How to Sell Social Media Management Services to Local Businesses
Today, I will show you how you can start a social media management business even if you have no experience or capital. Heck, you don’t even need to provide the service yourself. It means that your only job would be to look for clients. So 80% of your effort will be focused on selling your offer and packages.
The process works like this:
Step 1 – You familiarize yourself with the white-label company that we will use.
Step 2 – You’ll create a package that you will sell to your customers.
Step 3 – You’ll learn how to sell your service without really trying to be “salesy.”
Step 4 – You find clients who will use your services
1. What to Sell
We will use a service called RETORTAL. They can provide a branded (yours or your customers) social media platform where they (your customers) can use that service and post their content. Retortal also provides the actual content so the clients don’t have to bother creating them. So basically, the client doesn’t have to do anything except to check if the content created matches the message they want to share to their customers. Retortal can provide a control panel, a client sign up area, branded sales material and content for the social media posts. You can offer 3 types of packages to your customers. What you’ll do is change the name of these packages for your own offer and then increase the price accordingly. Personally, I like to sell at double the price of the packages. You can also sell a pro dashboard account if they want to do the “managing” themselves.
2. Create a Package & an Offer Sheet
The next step is to know what you’re actually going to sell. Creating the package isn’t that hard since you only need to invent names and change the price.
The offer sheet
Your offer sheet will serve as the sales letter of your product. The offer sheet should give them for information about the product and should act as a brochure that is actual helpful. It shouldn’t be a one pager that only shows them the 3 packages.
Here are the things that you should show in your offer sheet.
– Why they should use social media in their business
– What will they get if they buy the package
– What are the packages available
– How the whole process of social media management works
I recommend that you price your SOCIAL DASHBOARD PRO (the 1st feature) for at least $100 set up fee + $10 per month). You will have 3 packages and you should try to make the name as fancy as possible. Social Magnet 1 is so much more valuable than the name SOCIAL MEDIA PACKAGE 1. The table should give them all the information they need in order to decide whether to get your package or not.
3. The Offer
Remember when I told you to charge $100 for set-up fee? Well, if you want to make a consistent income and sell your services much easier, then forget about it for now. Some people will want just the social dashboard pro. That’s ok. Then go charge them $100 for set-up fee. But the real money and passive income is in the packages itself. What I would do is attach another letter on the offer sheet. It should be a white background and black ink letter.
4. How to Find Clients
Here are 6 of the best ways to start finding your first client.
1 – Friends, Family & Co-Workers
The best way to get started is to just let others know that you have a social media consulting/management business. Let them know that you have a new venture and you would appreciate them if they can send some people in the business. Even if you don’t directly get clients from them, it would still be worth the time to let them know that you’re running a management business. So when the time comes and someone ask them about it, you’ll be the first guy they they’ll think about and refer to.
2 – Yellow Pages
If you want to find local businesses in your area, just go to yellow pages and look for different type sof businesses in your city. These businesses have contact numbers available which you can call. Or better yet, go to their business and afford their services/products.
3 – Your Local Business Owners
You’re already probably using a lot of services and products, so why not ask them if they are interested in making more money in their business? Got a dentist? Talk to them about your business while you’re getting your teeth clean.
4 – YouTube Siphon
This is having yellow pages through video. Yellow pages have a list of businesses on YouTube that used their video marketing services. The great thing about these businesses is they’re already proven buyers. Most yp videos doesn’t actually work! So your job is to make sure that you provide them with great information about your online marketing agency.
5 – Business Meetups
This is one of my favorite method of finding new clients. Sure, it’s harder since you have to actually talk and create rapport with them. But it’s one of the most effective ways to find a client fast. Most cities have entrepreneur meetups where they help each other grow their businesses. Don’t sell your services! Just provide them with good information that can help them grow their business.
6 – LinkedIn
You will meet a lot of possible clients on LinkedIn. They key with LinkedIn is to add as many local business owners as possible and then give them some kind of e-book or information on how they can grow their business. Don’t focus on selling your service. Focus on helping the, at first. Once you built that relationship, you can now go start pitching your services through your offer sheet. That’s all you need in order to start a social media management business. If you think that you need more advance information, then you’re just looking for a reason to stall and not take action.
Conclusion
Running any kind of business is hard. There’s no such thing as easy money. You have to work for what you have and you have to be willing to lose sometimes. It’s the same with running a social media based business. Not everything will go according to plan. Your potential clients may reject you 5x in a row. The content Retortal provided may suck. A lot of things may go wrong (and they will!). But that shouldn’t stop you from taking action and making things happen. If you persevere, your efforts and hard work will soon be worth it.