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Small Social Media Agencies, how do you charge?
We’ve started a relatively small team of digital marketing and social media services. I just want to figure out a way of packaging the services properly.
Some people have retainers, some have x no. of posts per week, what kind of KPIs do you also promise clients?
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1 Reply
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This is really a good question. I am doing something similar. I am doing local and limited services. This is my suggestion. In Excel, list your service offerings. Do some local competitive analysis on each offering/skillset required. If you want to do packages or bundles you might want to take it a step further and define your customer personas a bit. But, let’s say for branding purposes you did a package that included the profile pic, banners for a Facebook page, Twitter and Instagram. Many companies can use that. Some like to do the copy themselves, but I have found doing social media audits that many do not take into consideration proper keyword analysis so I have been assisting with the copy. Right now, we are a little early to be offering any KPI’s. My first couple of people I worked with I did not even charge anything as I wanted to build my process. I had marketing experience but it was shallow and wide. And, I never worked at an agency. As demand grows, I am going to be raising prices a bit. The initial assessment I do which I do not charge for seems to be the most popular thing I do and it is very enlightening for people as they really are surprised at the results. I even have had to reassure people that they did not do anything wrong and that the assessment is like a gap analysis and it shows opportunities for improvement.
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Due to the ever-changing nature of social media, I prefer to work on a retainer basis where I provide X hours of services (these services might be publishing, design, consultancy, ad reporting etc) – however the client wants me to spend my time is up to them.
If they need more time or we have heavy months, I provision a rate card in the contract where they can buy extra hours/days at an agreed rate. Not only does this give the client certainty from the outset, but it creates a clear value of my time, because it’s very easy to get drawn into overdelivering without compensation. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be flexible in this industry, but there’s a lot more to social production than meets the eye and you need to value your time.
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You always have to think about this from the perspective of the client, namely…
1. How much business can you help generate?
2. How much brand awareness/presence can you build?
3. How much perceived success can you achieve for your direct contact and their superiors.For retail/sales oriented clients, I’ve charged a base + bonus. The bonus is based on sales metrics that we agree upon in advance and metrics that we both have access to. They appreciate that I have skin in the game, so to speak, and I structure it so that the bonus is higher than what I’d normally charge.
For brand oriented clients, you can do something similar based on agreed upon social metrics. Clients always have a competitor that they are aiming for. When you ask, they’ll always point to the big, national brands, but ask them to dig deeper to a more like-sized, similar competitor. Benchmark against their social analytics and set bonuses accordingly.
I set a reasonable base – one that I can be comfortable with if the engagement doesn’t work out for whatever reason.
And for clients that I have a longstanding and successful relationship with, I charge by the hour. There’s trust there, so I can do that.
Best of luck.
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I’m looking for these services for my startup company. If you are looking for clients, please let me know!
I do like the per/hr. price structure, as long as there is a good estimate on how long it will take to accomplish the goals.
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