Social media marketing agency is one label over five separable jobs: deciding what to say, producing the material, publishing it, replying to people, and buying paid distribution. Different agencies are strong at different ones, and a monthly figure covering all five tells you nothing about which you are getting.
The five jobs, and which cost what
Strategy decides the audience and the positions. Production makes photographs, video and graphics, and is the most expensive line by far. Publishing is scheduling and platform management, which is cheap. Community management is replying, and it is labour that scales with audience size. Paid media is buying reach and needs a separate budget and a separate skill. Ask a proposal to split the fee across these five; the split is the proposal.
Production quality is what actually differs
Most underperforming social accounts are not badly scheduled, they are badly made: material that looks like everyone else's, no consistent format, nothing anybody would share. That is a production and creative problem. When comparing agencies, compare the work they made for clients of your size rather than the strategy documents, which all look similar.
Community management has a response time and needs rules
If people ask questions, complain or contact you through social channels, someone has to reply within hours, know what the company will and will not say, and know when to escalate. Agree the hours, the escalation path and the tone before launch. A complaint answered slowly in public is more expensive than most campaigns.
Organic reach is limited, so plan the paid line
Organic reach on most platforms reaches a fraction of followers, and material that is not promoted is largely seen by people who already know you. A plan with no paid budget is a plan to talk to your existing audience. Decide what proportion goes to distribution, and hold the paid work to ordinary advertising measurement rather than to engagement counts.
Questions people ask about what is social media marketing agency
What should a social agency cost?
It depends almost entirely on the production volume. Ask how many assets of what type per month, because that is where the money goes.
Can we just use a scheduling tool?
For publishing, yes, and publishing was never the hard part. Strategy, production and replies are the work.
How is this measured?
By what it is for: reach and recall for awareness, clicks and enquiries for acquisition, response times for service. Engagement counts alone decide nothing.
Which platforms should we be on?
The ones your customers use and you can sustain with real production. A stale account is worse than no account.