If you're a busy marketing agency or consultant it can be difficult to keep up with all the latest strategies and techniques in Social Media Marketing. And it can be even more challenging to create a compelling Social Media Proposal to win a new client when you're busy managing existing ones.
Even if you're just getting started as a marketing consultant, what should you propose to clients who want you to manage their social media activities? How should you structure your proposal so it's clear that you can deliver results?
Here are five quick tips for making a big impact in your social media proposal template to convince new clients:
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Speak to Value, Not Activities. Make sure you start by focusing on the value and results you will target. While it's important to efficiently manage a myriad of social activities, if you don't focus on results you'll never know if you're getting anywhere. And neither will your client. Highlight past successes you and your team have recently achieved.
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Target Social Media Goals. Before putting pen to paper, you should have had enough discussions with the potential client to understand what their key business and social media goals are. Making sure that your proposal is aligned with their goals will increase your chances of success. Is growing their fan base more important than increasing engagement with existing fans? Is converting coupon offers on social media to sales more important than growing their fan base? Often, some goals have higher priority at this point in time. But show the flexibility to adjust your strategy as their top priority goals change over time.
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Show Them Your Process & Team. Sure you're talented and experienced, but can your client rely on you and your team to consistently produce results? Don't be afraid to give them a peek into how you will manage your social strategy, content creation, content curation, posting, and social promotions activities. Having a structured social media workflow that any individual can follow will give them confidence in you. For teams, demonstrating an understanding that social media management can be a team sport, with everyone having clearly defined social media team roles and responsibilities, will increase confidence in you.
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Tie Social Media Activities to Goals. Managing social activities and analyzing results will take the bulk of your time during an engagement, so it's really the most important part of your proposal. Making sure that your activities are focused on getting to the results and goals will be the key to separating you from other agencies. Here's some of the major social media activities that should be included. Feel free to include screenshots of tools you will use to help you manage and monitor social networks.
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Monitoring social activity. This includes client social profiles, influencers, VIPs and fans. Also any key #hashtags and search terms for your client's business.
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Engaging and responding. A great response can generate goodwill, engagement, or even sales. Complaints should be handled in a timely fashion as well.
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Creating and curating content for posting. Keeping fans engaged with a mix of original and curated content is a key ingredient for achieving those desired results on social.
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Running social promotions and campaigns. Special promotions can span social networks and run for an extended time, but can deliver measurable results against goals. It's critical to be able to manage social posts as a series which are part of a campaign.
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Analyzing results and activities. Clients will want to make sure you've delivered on all the activities you've promised but also that you're making progress toward the goals. Social activities should be continually tuned and tested to discover what could work better.
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Keep Them Engaged. First, inquire about what types of approvals are needed for campaigns, posts, images etc. Then make sure to include approval steps in your process. Next, wow your client with eye-candy from sample reports that you'll send them summarizing your results and activities. Finally, let them know that, behind the scenes, you'll be analyzing data and monitoring activities and metrics to make sure that you're always optimizing the time spent and focusing on results.
Here's another article for more in-depth advice, or you can download this Social Media Proposal template, complete with sample sections, graphics, and screenshots, to give you a jump start on winning that next social media management client. Good luck with your proposal!