Outsourcing your social media marketing will benefit your business in more ways than you can imagine. It will save you time and money as well as give you access to expertise, technologies, and other marketing-related needs.
Social media marketing can seem like one of the easier marketing tactics to understand because most of us own a personal social media account or 2 or more.
However, that doesn’t mean running your company’s social media accounts is a task just anyone within the company can do. Social media for business has its own rules and is its own animal.
Last year, there were more than 3.48 billion social media users worldwide. Because of its popularity, social media is clearly a huge marketing opportunity for businesses. Social marketing efforts can increase your brand visibility, help you gain new customers, and provide relationship-building opportunities for your current customers.
Of those 3.48 billion social media users, annual digital growth data shows that 288 million of them were active social media users.
These year-over-year growth changes show that consumers are spending more time on social media. This means there are more chances for them to come across social media marketing.
If you’ve been trying to decide whether or not to outsource your social media marketing, here are five reasons why you may want to take the plunge.
5 Reasons You Should Outsource Your Social Media Marking
- Outsourcing saves your business time
- Outsourcing gives you access to social media experts
- Outsourcing lets you access an agency’s tech stack
- Outsourcing can save your business money
- Most agencies help with additional marketing-related needs
1. Outsourcing Saves Your Business Time
Time is the number one reason companies decide to outsource their social media. Social media management is a task that requires constant attention and most certainly should not be simply posting on Twitter and Facebook when an hour clears up in your schedule.
About 42% of consumers expect a response on social media within 60 minutes. Letting your social media fall to the wayside because you have a trade show to attend or a board meeting to prepare for can damage your reputation.
Another benefit of responding quickly is that on certain platforms such as Facebook, you can earn badges that let your customers know you are responsive and will respond instantly to their inquiries.
When a customer sees this badge or any other one on your profile, they’ll be more than reassured that you’re the right fit.
On top of responding immediately, you also need to continuously monitor the conversations that are happening, regularly test different methods, and constantly track your brand mentions.
Time is money, and outsourcing your business will give you more time to focus on other vital parts of your business.
2. Outsourcing Gives You Access to Social Media Experts
No matter what you are outsourcing, the greatest benefit that comes from it is the expertise you gain that is currently not available to you. A social media expert uses the knowledge you have of your customer, coupled with knowledge of data to evolve your strategy.
Additionally, getting a fresh perspective from someone outside of your company can be extremely beneficial.
Instead of trying to carve out hours each week to dedicate to something that is not within your own wheelhouse, you could have an expert who lives and breathes social media working for you.
These experts stay on top of all industry trends, platforms, and tools, so you don’t need to. Using hashtags correctly, knowing what size photo to use on Pinterest, and knowing if TikTok could be leveraged for your business are just a few of the things an agency will be able to handle with ease.
Agencies will also be able to test different content with your audience and measure your return on investment. Let the experts do their job while you sit back when you choose to use an outsourced agency.
3. Outsourcing Lets You Access an Agency’s Tech Stack
Outsourcing your social media marketing will directly give you access to vital technologies needed to enhance your campaigns.
Agencies are typically paying for memberships to different tools such as Hootsuite, Agorapulse, NetBase, HubSpot, Canva, and Shutterstock.
If you were to pay for all of those industry-leading technologies yourself, your costs would add up pretty quickly.
On top of that, you would also need to train an internal employee on the different technologies in order to use them to their full potential.
You’ll save a lot of time and effort by using your outsourced vendor’s tech stack.
4. Outsourcing Can Save Your Business Money
Outsourcing is typically more cost-effective than hiring someone in-house. You’ll need to factor in the time it takes to hire, train, and develop new team members into your costs. On top of that, the average annual salary of a social media manager ranges from $34,432 to $56,571.
One of the benefits of hiring an agency over an in-house specialist is that you get an entire team for less than the price of one full-time hire. That team could include:
- A project manager to ensure everything gets done in a timely manner
- An online social media manager dedicated to the strategy of your social media efforts
- An account manager to help assist the social media manager
- A graphic designer who ensures everything has the same look and feel
That is a lot of people with different strengths working together on your company’s social accounts.
You also run the risk of your hire not fitting into your company’s culture and not working out.
Another way outsourcing your social media can help you cut costs is if your business has a call center. The average cost of social interaction is only $1 compared to $6 for a call center interaction.
When you save money by outsourcing, you can use the money you would have used for other needed efforts.
5. Most Agencies Help With Additional Marketing-Related Needs
Another benefit of outsourcing your social media to an agency is that they often have additional services they can provide to you.
Have a trade show coming up? Many agencies have designers that can help you design collateral, booths, giveaways, and more.
You can also use some design tools to make your social media content if you’re not yet ready for outsourcing.
Time to update your website? Many agencies have website design and development expertise as well.
Social media marketing agencies can be your one-stop-shop for all things marketing.