Have you ever hired a social media marketing agency and it turned out to be a complete disaster?
If yes, you are not alone!
The truth is most of the marketing agencies in Pakistan are either clueless or know very little about social media marketing which is hindering the business owners from their true potential.
I believe most of the marketers out there have forgotten the real purpose of SMM.
They need to rethink why business owners would hire them.
But Isn’t simple right?
Every business owner like you wants to achieve ROI quickly and make marketing investment profitable for them.
In the ideal case, turning every Rs. 5000 invested in ad spend to Rs. 10,000-20,000. At least a 2X return.
That’s how it is supposed to be!
However, it’s not that much simple especially if you have hired a wrong agency for social media marketing.
3 Ways to Spot if Your Agency Sucks
If you’re already with a marketing agency, here’s how you can spot if they suck:
- Polluting Facebook feed with poor content
See if the hired agency uses poor quality images on your social media pages like stock images with low resolutions, write poor content with grammatical mistakes, and all they do is share an image or video with your logo and Arial font tagline; your investment will go to waste.
- All they know about Facebook Ads is ‘Boost’
If your marketing agency is currently talking about the “boost” button, you’re doomed. They’ve clearly no understanding of how to effectively run ads to increase your sales and certainly have no understanding about social media marketing.
However, if that’s not the case, then ask your agency how they are running ads and confirm that it isn’t boost. Other things to confirm are:
Who they are targeting – age, gender, location, interests.
What they are promoting?
Are they using Facebook Pixel?
How much are they REALLY spending?
These questions can all play a huge part in the success of your social media campaigns.
- Engagement is zero
Social media engagement is an important part of any social media marketing campaign. It is measured by the number of shares, likes and comments. If there is no engagement on your social media account, it means you’re agency is not doing something right.
Factors to look:
Check if the content shared on your page is too generic (Such as ‘Buy from us’ intent post only)
Are your posts just liked by your friends?
Are they using 10+ hash tags on Facebook; if so, fire them immediately!
These are the typical bad agency approaches to market the business which will bring zero return for your business.
2 Common Reasons why social media agencies are INCAPABLE Today!
After knowing how to spot these alarming elements in social media agencies, let’s dive deeper into why these agencies have lost trust and what’s making them incapable to help businesses grow.
- Lack of Education and Training
As entrepreneurship craze is taking over the world by storm, many people have stepped in to try their luck, especially in social media marketing and eCommerce space. That is actually a good thing, however, most of them skip the first step which is gaining enough education, research, and practice before kick-starting their own business.
Similarly, social media marketers in Pakistan are unfortunately not well trained and lack basic marketing skills.
Initially, they manage to board a few clients, but with constant negative results from their campaigns makes business owners discouraged to hire a social media agency again.
- Reluctant to invest in online advertisement!
Having spent the last couple of years leading a social media agency for hundreds of businesses in Pakistan and around the world, I have come to the conclusion that business owners are also to blame as they are hesitant to invest money in online advertising.
Without spending any money on ads, it would be impossible to reach a higher number of people. It literally kills the reason for marketing.
As the Facebook algorithm toughens each year, it has made organic reach almost dead unless you’re sharing memes and viral videos.
You have to spend money to make money. That’s how it is.
My advice to every business owner is that they should take the money that was to be spent on buying newspaper ads and put it online and see the results for themselves.
Digital marketing is the profit-making model where you invest Rs10,000, then you double or triple that investment. It is a model that is working all over the world if done right.
Suggestions to develop a successful social media marketing strategy:
Users on social media platforms are not there to buy things. The typical objective of a visitor on social media is to engage and connect with people. Therefore, the best practice is to create engaging posts such as quizzes, competitions, live videos, and memes so that your followers can interact and talk to you.
When it comes to selling your stuff, you must do it engagingly in a step by step funnel.
First, you need to educate your customers to aware them about the problems they’re facing and then presenting them with a solution. You can do this by creating an ebook, blog or video ad with an educational message. This will position you as an expert in your industry.
Social Media Marketing Buying Cycle
And then in the final step, you can create an offer like discounts or a free consultation, which will attract them friction free.
The bottom line is this: You’ve to walk your customers through a proper cycle in order to market successfully using the medium of social media.
Otherwise, you can use Google AdWords to find customers with ‘buy now’ intent and marketing them without a funnel.
I hope our SMM agencies in Pakistan will use the right approach to market businesses and better-educated marketers will come in this industry so that it is a win-win for both parties.