Sorry, we have no social media marketing objectives, however, could you please provide us with a quote? This type of dialogue recently has inspired this post

So if you found yourself looking to hire a social media agency without much knowledge of the sector, how do you go about it? Social media can be a daunting subject for those who do not understand it yet. However, the real question to ask is what are your marketing objectives? If you are unable to answer this question you should not engage any social media or marketing agency until you can.

Also, you should not hire any social media agency, which is willing to work without marketing objectives. The obvious reason for this is how will you ever know if they have performed? It is a bad agreement for both parties to not start with clear marketing objectives up front.

To create marketing objectives, you simply need to have business objectives. And every business has objectives.

So here are some marketing objectives to consider when hiring a social media agency, PR firm, or marketing company.

✓ Increase Sales - This without a doubt is the pinnacle of all marketing objectives for commercial organisations. How many sales do you have today prior to commencing and how many new sales will you expect at the end of the period? For example, in the last 12 months, we increased website visits by 150% and achieved 15% more sales than the corresponding period.

✓ Increase Leads - As any good marketer would know leads are not sales, they are merely the opportunity to procure a new client. Marketing objectives should always clearly be linked to leads. How many leads are you bringing to the business today prior to hiring a social media agency? How many new leads will let you know they achieved your marketing objectives? Will 15,000 more email subscribers and 1,200 more sales lead per month be a good result over 12 months?

✓ Improve Customer Retention - Acquiring customers always costs more than retaining them. Therefore to have marketing to not include retention, will potentially result in a failed engagement. If you are losing more clients than you are acquiring, then you have a problem. If you are currently losing 5% of all customers per annum, then the goal should be to move this number to 4% or lower. There is no point filling the bucket if the hole is large.

✓ Improve Brand Awareness - This is an area where social media marketing excels. The principal difference being that you are building an audience. As you build your Facebook page, LinkedIn Company page, Twitter Bio, or Instagram brand those that follow are providing you with permission to market to them. Unlike traditional media, you do not need to try and acquire the relationship every time (transaction). Not commonly known by most brands yet to fully embrace social media, but your cost of adverting also goes down when they are connected to your brand, making it cheaper to reach your ideal audience. What a great marketing objective?

✓ Reduce Costs - Reducing the cost of client acquisition, the cost of retention, the cost of marketing, advertising, services, hardware, etc. should always be a focus.

An overriding marketing objective of hiring a social media agency should be to reduce your cost of marketing while increasing your leads and sales. Sounds unlikely I know, but it is not.

As I stated at the outset if you have no marketing objectives then take this road at your peril. Any social media agency willing to engage under this model has no interest in your business.

Because for their business to work, yours need to as well.