10 Reasons to Outsource Social Media Marketing and Management

As the owner of a digital marketing agency that offers social media marketing and management services, I should be writing a compelling article saying that everyone should outsource social media marketing.

But I won’t be doing that.

First of all, because I used to be a marketer who ran a department that tackled all things social media in house. And it worked perfectly.

Secondly, because I know for a fact that there a lot of companies that have the staff needed to handle social media marketing in house. And they are doing great. In fact, I even advised some of our copywriting clients not to outsource social media marketing to us, even though they were keen on doing so.

Yes, I refused easy money.

I did so because I ran an audit on their accounts. I asked about who’s handling what and about their process. This way, I learned that they had skilled digital marketers in-house and they had everything under control.

You see, I could have taken their money. But I decided to charge them for a few strategy pointers instead of a long-term management commitment and let them keep doing the great job they were doing.

And no, I’m not insane. Nor in the habit of turning down money. But when I started Idunn, I decided it was going to be a boutique agency complete with a boutique approach. To my mind, this means zero standard services, personalized packages for every client and extra care for every account, along with honest advice and strategy.

I digress.

Let’s get back to the issue at hand.

How Do You Know You Need to Outsource Social Media Marketing?

Here’s the tricky part about knowing when you’re in over your head: it’s very easy to get wrapped up in your own bubble. You do the same thing you’ve always done and when results don’t appear you panic.

Plus, you have to be completely honest in reviewing your own work and results, which is also incredibly hard to do. Finding excuses may work for your ego, but it will certainly not help you improve your social media presence.

“We’re hiring an intern to take care of social media.”

(This may have worked 10 years ago when social media was in its infancy, but not anymore. You need real specialists for real results).

“We post when we have time.”

(Absolutely not! You post when your customers have the time to read and engage with your posts. You work hard to determine when that time is and you experiment continuously.)

“We post the items we want to sell.”

(Of course you do. But what about the things your customers really want to see? Remember that they are literally bombarded with sales-y messages every day, everywhere they go.)

“We’ll have someone from our marketing department dedicated two hours per week to social media marketing.”

(Sure, that works. But only in a world where the users choose to engage with your brand in those very two hours you dedicate to social media every week.)

If any of the above sound like you, then it’s clearly time to outsource social media marketing and management. Here’s what you’ll get out of it:

10 Reasons to Outsource Social Media Management and Marketing

1. You Get Consistency

…which is something your audience not only loves, but also needs.

When you outsource social media marketing and management, you can say goodbye to posting when you have the chance. If you work with the right agency, you can expect a strict and clear posting schedule.

At Idunn, for instance, we work hard to find out which days and times are the best for posting on each account and each social network for our clients. We don’t post “when we have the time”. We post when we know we can get our audience’s attention.

Plus, we never miss a relevant holiday or special occasion. No matter how busy that time is for us or our clients, we make sure the posts are scheduled in time for Christmas, company anniversaries, Valentine’s Day and many, many others.

2. Your Customers Get Timely Responses

Customers expect brands to respond within three to six hours to complaints on social media. Granted, if they post a complaint during the night, the time may be longer. Otherwise, you are expected to react very fast.

But what do you do when you are on holiday or caught in back to back meetings all day long? You leave questions and complaints unanswered?

That’s the biggest no-no of social media. Remember the “social” part in social media. You’re not supposed to only push messages to your channels.

You are supposed to listen carefully and engage in conversations. Sometimes, it can be a full-time job, even if most marketers report spending only six+ hours on social media per week.

At Idunn, we use advanced social listening tools to make sure our customers never leave a complaint unanswered, even if their brand is not directly tagged in it. Better yet, social listening enables us to find new exciting opportunities for us and for our clients.

3. You Benefit from Strategy Advice

The world of social media is changing FAST. One announcement from Mark Zuckerberg can cause havoc in marketing department that’s already stretched thin.

But when you outsource social media marketing and management, you should expect the agency you work with to be on top of things and not be caught by surprise.

Case in point: when, in the beginning of 2018, Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook business pages will have an even lower organic reach, countless websites wrote apocalyptical articles about this. Some advised people to close their business pages altogether, while others advised pouring hefty sums into Facebook ads.

We were calm.

We knew this was coming. In fact, it wasn’t even a major change – it was something every social media marketer knew was going to happen sooner rather than later.

So we advised our clients to stop pouring money into page likes campaigns and move to boosting posts. Also, we worked with them on strategies to boost their organic reach.

There was no panic, just clear-headed strategizing. As one should expect when they outsource social media marketing to specialists.

4. You Save Time AND Money

I think the time saving part is clear by now. But how can you save money by paying someone to do something?

It sounds contradictory, right?

Well, it’s not!

Oftentimes, the fee you pay an agency when you outsource social media marketing and management is lower than what you would pay an employee to care for your accounts. And that’s just one employee, not an entire team.

We have clients who thought the same: I can’t afford to outsource social media. So I’ll hire someone. When they realized that the upfront and long-term costs with: new laptop, office space, salary and taxes were huge, they contacted us. And they were relieved to see a significant difference in their bottom line.

5. You Get the Experience and Expertise of an Entire Team

Speaking of employees, if you can afford a whole social media team on your payroll, that’s great! Otherwise, you may consider outsourcing your social media activities.

Here’s why.

You may not need more than one person working eight hours per day on your brand’s social media presence. But you could surely benefit from the experience, expertise and ideas of an entire team.

When you outsource social media marketing and management, you get a whole agency on your side. Couple that with your own marketing team and you’ve got a winning recipe.

Why?

Because no matter how brilliant an employee is, two heads are always better than one. And three or five are even better.

You need a constant stream of fresh, exciting ideas to keep your social media channels performing well. You can’t expect a single person to always deliver those ideas, especially if they have other marketing tasks on their plate, as well.

6. You Have Access to Cutting-Edge Tools

Each month, my agency spends $1000+ on social media management, monitoring and listening tools. I know this is a lot for an SMB.

We can afford it because we use these tools for multiple clients. For instance, we use Sendible for social media management and reporting. Sendible is one of the more expensive tools of its kind. But we chose it because of its features and, most importantly, because it is updated as soon as a social network operates a change in their API.

Some clients have their own social media management tools. And that’s great for us – we’re flexible and fluent in most of them. But for those who don’t have such a tool, they don’t need to pay a new subscription. They can always rely on our own tools.

The same goes for social monitoring, listening and growing. All our clients get access to best-in-class tools. For additional services, we can always recommend tools.

Or advise against them (yes, that’s happening, too).

We are among the first to test most of the new tools that the market raves about. And, let’s face it, not all of them are as good as advertised.

This is where a team of seasoned social media professionals comes in handy. We won’t let our customers waste money or time on something that we have already tested and discarded.

7. You Get Great Content on Your Social Media Channels

Above all else, at Idunn we are marketers. So we know the adequate tone of voice for each brand and each channel.

This is something that every social media agency worth of the name should offer. Bulk posting without relevant captions is useless.

Even more, at Idunn, we have a team of seasoned copywriters. Because we also offer copywriting services, it comes easy to us to create great, attention-grabbing captions.

You know that tongue-tied feeling you get when you feel like everything you write sounds incredibly bad? It happens to everyone! But when you outsource social media marketing, you have an entire team at your disposal. And they can’t all be deserted by their muses at the same time, can they?

8. You Get the Most out of Your Advertising Budget

In an era when things change as fast as they do today, ad monitoring is of the utmost importance.

Do you have the time to check on your social media ads at least once per day, along with replying to comments and posts, posting and engaging?

If not, then outsourcing social media marketing and management is your best bet.

A good agency will find the time to test and monitor your ads to ensure optimal performance is achieved. You can easily save half your advertising budget if you outsource social media ads to a PPC wizard!

9. You Stay Relevant

I’ve seen this a thousand time in most of our clients’ social media accounts: busy and bootstrapped SMBs tend to rely a lot on finding the recipe of success and then repeating it over and over again.

That’s perfectly normal, one would say. After all, if you found what works, why change it?

And it’s also a good idea – find out what type of social media post works best for your audience and create it as often as possible.

There’s one problem with this, though: the same recipe can only work for so long.

Think about it this way: you found the perfect food recipe. It’s sophisticated and amazing (something like French entrecote, for instance). You also have access to the perfect cuts for it and, right now, you feel like you could eat this forever and not get tired of it.

But you know you will.

There will come a time when you’d happily trade your fancy and super expensive French entrecote for the cheapest, greasiest hot dog just to get a bit of variety in your life.

The same goes for social media. It may be tempting to rely on something that brought you success. But if you don’t shake and stir it every once in a while, it will stop working.

When you get to that point and you start asking yourself what happened to your great results, this is when you should outsource social media marketing. It’s obvious your channels need a breath of fresh air.

10. You Open a Whole New World of Possibilities

You know what the best part about outsourcing social media marketing and management is? The beginning.

This is when more wheels start to spin.

Everyone has new ideas.

Your new agency is eager to come up with fresh concepts.

One of the things that happened in the beginning of almost every new social media project we took over was refining our clients’ targeting.

At times, they were targeting too many people and wasting money on ads that fell on deaf years. Other times, they would leave out great buyer personas.

After our initial research, we were always able to do better targeting for them and help them achieve more with less.

It’s our favorite thing to do!

Looking to outsource social media marketing and management? You have come to the right place! Let us show you how can achieve more with less, just like we did for all our clients: