Unlock Hidden Revenue Streams: Social Media Strategies for Agencies

We’re in a space right now, I think, in 2024 where you could get canceled almost any second as a brand. You say the wrong thing on social, whatever it is, there’s an opportunity, there’s a risk.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Beyond Social podcast. I’m Reggie, one of your hosts. This is a show where we go behind the scenes on how marketers do amazing things and how we are building a tool to help those marketers. Myself and Vitaly today are talking about some of the ways that marketing agencies, marketers, freelance solopreneurs could expand their revenue by offering a couple more things that in partnership with an SMM tool could really help to expand your core offering.

So Vital, I know that we were chatting before this about, you know, there’s so many different elements of functionality and in general, so many different things that we can add value to the client, right? So us providing value to the agency or to the marketer, but beyond that, what are some of the things that we were thinking through that could help them to expand, right?

The Core Social Media Management Model

Whatever that is, I think when it comes to marketing agencies, right, you have the the bigger agencies that already are offering quite a few services to their customers, everything from branding to, you know, you have the copywriting, you have, uh, ad production, videography, you know, you have a number of sort of services already.

In our conversations today, we’re going to focus on the social media management side of sort of marketing, where majority of services are sort of related to content production. You have your social media managers and agencies offering social media management to brands and companies out there, and the primary offering is content and creating content on regular basis, whether it’s imagery, videos, you know, whatever the content is. And then end of the month, typically an agency would, you know, social media manager would go out and you know, generate a report as a way of sort of proving the value to their customer.

Revenue Stream 1: Post Boosting and Ad Spend Management

Yeah, and I think beyond that rule, like you mentioned that, right, like maybe there’s a slow month on Tik Tok or on Instagram for them. I think one of the things that we want to talk about is how do we offset that, but at the same time offer an additional offering for that marketer, for that agency, right? I guess more, more of the marketer, so that in that slow month you can offset that, right? So let’s talk a little bit about boosting.

Yeah, so the ad spend management is a fairly large sort of area and it typically comes with needing to have enough expertise how to set up ads on all these different platforms. And it’s complex enough of a subject to where some networks like Facebook, like Meta, they offer certifications on the subject. So it’s quite, um, challenging in in certain cases to kind of become an expert.

For that reason, maybe the broader ad spend management and ad management is something maybe outside of the scope of today’s conversation, because again, it’s, it’s a, it’s a vast subject. However, just like you said, um, augmenting Performance Marketing performance with boosting, and boosting is sort of, um, an easier way of getting the benefit of the ads without necessarily going all in with ad management.

Revenue Stream 2: Bio Link Page Management

I think in another way, I’ve seen some agencies recently, even just marketers in general, is starting to take over the the management of biolink pages for brands, for local businesses. And it’s helpful in a couple different ways. Well, one, right, the whole goal here is you add another billable item, right? You’re able to provide value to your customer in the sense that you’re creating a microsite, landing page for them with the top links.

I’m sure everybody listening probably already knows what a biolink page is. Uh, but at the end of it, you get to look into features like, let’s say if you’re boosting posts, right? Now I can tie in the Meta pixel, right? I can put in the Google Analytics script, and so now I’m getting more results in other areas. But at the same time, you’re you’re being able to showcase in those reports the value, hey, now we have a Google Analytics report that shows us people who went from our Instagram account to our biolink page, and then ultimately purchased something on the website, right? So now we’re able to kind of tie in that user journey and really communicate that value to them, which could be very, very helpful.

Revenue Stream 3: Employee Advocacy Programs

Yeah, and you mentioned the the, uh, ability to say, let’s say like with real estate or mortgage, right? Where I’m a marketer that handles that specific brand, that real estate firm in a market, and they’ve got, I don’t know, 50, 100 agents. Bio pages, awesome, great addition.

The next one is like really advocacy, the fact that each one of those employees, like you said, they have a social presence. And if they’re in a service base or a sales role, like those sort of profiles, their goal is to sell more. So let’s talk a little bit about advocacy and how that can can help kind of just, well, one billable item, lot more profiles, but also why agencies or marketers are really primed to be the person to run an advocacy program for an organization.

Yeah, as as first of all, the Advocacy, I think, is is again under um underutilized strategy in many cases. It’s not even part of a strategy at all for the business. So you as an agency, you are seeing you’re having a customer, and and you the customer has employees and that’s untapped potential for the customer.

Revenue Stream 4: Strategic Integrations

I I want to kind of shift too into some integrations. I know that sometimes agency or marketers clients have other tools they’re working with, you know, ClickUp, workflow management, Asset Management platforms that they use. And so being able to tie all this stuff together makes lives easier, but also starts giving people access to things that maybe they didn’t have access to so easily before, right?

Yeah, so I think the depending on the particular client level of sophistication in terms of uh what else is happening within the company, whether it’s an HR platform, whether it’s a um some sort of a content management system or um some sort of a communication tool like Teams or Slack, obviously connecting that part of their world to the social media into the marketing efforts, whether it’s uh oh, there is a content that’s created that needs to be approved, right? Or there is a content that we hope everybody in the company now engages with.

Revenue Stream 5: Sentiment Analysis and Reputation Management

I didn’t have this to our list, but I I thought of one uh before we started recording, which is Brands. I mean, like, listen, we’re we’re in this space and I’m gonna say this, some people might not like it. We’re in a space right now, I think in 2024, where you could get canceled almost any second as a brand. You say the wrong thing on social, whatever it is, there’s an opportunity, there’s a risk.

And so I think that there’s been this shift towards really leaning into what is my audience saying about me? How are they feeling about my customer service team, my product, the experience they have in my stores, whatever that might be? So being able to provide something like a sentiment analysis, right, over a period of time, helping them to discover potential PR crisises before they even happen, that could be a pretty solid addition to additional revenue stream for them too.

The Value-First Approach

Yeah, and this is when you add value, right? Everything that we’re talking about here is like you as an organization adding value to your client, help them to achieve their goals. And and when they see that, they’re going to want more, right? That’s the beauty of it.

But thanks again for listening and we appreciate you guys. Uh, if you have any other ideas, I know we went through five ideas for marketers and social media managers to add revenue streams. If you think of any other ideas, make sure you leave that as a comment on any of the platforms you’re consuming this podcast on. If you have any thoughts on episode ideas, anything that you want us to cover or if you want to come join Vali and I on a future episode, make sure to head over to vistas social. Domo and we’ll see you guys next time.