As a social media agency, you are keen to win new clients. An effective tool for doing so is a proposal that provides the solutions to problems your clients might not even know they have.
Many businesses today know they need to be active on social media. The trouble is they don’t have the time, resources, or the experience to execute a social strategy. They don’t know what platforms they should be using or what and how often they should be posting. What’s more, in some cases companies find it difficult to come up with growth strategies to increase their authority.
While many organizations know they need to have an active social media presence, sometimes the fog that surrounds social media can make thinking about it overwhelming to them. If you are presenting a social media proposal to a client, the solutions you offer might just give them a new set of problems to consider. So how do you come up with the winning formula that will give you the proposal that wins the business?
There are three methods for creating an effective proposal and leaving your clients with no option but to consider it as their best solution.
Research clients and their marketplaces
Researching your clients is key. You can’t propose solutions to companies if you haven’t taken the time to understand their brands. How do you know what the solution is if you don’t know what their needs are?
There are several important things that you need to ascertain before you can even consider putting together a proposal.
- Who the brands are and what they do
- What the brands stand for
- What they are offering their clients
- The challenges brands face in the current climate
- Their competitors and what the competitors offer
- How the brands stand out among other companies in their industry
- The brands’ social media presence versus that of their competitors
Once you have ascertained the above information, you can begin to dig a bit deeper into areas such as the brands’ competitors and the competitors’ social media presence. While you don’t know the competition’s performance concerning their bottom line, what you can determine is how they perform on social media.
How do your potential clients rank against their competitors? Knowing how they compare to each other will give you much greater depth to your proposal and really show that you know the marketplace and those that operate in it.
Standing in front of clients with their competitors’ Facebook page stats, for example, is a great talking point and helps you to formulate the right strategy for your prospective clients. If a client’s page only has 1,000 likes and the competitor’s has 10,000 likes, there is clearly some room for improvement.
How do your clients engage their audiences and what sort of things do they post? How do their pages add value to their audiences? What are their response times? The majority of people who respond on social media expect a response in an hour. Are your clients meeting those expectations?
What social media strategy will you implement?
It is important that you demonstrate the strategy that you have devised for your clients. Designing the right strategy depends on how well you have researched a client’s brand and identifying the right social media for it. Different social media platforms offer different audiences, and there is usually more than one suitable medium for the client that you are trying to win.
Do your clients offer products that are visual that would win the hearts and minds of people on Instagram? Perhaps they are more business focused, and their potential audience is using LinkedIn. Formulating a strategy should include the platforms you are recommending, along with the reasons why you are recommending them.
Another key feature of your proposal should be the content strategy. What will you post? When and how will you ensure that it is relevant content? How will you engage with your client’s audience? Content strategy has to begin with the number of posts that go out on each social profile per day. These posts cannot go out at random times either. You need to identify the best times to post so that your efforts achieve maximum engagement.
While clients pay you to devise and implement a strategy, they also like to retain some element of control. It is therefore important to ensure that you make sure the accounts are visible to the customer. Doing so will reassure the client that the social media is not completely out of their hands.
Use tools that give your customers access to their accounts. Clients can then get involved from time to time, especially when they see momentum building. For clients to be able to entrust their social media to you, it is crucial that they feel in control.
Reporting progress
At the end of each week or month, your clients will want to see how their social media is performing. They are paying you for a service, and they want to see the results of that service. As a good social media agency, you should be regularly updating your clients on how their profiles are performing.
For example, the metrics that you report on should include the growth of the audience on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. You should be able to show clients their busiest times, the best times for engagement, and how their pages are doing.
Demonstrating the depth of the analytics will provide your clients with something tangible and show them that you are serious. When you put together your social media proposal, include the metrics that will show them the most results. Point out the top engaged posts, which hashtags they should be using, and which types of posts performed best. These are all good, measurable metrics that will show that you know what you are doing and that you mean business.
By being able to demonstrate the complete picture to your potential clients, your proposal will be taken much more seriously than if you simply said, “This is where you should be, and this is how much it will cost.” You don’t need to prepare a 100-slide presentation, but a few key slides demonstrating what you can offer will put you way ahead of any possible competition.
Latest posts by Nikhil Premanandan (see all)
- Prepare an Awesome Social Media Proposal to Win That Client - September 30, 2016
Wow! What an awesome post. I read it from start to end, really like it
I just want to thank you for such a good arrangement.
your social media proposal is awesome. An online business and getting more clients, social media can be really helpful. Nowadays, people have included the use of social networking sites in their daily routine. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the blog…really interesting and helpful……to grow business online or through Social media…..thanks for these tips and ideas…
Hey thanks Nikhil for the wonderful post Prepare an Awesome Social Media Proposal to Win That Client. This is really worth reading. Thank you!!!!!!!!!
This is really an interesting article sir. You have told about social media here. We know how perfect the social media is to promote your business. Without social media we can not think our online business. We must have proper knowledge about social media marketing. Your article must be helpful. Thanks for sharing.
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Great post Nikhil! In your social media proposal you also have to be clear about the price for the project or service.
George would love you to read ..One Half’s Offshoring Accounting Services
Social media is increased day by day. I am using facebook, twitter, Pinterest for social media sharing. Can any one suggest me the most powerful social media other than these?
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Hello Dear
well i read your article and that is true that knows A day everyone want to stay on social media because this is very good platform to promote our business and other thing by using social media app we can see as soon as possible well result about our business . thanks to share with us this great information.
Hi Nikhil.P
Thank you so much for sharing your informative article with us. It will help me a lot to win more client from social media.
Golam Qauser would love you to read ..How to Remove Background from a Picture Using Photoshop ?
Thank you Golam. Glad my article was of help. Good luck getting those clients.
Cheers!
Nikhil.P
Thanks for sharing your real world proven advice Nakhil!
And sadly, I have to admit, my company is not truly
maximizing the full potential of social media marketing!
And I definitely feel like I’m attempting to read a foreign language, whenever
I’m on twitter!
But your points are well taken! Thank you for helping to clear many issues up
for me!
Mark would love you to read ..Email Marketing: Seven Potentially Profitable Reasons Aweber Might Be Right For You!
I hear you, Mark. I was exactly at the same place 6 yrs ago. The only way to get to know social media better is to get down and start working it. Thanks for stopping by.
Cheers!
Nikhil.P
This is really an interesting article sir. You have told about social media here. We know how perfect the social media is to promote your business. Without social media we can not think our online business. We must have proper knowledge about social media marketing. Your article must be helpful. Thanks for sharing.
Munna Hossain would love you to read ..How to Unlock Locked Widgets in Blogger Easily
Glad that I could help out with my article, Munna.
Cheers!
Nikhil.P
Great post I must say, I’ve never thought of the tips you have shared here and I’m really happy that I learned some great points from this post.
Thanks
Osho would love you to read ..The Best Frameworks for Building Mobile Apps
Thanks a lot Osho. Glad you liked my article.
Thanks Nikhil you have share valuable post. I think, if you are serving professional social media services to the clients, having a LinkedIn presence could boast your reach.
Brainpulse would love you to read ..Is Disavow No More A Necessity With Penguin 4.0 Update?
Glad you liked my article.
Cheers!
Nikhil.P
hey i read your article and this is fact that social media platform is the best platform for the growing . and social media strategy is the great . thanks to upload this information on this site .i would like to thanks your
Thanks Madhuri.
Nikhil.P
Very nice article. Indeed, social media is really important now a days for marketing of any product as it helps a great deal in growing your product.
Anyways, thanks for the article as it can help people like me to get some clients and keep us the good work.
Cheers!
Glad I could help out with my article, Junaid. Good luck with those clients.
Cheers!
Nikhil.P
Hey Nikhil,
A social media marketing proposal should reiterate marketing and business goals previously discussed. Social activities should be aligned with major social media goals, such as Fan Growth, Engagement, and Sales. Each company shall be different and the proposal may need to focus on just one or two social media goals, or all of the major ones.
Before putting pen to paper, we should have enough discussions with the potential client to understand what their key business and social media goals are. Making sure that our proposal is aligned with their goals will increase our chances of success. Managing social activities and analyzing results will take the bulk of our time during an engagement, so it’s really the most important part of our proposal.
Making sure that our activities are focused on getting to the results and goals will be the key to separating you from other agencies. 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.
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. Eventually, thanks for sharing your informative thought with us.
With best regards,
Amar kumar
Amar kumar would love you to read ..Revamp an Old Website in 13 Steps
Indeed Amar Kumar. Excellent points highlighted by you. Glad you liked my article.
Cheers!
Nikhil.P
Hi Nikhil…
Thanks for your prospectful post. Social media plays a vital role for the publicity of the enterpreneur business. Hope, the bloggers and businesses will get a memorable touch by reading your post.
Thanks Nayem for your kind words. Have a nice day.
Social media is getting more and more important these days. Online or offline any business needs social media engagement. Anyway Thanks for this well researched article. It would definitely help a lot of people like me to get some new clients.
Awesome Subhadip. Thanks for stopping by and wish you good luck in getting those clients.
Thanks guys. I hope it does. Glad you liked my article.
Nikhil.P
Hey Nikhil,
For an online business and getting more clients, social media can be really helpful. Nowadays, people have included the use of social networking sites in their daily routine.
The more you promote your product on social networks, the more you will get the clients. The visual content can be most viral.
Thanks for sharing with us.
~Ravi
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Hi Ravi
Indeed visual content has the potential to get fetch those precious eyeballs to your site. It is important for agencies to play to their strengths. If they are good at providing visual content with the help of designers, then they should leverage that. Thanks for stopping by Ravi.
Cheers!
Nikhil.P