Should you Partner with a Digital Marketing Agency for your Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is an important part of the digital marketing landscape.

• Around 75% of internet users utilize social media to research products and services from brands before making a purchase.
• A large core of brand awareness is achieved through social media marketing with $219 billion being spent on social media advertising in 2024.
• The average person spends 2 hours and 20 minutes per day on social media.
• As of October 2024, there were 5.22 billion social media users worldwide. 

So, it’s not a matter of if social media marketing should be a part of your digital marketing strategy, it’s a matter of how it should be a part of your digital marketing strategy. 

When to Partner with an Agency for Social Media Marketing

Partnering with an agency to manage your social media marketing is good for more reasons than keeping your business ahead of the curve with social media platforms and trends. The most common reasons we’ve found hiring an agency for social media marketing to be beneficial are:

• Internal Time Constraints: The most common dilemma is knowing social media marketing is important, but not having the available internal team time to dedicate to it. For many companies, partnering with an agency makes more financial sense than hiring an internal team member. 
• Commitment and Consistency: When you partner with an agency for social media marketing, you can rely on consistency of posting to stay in front of your target audience week-in and week-out. No working around your internal team vacations, sick-time, or competing team priorities. 
• Lack of In-House Expertise: Agencies spend a significant amount of time staying on top of industry trends and new and emerging social media platforms. While internal company resources can be well-intentioned, it can be more difficult to stay abreast of industry trends without being entrenched in the industry daily. 
• Social Media Ad Focus: Perhaps the highest reach and visibility from social media marketing can be found through social media advertising. Oftentimes social media ad strategy is commonly overlooked by companies who focus their internal time and resources on organic social media strategy. Because of multi-channel ad complexity and opportunity, it is best to rely on an agency to manage and monitor your ad performance. 

With clearly defined goals, an agency will tailor a social media strategy specially for your business objectives, and can help companies to scale efforts over time. 

When Not to Partner with an Agency for Social Media Marketing

Partnering with an agency for your social media marketing efforts may not always be the best solution. The most common reasons we’ve found to consider managing your social media marketing in-house include:

• Highly Technical Niche Industry Expertise Needed: If you are in an industry that requires highly specialized industry knowledge, it may be a good idea to manage your own organic social media efforts unless you’re willing to put in the time to train and integrate your partner agency on the intricacies of your business. 
• Highly Active Internal Social Culture: If you’re in an industry where displaying your brand culture and daily brand stories are critical to your exposure and success, you may want to consider managing your social media marketing efforts internally. Unless you partner with an agency to be on-site regularly, the agency will rely on the company to provide regular photo and video assets to showcase the brand and brand activities, which can be a common roadblock. 

While the above can be true, when choosing the right partner these obstacles aren’t always insurmountable, but do require a mutual partnership and effort to achieve the right outcomes.  

What to Examine Before Deciding to Partner with an Agency for Social Media Marketing

While partnering with an agency can be ideal to help manage your social media marketing when you need expertise, scalability, and efficiency, your company’s goals and team capabilities should be considered first before making this important decision. Before you take the leap:

Once you’ve assessed these critical elements, take the leap into increased brand exposure with social media marketing.

• Document your goals
• Assess tools, social channels and resources needed to execute your strategy
• Evaluate your internal team’s skills and workload availability
• Research local agencies