing tips for small business
Ready to onboard a new social media client? We’ve rounded up 7 handy tips to help you get them set up for success from the beginning of your partnership.
1. Define your client’s social media marketing goals: before beginning any form of social media content, it’s essential to create goals beforehand. This could be in the form of the SMART Framework (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely). This will help you create achievable objectives over the long term and give you something to reflect on when looking at analytics.
2. Understand your client’s target audience: this part is crucial in creating content that resonates with your client’s potential customers. You can develop ultra-specific demographics to understand which social media channels are the best ones to use for your clients. Take this example: 65% of Instagram users are under 35, so if your client has a product for an older demographic, then Instagram might not be the best choice of platform (for now). Plus, taking time to understand your client’s target market means uncovering your customers’ pain points and deepest desires.
3. Pick the right social media platform: this part is where you’ll want to deep dive into the benefits of each social platform and who its primary audience is. TikTok is aimed at Gen Z, Facebook is generally for an older audience, and LinkedIn is based on business professionals. This choice of social media platform needs to be aligned with your client’s ideal customer to ensure they find the best success.
4. Stay consistent with your brand: posting consistency is vital in social media, but branding consistency is even more crucial. You’ll want to make sure your clients are keeping on brand in all their content. What does this mean? Creating high-quality content means maintaining brand colors, brand fonts, brand tone of voice and keeping consistent elements throughout all their content.
5. Build connection and boost engagement: communication is essential to a loyal following. And with customers becoming warier and warier of the brands they follow, communicating with them is a great way to build trust. An excellent guide to follow is the 80/20 rule: where you post 80% informational and entertaining content and 20% promotional content. Another way to build connection and trust is through social proof, and showcasing your client’s testimonials is a great way to build trust.
6. Use social media analytics: There are four main types of analytics you should be looking at depending on your goal: awareness, engagement, customer service, and return on investment (ROI). These analytics will help you assess what’s working and what isn’t. Plus, it allows you to adjust where necessary to reach more customers.
7. Automation tools and professional social media managers: getting help is crucial in seeing long-term success. Social media managers are professionally trained to help businesses manage social media presence across all platforms, increase brand recognition and customer base, and do so strategically to help you achieve goals in no time. Plus, discovering automation tools for social media content will help you connect with clients at the perfect time.
Looking for the perfect all-in-one platform to streamline your workflows as a social media manager? Here at Sked Social, our Instagram scheduler allows you to save time and money from post approvals all the way through to publishing.
Wrapping Up
And that’s a wrap! Selling social media services to clients can seem like a daunting task. But with the right information and a valuable solution, you can help your clients reap the benefits of a social media account.
And why not simplify this process with a streamlined social media scheduling tool? Create informational and entertaining content for business owners, entrepreneurs and the like. Then schedule ahead of time to focus on providing value to your clients.
Put your social scheduling on autopilot with our scheduling tool. Sked Social allows your team to collaborate quickly and saves time and effort with features like auto publish. Perfect your Insta feed, schedule everything from posts to Reels and IGTV, keep social media templates and cross-post to your other socials in a few clicks.
Schedule a month’s worth of captivating content in one week for free – Start 7-day free trial.
Collaborate effortlessly, save time and spend less
Why settle for a lackluster social media management tool when you could be using Sked Social? With unlimited collaborator access, streamlined approvals and advanced auto-post technology that lets you schedule to all major platforms, Sked Social offers everything you need.
Get Started for FREE