Are you just starting the SMMA business and unsure how to go about it?
Maybe you’ve seen people crush it with SMMA signing 2K a month clients.
But you don’t know how to start your social media marketing agency?
Information is thrown at you from all directions and you don’t know what exact steps to take.
If that sounds like you right now, I understand what that’s like.
I’ve been there too.
That’s why I want to break this business model down to its fundamentals so you can understand how it works and how you can start your digital marketing agency managing social media for clients.
I’m doing this because I wish I had seen something like this when I was starting out.
A breakdown to better understand what is SMMA, how it works, and why it works so well.
These strategies are the ones that I personally used to start my agency.
And without further ado, let’s get right into this free SMMA course.
Table of Contents
What is SMMA?
An SMMA stands for social media marketing agency. It is a business model where you run an agency that provides social media marketing services to clients.
And this can be done from anywhere in the world so you don’t need employees with a social media marketing agency. It is not a formal business that requires an office employee or even a legal corporation.
It’s not this weird hack or trick or tactic. It’s just you have a service-based business that provides services to clients. Pretty simple.
1. Develop Digital Marketing Skills
Now the first thing that I want to share with you is that if you want to run a serious business, you need to develop the skills.
There is no way around it. And if you’re just getting started, trust me, I’ve been where you’re at currently.
And there’s so much to learn. That can be quite daunting, right?
I’m talking:
- Paid advertising
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Sales funnels
- Copywriting
- Conversion rate optimization
There’s so much out there.
I feel like what stops a lot of people is that. It’s the paradox of choice. There’s so much out there that you can fight and focus your energy, time, and attention on one single thing.
So, how to develop the skills to start a social media marketing agency?
Let’s find out.
How To Develop SMMA Skills?
What I like to do when learning new skills is what I call the Elon Musk advantage.
Now, what do I mean by that?
Elon Musk is a very smart guy and does many things very well.
But one of the things that really stands out to me is that he finds a way to surround himself with very, very smart people who far exceed their capabilities and knowledge in specific areas.
And he leverages these people to create some of the most innovative companies in the game.
How can you apply this to your agency?
What you want to do when you first start out is leave your ego at the door and put your hands up and say, “I don’t know much about the service I would expect.”
So what am I going to do? I’m going to go ahead and start learning as much as I possibly can in my free time and sort of solving as much information as I possibly can to become an expert myself.
But I will also seek out other experts who have been doing this for years.
How to find the experts?
Well, there are tons of great digital marketing courses like Fiverr’s Paid Advertising: Social And Search, which will give you a deep understanding of social media, paid advertising, driving leads, and digital marketing overall.
8 courses in total with over 261 videos led by some of the top digital marketing experts in the world.
But if you have some digital marketing knowledge, I personally recommend the free digital marketing course provided by GoHighLevel, which is specifically designed for agency owners.
GoHighLevel is a digital marketing platform for digital marketing agencies that also gives you access to step-by-step training on how to run an SMMA agency.
2. Create SMMA Website
If you’re thinking about starting an SMMA agency, a website is a must. If you run an agency and you don’t have a professional website, sales funnel, and business email – nobody will trust you.
Creating a website for a digital marketing agency can help promote your business, showcase your services, and attract new clients.
Your website must effectively and efficiently communicate the company’s services to potential clients. It should also be visually appealing and organized well.
There are many different options to create an SMMA website, like:
But the best software for digital marketing agencies is GoHighLevel, which I’m also currently using in my agency.
It’s essentially an all-in-one digital marketing platform explicitly created for agencies. The great thing about HighLevel is that you can not only use it to run your agency but also provide marketing agency services to your clients.
GoHighLevel enables you to:
- Build websites and sales funnels
- Manage your clients with its advanced CRM
- Schedule appointments with your clients
- Customize email follow-up sequences
- Build surveys and forms
- Create chatbots
- And more
They also have something called GoHighLevel snapshots that basically lets you deliver a snapshot of an account and everything in that account to another account you set up in HighLevel.
But the best part about GoHighLevel is that you can actually white-label this software. This means you can brand the platform and its mobile app with your custom domain, logo, and colors, and then you can resell it to your customers for a monthly subscription that goes straight into your SMMA agency’s bank account.
GoHighLevel empowers over 15,000 agencies around the world.
If you want to give it a try, GoHighLevel offers our readers a 30-day extended trial where you’ll also get the training once you sign up.
Create a Logo
If you’re looking for premium clients, you want to make sure you have a premium look so you want to make sure you have a high-quality logo.
It also gives you a very easy win when it comes to branding your agency.
And it’s actually very easy to get it done, You can try it yourself, or you can find professionals on Fiverr.
Set up a Business Email
And the final thing is your business email. And for this, I recommend the whole Google Workspace.
It’s going to cost you $6 a month and you get access to all Google tools and features.
And that way, you do not have to invest that money into Dropbox and a bunch of other individual software that combined come up to much more. Business email is also essential for different cold outreach outreach strategies that we’ll cover later in this SMMA course.
So this is what you need to have your website up and running. You can read more in this guide on the SMMA website if you want to learn more.
3. Choose an SMMA Service
What are some of the most profitable services I can offer?
What are the services that will add the most value to clients?
What service should I pick and sell to clients?
If you want the answers to these questions, keep reading.
First, pick your service.
There are a ton of SMMA services you can sell:
- Paid advertising
- Social media management
- Building sales funnels
- Content creation
- User generated content
- Influencer marketing
The list goes on and on… But how do you choose which one to offer?
I like services that have a clear return on investment. Services that get you a clear idea of how much money you spent and made back. This way, it’s clear for you and your client.
There’s no discussion on your value. You can both see how much profit you generated them without question. Let me dig a little deeper and give you two scenarios:
Scenario 1:
Let’s say you’re doing content creation. You take photos for your clients for their social media pages.
And that’s great, but the problem with this service is that you can’t attribute a clear return on content creation.
You can’t clearly see how much money you made with each photo or photoshoot.
Scenario 2:
Now, let’s say you go with Facebook advertising.
With each ad you create for them, there’s a clear number of how much you made them. You can easily see the ROAS (return on ad spend).
For example, if you put $100 into running the ad, and you see it’s generating a $2OO revenue, you’re getting a 2X ROAS.
That’s why running ads for clients will give you the clearest look at the return on investment.
💡 Pro Tip
Focus on one single vertical.
Yes, becoming a full-stack well-rounded digital marketer is an incredible skill. It does give you quite an edge over competitors, but at first, focus on one thing. For example one social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest.
And I think that mastering a single platform actually is going to give you more of an edge than actually being an expert at a bunch of different services.
4. Pick Your SMMA Niche
To choose your SMMA niche, you need to answer the question of who will you be serving with your agency.
When I started out, it wasn’t until I became laser-focused on one niche that I started to see results.
Until then, I tried to appeal to too many people who didn’t share many commonalities.
And see, the easiest way to fail with SMMA is to try to appeal to everyone.
By trying to sell to everyone, you’re not going to understand the people well.
And when you don’t understand the people you’re selling to well, you will have a hard time solving their problems.
You’ll end up having little impact and no one will want your services.
So, instead of targeting the masses, narrow down to the specific group of people you will serve.
It’s about learning their common traits, speaking their language, and finding out about the problems they’re facing.
This way, your offer will be much more valuable. It’ll be easier to sign clients, too.
From here, there are mainly 2 routes you can take to narrow down your niche:
Local Businesses
For local businesses, your main service offering will be bringing leads (people who have the potential to become customers).
The downside about helping local businesses is that there’s no clear attribution to how much money you made them.
E-commerce
With E-com, you get to see a clear dollar return at the end of each month. You can clearly see how much money you’ve made your clients.
Not only that, but you can also see a clear attribution to sales. Let me explain.
Every time someone buys from a Facebook ad you created, that sale gets tagged under your ad.
Your Facebook ad gets attributed to that sale.
Then it’s easy for you and your client to see how much money you’ve made them directly.
Now, if you’re going down the E-Com route, it’s important to narrow it down to your sub-niche.
This helps you further diversify and stand out from your competitors.
Whether your target niche is a local business or you want to work with e-commerce stores you shouldn’t stop here.
1. Choose a Category
When it comes to finding your SMMA niche, you want to think about what you’re knowledgeable in and what the demand is for what you’re providing.
Here are some examples of categories to choose from:
- Health
- Fitness
- Clothing
- Tech
There are so many categories to choose from!
2. Narrow Down to a Subniche
After choosing a category, you’ll want to go even narrower.
So let’s say your category is fitness. Under fitness, you might think of:
- Crossfit
- Hit Workouts
- Yoga
Or any other kind of workout that you can think about.
Now, you might be thinking, “isn’t this going to limit my opportunities?” Good question.
But no, it’s not going to limit your possibilities.
In fact, it’s going to expand your client opportunities because you’ll have a deep understanding of your specific market.
This beats going broad and general every time.
It gives you an edge over other agencies that don’t specialize.
See this chart below for a rough guide (this is an example, there are many more sub-niches out there!)
If you’re still struggling at this point or need some inspiration, check out this article on best SMMA niches, where I break down 12 different niches.
5. Create Your Unique Selling Proposition
Why is it important to have a unique selling proposition?
What drastically changed things for me when building my SMMA agency was clarity.
Often, the answer is not downloading more info into our brain, but stripping everything down to its bare bones and having total clarity.
Clarity about the value you offer businesses and clients. Clarity about what it is that your agency is great at doing. Clarity as to how you monetize your agency as much as possible.
And all clarity starts with a mission.
Having an agency mission will not only give you incredible clarity as to what prospects you should be reaching out to, but it will make your outreach much more powerful.
It will indicate to the prospect that you speak their language and that they specialize in their niche.
A mission clarifies your prospects and how you can help them get where they want to go.
It shows that you understand their business model. It shows you speak their language. And people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
This will put you ahead of 99% of people who are reaching out and have clients in 100 different niches.
It will also help you streamline your service. It’s of extreme importance that you pick ONE single service. This will reduce operational complexity and will allow you to gain a competitive advantage by being the best agency for that specific service in your niche.
So, with that in mind, are you ready to dive into the 4 pillars of your agency’s mission?
Question 1: Who do you help?
Is it fitness brands?
Tech brands?
Beauty brands?
This would be your niche.
Question 2: What do you help them achieve?
Is it to grow sales?
And grow it by how much?
Make sure to be specific on this part. Set your standards so prospects will get an idea of what they’re heading in for.
Think about the ONE outcome prospects in your niche value most.
What is the main KPI that they are optimizing for?
How do they measure success?
Question 3: How will you help them?
This part shows your service.
Pick an in-demand online service. I recommend a revenue-driven service—a service where you’re bringing in measurable value/revenue.
Question 4: What sets you apart from the competition?
This is your competitive advantage over other agencies.
Some examples are creative or data-driven.
Other pillars you could base this on are time, cost, efficiency, results, quality, etc.
Check out the graphic below for a one-sentence breakdown:
6. Get SMMA Clients
Now, let’s take a look at how to get SMMA clients.
As an agency owner, there’s no hiding from sales and approaching a business.
If you don’t master sales and outreach, it’s going to be nearly impossible to grow your SMMA.
I tried running away from it when I first started. I used to say things like I’m not a salesman, or I’ll never master this thing.
300+ sales meetings later, I can, without a shadow of a doubt, say that sales come down to practice.
The more prospects you speak to, the better you get at it. The better you’re at it, the more people you close.
Now, you’re going to be picking the most effective methods you’re going to use for outreach.
Ready to get into it?
Step 1. Make a List of Prospects
You want to make a lead list. You want to start locally, you can go broader later, but start locally and just create a Google sheet, Google Docs, or it can even be pen and paper.
And just write 20-30 businesses, their:
- Business name
- Phone number
- Email address
- Website
- Social media pages
So that is the process of lead sourcing and basically just collecting a bunch of leads that you intend on reaching out to and just collecting as much information about those leads as possible.
So that way you can have the highest likeliness of setting a meeting with them.
And to make your life easier, you can use lead generation software like Apollo.io, LeadFuze, or Uplead,
With just a few clicks of a button, you’re going to get hundreds of leads from nearly every city and industry.
All you have to do is just type in the targeted city and industry. This tool is going to save you lots of time.
Step 2. Prepare an Outreach Template
Now, here’s a very simple example outreach message example that you can use:
📝SMMA Email Outreach Template
“Hey,
My name’s [Your Name] and I help restaurants get new customers.
I’ve just had to look at your website and I noticed you’re leaving a lot of money on the table in your business.
I have some great ideas for you to get more customers in.
Would you like to discuss them?”
The most important thing is selling the meeting, not the service. A lot of beginners in social media marketing make that mistake.
You are selling the meeting, not the service, so when you’re reaching out to clients, don’t start talking about the benefits of your service.
Don’t talk about your service at all. You are just selling the meeting and its infinite upside for them and basically zero downsides.
So that is super important because you need to understand these business owners are busy, respect their time, and make sure that the meeting is an absolute win-win for them.
Step 3. Pick SMMA Outreach Methods
Here are the best SMMA outreach methods you can consider:
1. Cold Email
This is the bread and butter of any outreach strategy. If you go about it the right way, with a powerful email copy, it can be very effective. Here you can learn more about how to do SMMA cold email outreach step by step.
2. Cold Call
The oldest method in the book but can work tremendously well. This is much better suited for local businesses. You can find more about this outreach strategy in my guide on SMMA cold calling.
3. Facebook Outreach
Finding your prospects on Facebook and starting a conversation on the platform.
Before doing so, I recommend you clean up your Facebook profile.
Have a professional profile picture in place, ideally a banner with your agency mission, and in your bio, you should also have the agency mission. Make ‘unprofessional’ pictures (you partying, drinking, etc) private.
4. LinkedIn Outreach
This platform is particularly important if you’re in the E-commerce niche. Here’s where most of your prospects will be hanging out
5. Video Audit
We will talk about this method later on. One of the methods I’ve had the most success with.
6. Cold Instagram Video Intro
Cold DMs on IG seldom work. I have noticed that the Instagram video intro is much more powerful. Shoot a 1-2 min video introducing yourself, what you do, how you can help them, and a clear Call to Action.
7. Walk-in
This consists of literally walking into a business to speak with the manager or business owner. This is, of course, only applicable to local businesses.
8. Facebook Groups
This method consists of identifying Facebook groups where your prospects will be hanging out.
You are infiltrating them and providing value upfront by answering questions and engaging with the community. Once you engage often, you will begin getting inbound leads in your messages.
You can also proactively transition prospects for whom you have answered questions to a DM.
So, what next?
Step 4. Pick Your Best Outreach Method
Once you have picked 4 outreach methods, you want to test them and watch out for feedback and results over 1-2 months.
After having looked at the data, you will realize that some are performing better than others.
This is normal.
Depending on your personality and niche, different outreach methods will be better suited than others.
Now you want to pick the 2 winners and kill the rest. That way you’ll be able to double down on the ones that are working.
Then keep on looking back at the data (email open rate, message response rate, etc.)… And keep iterating according to feedback.
Step 5. Use your Personal Network
Friends, colleagues, acquaintances, classmates, family members, etc.
You’re looking for a business owner, and you can now use your network for your personal benefit.
I truly believe that the people who get ahead and get what they want in life are those who are willing to ASK.
Most people go their entire life without using their networks.
A network is there to support you and for you to support them. So make use of it.
Here’s a script you can use to reach out to your network:
📝 SMMA Outreach Template Example
“Hey [friend name],
Congratulations on [insert a recent accomplishment /event]. Hope all is well!
I just started a digital marketing agency. Exciting times but as you probably know, the initial phase is always the hardest one.
So I was wondering if you could give me a hand since you have a vast network. Who do you know would be interested in growing their businesses?
Any help is always appreciated.
Let’s grab a drink soon. It’s one me!”
Step 6. Arrange a Meeting
Explain to them the benefits of your service and how you can help them. Be upfront about them being your first client and you needing the experience.
Ensure they know you’re someone who is serious and someone who will work incredibly hard to take their business to a new level.
I also want you to understand that business owners understand. They understand that you’re trying to get your jumpstart.
Why? Because they’ve been there themselves.
They will have much more empathy if you come across as a genuine person who is real about where they are currently at, than if you try to play it out to be this ‘successful agency owner’.
Transparency and honesty should ALWAYS be top of your list of values as a business owner.
Step 7. Leverage Other People’s Network
Have your network come back with a no? No worries!
It’s time to tap into the exponential reach of a network.
You want people closest to your network to dig into theirs, creating a viral loop effect.
Even if your personal network comes back with qualified leads, you should still use this method to your advantage.
We are going for volume at the start, as those initial meetings will serve to give you momentum and confidence.
SMMA Outreach Tips To Get More Clients
“But with so many possibilities for outreach, how should I best go about it?”
“What should I do or don’t do with them?
After sending out hundreds of messages and iterating according to feedback, I’ve come across a couple of simple guidelines for increasing conversion rates.
I’ve boiled them down to 3 easy things.
Understand the typical day of your prospect
Where are they likely to hang out? Linkedin? Facebook? Instagram?
If they’re in the E-com sphere, they’re most likely hanging out online on Linkedln or Facebook.
Play to your personality and strengths
Try out a couple of these platforms and see which one you’re most comfortable with.
For example, if you are strong with writing, go with emails and messaging. If you are stronger on camera, go with the video audit.
And if you decide to go down the video audit route (which I’ve personally seen the most success with)…
I’ve boiled down my process to a simple-to-follow guideline after sending out 334+ video audits.
Would you like to know what it is?
Avoid Huge Instagram Accounts
If you’re reaching out to someone with a huge Instagram following, DM’s may not be the best place to reach them.
It’s important to pay attention to where the business owner will be most receptive to your message.
Make sure the platform you’re sending the message with isn’t supersaturated.
The Video Audit Method Explained
Doing a video audit means sending a 5-10 min screen recording to our prospect.
To go over their current digital marketing strategy and how they are currently doing in our area of expertise.
We are going to be using loom.com for this, which is free for up to 100 videos. I love Loom because it gives us instant URL access to our video recordings. We will be sending this link to our prospects.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
We will pick their closest competitor who is implementing the service we offer and compare it to our prospect’s lack of implementation.
If you’re offering Facebook Ads, you will take a look at both the competitor’s and the prospect’s Ad Library for example.
Here are 4 keys to a killer video audit:
1. Deliverability is everything:
Before putting together the video audit, make sure you can get a hold of the decision-maker.
Otherwise, you risk wasting your time.
This outreach method is one of the most effective ones, but it’s also more time-consuming.
You want to make sure that they are at least going to notice you.
2. Turn a Cold Video Audit into a Warm Video Audit:
You can either start a conversation with them prior to recording or ask them straight away if they would be interested in seeing a video audit of their current digital marketing strategy before sending it.
Going about it in this way might mean you spend a bit more time prior to sending the audit, but it tends to be well worth it as you ensure that they will watch the audit.
3. Get them to a meeting:
We aren’t trying to close any prospect via a message or call.
We need to jump on a Zoom video call with them – that is a high-income scenario.
4. The Intro is King:
Here’s where your prospects will decide whether they want to listen to the rest of the video audit.
You want to make sure you have the first 1-3 minutes perfected.
Below is a script you can use to make sure you master the intro and start on a good foot:
📝 SMMA Prospecting Outreach Template Example
“Hey [business name], it?s [your name] here from [your agency name] and it’s great e-meeting you.
I have gone ahead and created an in-depth marketing audit on [prospect business] where I have included 1-2 pieces of ACTIONABLE strategies.
These are strategies we are implementing right now for all our clients to [the outcome your service produces].
And these are strategies you can immediately apply right after this quick audit, to make incredible returns and recoup some of the revenue lost at the moment.
So, without further ado, let’s get right into it.”
7. SMMA Service Delivery
So, once you sign your first clients, now is the time to service them.
And as a digital marketer, you have two options: social media management and content creation.
Content Creation
Content creation includes:
- Creating social media posts
- Making videos
- Design banners, graphics
- Writing copy
- And more
Social Media Management
This service involves:
- Posting on social media platforms
- Running Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns
- Running PPC ad campaigns
- Answering DM’s and comments
- Writing copy
- Growing the social media platforms
- And more
That is the easiest place to start and usually, that is where you’re going to get the highest retention.
So these services, you get the most obvious ROI. It’s the easiest to learn and there are few costs.
8. Scale Your SMMA Business
The next step is all about hiring your expert team and scaling your business.
At this point, you have two options to get results for your clients. Either you outsource, or you do it yourself.
Doing it yourself is easier to start. Outsourcing is easier to scale.
Your team can take care of one of the most important aspects of the agency, which is service delivery. Note that I didn’t say the most important aspect.
A lot of people say, “Oh, well, if I’m just outsourcing the service delivery, what do I actually do? What is my value? ”
Your value is creating an incredible ecosystem, processes, reporting, communication, and signing clients, which is massive, making sure the clients are.
My point here is your value is not just doing the service. The value of an agency is not just delivering the service for clients.
There are so many other things that come into the picture that are incredibly important, but that’s a whole other topic.
What I want to do right now is I want to show you where and who to hire for your team.
Now, when it comes to where I’m a big fan of Facebook groups or any type of community online around your service which is social media management.
The great thing about the internet is that people congregate online with like-minded people.
And the reason why I liked searching for people there is that it’s not transactional.
If you’re going on Fiverr, which by the way, is a good backup option, the person is there for transactional reasons, and there’s nothing wrong with it.
But when you look for people on Facebook groups that are just there to develop themselves, to grow their skillset with the service.
And so that is why I am one of the big fans of Facebook groups.
Other backup options include Reddit or freelancer platforms like Fiverr or UpWork.
Another way to scale your SMMA agency is providing AI marketing services like:
- AI chatbots
- Marketing automation
- Content automation
- Custom workflows
- And more
If you want to learn more, I’ve put together an article on how to start an AI automation agency.
Best SMMA Tools
Now, let’s take a look at some of the best SMMA tools.
1. GoHighLevel
So as I said earlier, GoHighLevel is the fastest-growing white-label marketing automation platform for digital agencies. They have everything you need to run an SMMA business, from CRM and website builder to marketing automation, 2-way SMS, sales funnel builder, and more.
You can check out my GoHighlevel review for more details or try it out straight away.
Here you can start with a GoHighLevel 30-day free trial.
2. BuzzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a powerful content marketing platform that lets you find the most shared and trending content across the internet and different social media platforms. This helps you find the topics and formats that have already been successful in your selected SMMA niche.
BuzzSumo has 5 main parts: Discovery, Content, Influencers, Monitoring, and Projects. Together, these parts make up a full set of tools that can be used for a wide range of tasks.
3. AdCreative.ai
AdCreative is a powerful tool for making ads and social media posts. It uses highly trained artificial intelligence to help businesses make personalized content for their brand.
AdCreative takes your ad account data and uses advanced algorithms and millions of data points from other advertisers to make creatives for social media platforms or pay-per-click campaigns.
All you have to do is give AdCreative some basic information about your business and the people you want to reach, and it will do the rest.
What makes this software unique is that the longer you use it, the better results you’ll see. After just a few days or weeks, AdCreative can create limitless content for your SMMA business.
One of AdCreative’s best features is its neural network, which keeps improving every day and adapts to your business’s needs. This makes sure that the content made for your brand is always optimized and tailored to it.
Here you can get 25% off any AdCreative pricing plan and $500 in free Google Ads credits.
4. Ocoya
Ocoya is a social media marketing platform that helps you create, schedule and analyse your campaigns from one place.
You can start the design process quickly with Ocoya’s built-in template library, which has designs for your marketing campaigns that can be changed to fit your needs.
With more than 10,000 image and video templates at your disposal, you can make professional graphics for your projects quickly.
You can easily design content with custom fonts, colors, backgrounds, and layouts with the drag-and-drop editor.
With the help of Ocoya’s AI copywriter, you can take your social media marketing to the next level.
Just type in a simple idea for a post, and in seconds, the AI copywriter will come up with interesting captions and suggest relevant hashtags.
This platform also has a powerful link-shortening feature, so you can shorten URLs right in the caption editor, shorten links in bulk, and even make QR codes.
You need more than just captions and hashtags to connect with your customers and get them to make more purchases.
💡 Note
Make sure to check out our list of AI marketing tools that will help you scale your SMMA agency faster. Below is also a video version.
SMMA SaaS
As you can guess, marketing can take months and months before it takes off and start showing results. That was a big problem I ran into was that clients were not seeing the immediate results and so they were not willing to keep paying me the $2,000 to $3,000 a month that I was charging them.
So I had a ton of people request refunds and a lot of people quitting after the first month because they didn’t see results in 30 days, which is very hard to do as a marketing marketer.
So maybe that was my fault for not establishing that good enough, or maybe I’m not a great marketer and you guys can produce amazing results in just one month but that was not the case for me.
GoHighlevel SaaS Mode
Then, this is when I ran into GoHighLevel SaaS mode. So SaaS, you can white-label your own GoHighLevel marketing software that works perfectly for a specific niche. You can give your clients all of the marketing tools that they need for success.
So instead of me building the website and building the funnels and doing the ads and all the posts, I give them a platform so that they could go and do it themselves and manage all of it themselves. So instead of feeding them fish, I was teaching them to fish. I was teaching them to become the marketer, which most business owners want to learn and want to do.
And also they love having the software because it solves all of their marketing problems and they don’t have to pay a marketing company thousands of dollars a month to do it for them. You can offer your white-labeled GoHighLevel software for anything from $ 197 to $497 a month, depending on which features they get in the different subscription levels.
And what I love about it is that there’s no management or legwork after I sign a customer up. So I jump on the sales call, collect their payment info, create their account, and then they have everything that they would ever need pertaining to marketing for their company. And then I’ve been able to enjoy passive income that comes in every single month as part of the subscription that they pay for the software.
SMMA SaaS Downsides
If I’m being completely honest, there are a couple of downsides to SMMA SaaS. The first, it can take time to set up and launch. It’s very much an upfront time investment, and so that is one downside. It can take a week or two to set everything up.
There is a turn rate for users, meaning people do cancel every once in a while. I found that in my little bit over a year doing this that the turn rate is around 10 %, meaning if I sign up 100 clients in a year, about 10 of those people are going to cancel on me. Not everybody puts in the effort to get those amazing results out of the software. And so, every once in a while, you will have people canceled.
But not nearly as many people are canceling on my software as they were on the traditional social media marketing services that I was offering previously.
And then lastly, GoHighLevel is very intuitive. It’s always changing, it’s always getting better. And so you do have to keep up with that stuff. You might have to update things for your users every once in a while. But trust me, it’s not a ton of work, but you do have stuff to do every once in a while.
SMMA SaaS Benefits
But in my humble opinion, the benefits greatly outweigh the detriments. And so the first benefit we have is that you can make substantial passive income every month. If you had 24 people using your software, which is not hard to reach at all, all paying $297 a month on average between the different subscription levels that you have, you would be making $6,000 a month in passive recurring income.
Number two, you can use the software for your own personal business if you have one. Obviously, I use GoHighLevel in my personal business, and it’s helped me grow from zero SaaS clients to serving over 100 SaaS clients today. Something else that’s awesome very few people know about this.
Less than 1 % of people know about this opportunity to sell your own white-labeled software, and so it is not a saturated industry at all. There are other big software companies, but a lot of them aren’t very niched down. And so if you can come up with the software and serve a specific niche with that software and solve all of their problems, then you will have a much greater product than all these other software companies out there. On top of that, you’ll learn a ton of valuable business and marketing skills.
There are 32.2 million business owners in the United States that you could serve with your software and that are using a worse software than the software that you could be providing for them.
And then, lastly, you can work from anywhere. You can take time off when you want and you’ll still get paid from your clients for their monthly subscriptions.
I hope you guys understand why SMMA SaaS is such a powerful opportunity right now. That’s why so many marketers are switching from their traditional social media marketing agencies to a SaaS agency because GoHighLevel has created a tool for us that we can give to business owners and allow them to succeed and excel in their marketing efforts
What Do I Need To Start SMMA Business?
To start a social media marketing agency, all you need is:
✅ Laptop
✅ Business email
✅ Social media account
And optionally some marketing automation tools that will make your life way easier. I personally recommend GoHighLevel and Ocoya.
This is what you don’t need:
🚫 Employee
🚫 Office
🚫 Registered business
🚫 College degree
So, if that’s holding you back, please don’t let it.
Best SMMA Courses
Here are some of the best SMMA courses you can find online:
- SMMA Blueprint
- Agency Incubator by Iman Ghadzi
- 6 Figure Agency by Billy Willson
- 30 Day SMMA
- Marketing Agency Program by Kevin David
- 7 Figure Agency by Joel Kaplan
I highly recommend doing in-depth research before buying any of them because prices reach up to $4,000, so they’re really expensive.
My personal recommendation is free digital marketing training provided by GoHighLevel if you decide to upgrade to any of their pricing plans.
Despite getting access to many digital marketing tools to run your SMMA business, you’ll get access to really great training led by digital marketing experts.
If you’re interested in getting started, GoHighLevel offers a 30-day extended trial for our readers.
Starting SMMA Business Final Words
And that is how to start your social media marketing agency in 2023.
I really hope you guys enjoyed these tactics, strategies, and fundamental concepts in this in-depth SMMA business course.
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