What Does a Social Media Marketing Agency Do?

Although many employees, managers, and owners may use social media in their personal lives, figuring out how to leverage it for business purposes can be challenging. Yet, an effective social media strategy is an exceptional way to boost brand awareness, drive traffic, and get started with influencer marketing. 

This is exactly why many businesses consider hiring a social media marketing agency. So, what does a social media marketing agency do to achieve outstanding results for clients?

Read on to learn about some of the most common social media agency services and how they can help your business.

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

A social media marketing agency (SMMA) provides several social media marketing services to help businesses improve their online presence, such as:

• Developing and tailoring social media marketing strategies for each platform.
• Creating and posting quality content to accounts.
• Running paid social media advertising campaigns.
• Engaging with followers and building a community around your brand.
• Identifying and leveraging opportunities for influencer marketing partnerships.
• Tracking and interpreting social media data to measure campaign success.

What Is a Social Media Marketing Agency?

A social media marketing agency is a type of digital marketing agency that uses social media to improve a brand’s online visibility. This often includes creating social media strategies, running campaigns, and tracking their results.

Is your current social media approach netting high-quality leads or attracting new followers? A whopping 93% of small businesses report difficulties overcoming common social media challenges like these.

To successfully use social media to market your business, you need to do a lot more than just put up the occasional post about your products or services. 

Fortunately, this type of marketing agency knows exactly what to do to help you leverage popular platforms and achieve your business goals.

What Does a Social Media Marketing Agency Do?

A better question may be, what don’t they do? There are several things a social media marketing agency may do to improve your business’s online presence.

Develops social media strategies tailored to each platform

Before you can run a successful social media campaign, you need a solid game plan. A good social media marketing agency can help you create a comprehensive social media marketing strategy that aligns with your brand’s voice, values, and marketing goals.

To design an effective plan, an agency will consider your:

• Marketing goals. Do you want to increase brand awareness, boost sales, etc.?
• Target audience. Are your customers on Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, or another platform? What is the best way to reach them on each one?
• Competitors. What are your opponents doing? Is there anything you can learn from their strategy?

A thorough, well-researched social media strategy provides a roadmap for everything from content creation to audience engagement. 

Example: Let’s say a social media marketing agency performs a competitor analysis and finds that your rivals are doing much better on Instagram. They may then determine the strengths of their campaigns and use them to inform your strategy.

Creates and posts relevant, engaging content

Of course, you won’t get far on social media without content. A social media marketing agency knows the value of creating quality social media posts that align with your content marketing efforts. They will go the extra mile to create posts that:

• Include eye-catching graphics or videos.
• Are well-written and niche-specific.
• Capitalize on the latest trends.

Note that with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), some may use AI tools to generate text for social media posts. It’s best practice to communicate your brand’s AI policies right from the start to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Then, if you want peace of mind that your posts are original, don’t worry — AI content detection in marketing is fairly common these days. Some agencies will run the text through an AI detector to ensure it's human-written before it goes live on your business page. 

Runs paid social media advertising campaigns

In addition to organic posts, social media marketing agencies can help you with paid social media campaigns. Since this approach involves paying the various social media platforms to display your content to a specific audience, leveraging a social media marketing agency’s expertise here can help you make the most of your ad budget.

A social media marketing agency’s approach to paid ads often depends on the platform; services can vary. Generally, though, it involves:

• Creating targeted ads.
• Managing the ad budget.
• Performing A/B testing to see which ads have the best results.

Example: Let’s say that your audience is on TikTok. Engagement is everything on this platform, so social media marketing agencies may use their knowledge of the latest TikTok trends to help create ads, engage your audience, and increase the odds of your post going viral.

Takes care of community management and audience engagement

One critical area of social media marketing is community management and audience engagement. Those paid and organic posts may help you attract new followers and generate leads, but engaging with your current audience is key to building trust in your brand.

To drive communication between your business and its followers, social media marketing agencies:

• Engage in real-time conversations, responding to comments, direct messages, etc.
• Create interactive content to encourage participation, like polls and quizzes.
• Monitor and participate in the latest trends.

The goal of a social media marketing agency here is to create a sense of community around your business. Being known as an approachable, relatable brand can do wonders for your online reputation.

Leverages influencer marketing

Did you know that the market value of global influencer marketing more than tripled from 2019 to 2023? 

Influencers have become indispensable to brands who want to benefit from their online reach and credibility, and social media marketing agencies know the ins and outs of running these partnerships successfully.

To help you leverage the power of influencers, social media marketing agencies:

• Identify, connect, and negotiate contracts with influencers appropriate for your brand and audience.
• Ensure that content creation and campaigns align with your business goals.
• Monitor the partnership to see if it's working.

For example, a social media marketing agency may find that your brand would benefit from partnering with a micro-influencer. As the name suggests, these influencers have smaller followings (less than 100k) than macro-influencers (over 100k). However, they often have a stronger connection with their audience, which can result in higher-quality leads.

Tracks metrics and interprets analytics

Finally — and perhaps most importantly — a social media marketing agency keeps a close eye on the results of their marketing campaigns and reports them back to you. 

By collecting and interpreting social media data, they can demonstrate the effectiveness of their efforts and adjust your social media strategy if needed.

The data and metrics they track may depend on your business goals, but some of the most common ones include:

• Impressions or views
• Engagement
• Click-through rates (CTRs)

For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, a social media marketing agency may be more interested in the number of impressions or views than your CTRs.

Improve Your Online Presence with a Social Media Marketing Agency

It takes time to become a social media expert and even more time to create the kind of content and community around your brand that gets results.

Social media marketing agencies are professionals who have put in the time and effort to really understand their craft. From strategy to execution, they know what it takes to improve your online presence and drive results for your business. 

Interested in learning more about marketing agencies? Check out our top guides:

• What Is a Marketing Agency?
• What Does a Marketing Agency Do?
• What Is a B2B Marketing Agency?