Challenges of Working on a Retainer as Social Media Managers

Ever since the pandemic, working remotely has been the new normal. People can now fulfill their dreams of traveling and working side by side. Several times, it has been reported that employees are hesitant to go back to the office as they feel that they are more productive at home.

Similarly, many people have also shifted to retainer-based jobs than working full time for a single company. This has led to a more diverse set of skills and multiple revenue streams for many people.

However, the biggest challenge in this form of employment is finding, managing, and retaining clients simultaneously. So we decided to reach out to social media managers working remotely to learn about their struggles in retaining clients.

Here is what we asked and the responses that we got!

Query: Since covid and the rise in popularity of platforms like TikTok, Social Media, and creative jobs are being sought out because it allows more flexibility and the permission to work remotely or freelance with ease. However, the biggest challenge can be finding and retaining clients. What advice would you offer Social Media Managers on finding and retaining clients?

Chris Grayson

Co-Founder at Influencer Made

In my opinion, the key to finding clients is networking. Get involved in online communities, attend meetups and events, and if you specialize in a particular niche, reach out to other social media managers to ask for referrals.

Once you’ve found a few potential clients, it’s important to build a relationship with them by providing value, being responsive to their needs, and delivering quality work. If you can do all of this, there is a good chance you will also attract new clients through word of mouth.

Bottom Line: Networking is the key.

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Aseem Kishore

Founder of Help Desk Geek

Bring something to the table!
The Social Media Manager applicant pool is huge, and because of the apparent simplicity and flexibility of this role, everyone from professionals to students are applying for the same limited jobs as you. Clients have many potential candidates to choose from. So how can you make sure your client sticks by?

The simple solution is to offer MORE than your competitors. All Social Media Managers post content and engage with the audience; maybe you can make monthly performance reports with research-backed suggestions to improve on the strategy.

This will surely be an added advantage to hiring you and keeping you for the long-term for any employer. The client community works mostly on referrals, so this way, you can leave a good impression on your clients, who may refer you to their friends in the industry.

Best of luck!

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Rahul Mohanachandran

Co-Founder at Kasera

In this post COVID era, marketers must be focusing on adding more value than what they charge for every client. This will create a raving base of clients, and it will help to retain them for a long time. This can be done by providing additional services to clients who were added service to the code services expected by the clients.

For instance, if there is a client who is signed up for Instagram and Facebook marketing, helping them do marketing around TikTok or even helping on a high-level strategy can go a long way to help the client stretch their marketing budget and see the value in retaining the marketer.

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Anatolii Ulitovskyi

Founder of UNmiss

My main strategy for finding new clients is not to copy my competitors and use my strong sides. For example, when my competitors have strong positions with ebooks, tools, and courses, but it is far from my strong sides and passion, I will never use these methods. For me, the most important element is a passion for doing something, even if it is not your strong side. Content creators often give up because of copying competitors or trying to cover hating methods.

I use three well-working methods for retaining clients:
– Give more than I promised;
– Listen more than talk;
– Talk to them a few times a week and with some clients a few times a day.Customers love attention. Many companies have poor customer service and support after payment. Take away this feeling. Kindness and empathy are a must-have for any business model. Digital marketing results take so much time because of the high competition from many big companies with huge resources. Customers often get the feeling abandoned after the payment. Retention depends on your attention.

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Aquif Shaikh

Founder of Blogging Ocean

There are a few things social media managers can do for clients:
1. Make a list of your target clients and tailor your content and services to fit their needs.
2. Stay up to date on the latest trends in social media and be prepared to offer advice and solutions.
3. Create a strong online presence and build a network of contacts in the industry.
4. Be proactive in seeking out new opportunities and connecting with potential clients.
5. Work hard to establish strong relationships with your clients professionally and personally. By building trust and showing that you are dedicated to their success, you will be more likely to retain them as clients.

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Deni Ivanov

Digital Marketing Director at Royal Cleaning

Be strategic in finding clients to service, and deliver consistently satisfactory results. The best way for Social Media Managers to find clients and retain them amidst the heightened competition is to grow their repertoire of satisfied clientele by focusing on servicing those whose needs match their main skill sets. Social media marketing is broad, and it is rarely the case for you to be an expert in all aspects.

So, to increase your chances of consistently delivering excellent results that will make them spread the word of your success, find leads whose social media needs align best with your forte or the industries you already find familiar.

Then, keep their trust and business by aligning SMART goals and expectations and delivering beyond expectation results. It is a cliché worth mentioning that happy clients are your best bet at finding and retaining more clients.

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Liz Whiting

Director of Digitial Media at Coinbound

1. Do good work. Don’t have a client yet? You are your client. Build a Tik Tok page, and grow your Instagram and YouTube channel. Take amazing photos. Share. Share. Share. My resume has been my work. Positive experiences and word of mouth works.
2. Always shoot your shot. I wanted to work in weed so I would order delivery and ask if they needed marketing. Eventually, I met the CEO.
3. A few good clients are better than 10 bad ones. Vet your clients as early as possible.
4. Document your work as best as possible and define the client’s goal. It’ll be murky if you’re not on the same page about what you’re working toward. Goals aren’t set in stone – you’re there to test and see what works. Something isn’t working? Present a different option.

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Scott Spivack

Marketing Director at United Medical Credit

Get noticed with creative Instagram stories, reels, and short videos. The idea is to show your prospective clients that you’re aware of the current trends and constantly trying them with your business strategy.

This creates relevancy and fills clients with the sense that you fit the bracket of emerging social media trends. So, it motivates them to approach your business and they’re more inclined to work with you. This works because you’re basically aligning your business with their needs.

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Sharon Van Donkelaar

Chief Marketing Officer at Expandi

There are plenty of strategies when it comes to client retention, such as:
– Providing an exceptional customer service experience. Customers come back when they know they’re valued. The best way to show appreciation to customers is by offering fast and efficient customer service, which can create the right word of mouth and help in client acquisition as well as retention.
– Tailoring offers to fit each customer’s needs and show appreciation. Sending birthday gift cards to customers is another fantastic way to increase their retention and trust. By doing this, businesses are showing they value each customer and look past just selling them.

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Chris Mitchell

Founder of Intelus Agency

My best advice for getting clients as a social media marketer or agency is to be everywhere that your potential customers are. I know that sounds obvious, but it’s more than that. Take your most ideal customers, research where they spend most of their time and distribute valuable and actionable content on those platforms to position your brand as the best solution to their problem.
As a LinkedIn marketing agency, we start with blog posts, and repurpose them as slideshows, infographics, quotes, and videos, then distribute them to our email newsletter, social platforms, and various other websites like Slideshare and Reddit to improve SEO.

To nurture and convert the visitors we attract to the site, we use Google and LinkedIn retargeting ads to get them back to the site and increase the likelihood of conversion with lead magnets like a free trial of our LinkedIn content marketing and LinkedIn ads services.

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John Tian

Co-Founder of Mobitrix

The most important thing you can do is to be a thought leader. And the way you do that? Connect with influencers in your field of expertise. You will make as many connections with people as possible and hence get to know them.

To connect with influencers, you should start from blogs and check out their LinkedIn profiles; if available, then connect with them using LinkedIn’s messaging feature or invite them for a chat via Facebook or Twitter.

Once you’ve landed clients, the next big challenge is to retain them. As a social media manager, your best bet at keeping your clients satisfied and paying for the long haul is to deliver results based on set objectives at the begging of each professional engagement. Consistently hitting these milestones and delivering a positive ROI is key to a successful career in this field.

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Guy Regev

CEO of eTraffic

My biggest piece of advice is to track everything and keep it all together. If you can easily share valuable insight to potential clients, you’ll have a good chance of quickly securing them and getting to work. Metrics speak volumes, so track everything you can related to the work you are good at.

For example, if you increase a certain page’s followers exponentially, get everything you can related to that work and share it. Having this data can mean much more to potential clients than saying what you’ll do and the potential for your work.

Business owners and potential clients often view data and analytics more favorably. Also, when you receive any sort of review or testimonial, you should leverage those words. Keep them close, organize them properly, and share those reviews with others every chance you get. Spoken word and analytics are the secret recipes to winning over potential clients and building your business!

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Ronald Williams

Founder of Best People Finder

Bet on neuromarketing. I believe this is a much-neglected area by social media marketers. Today’s consumer has different behavior, interest, and habits. With neuromarketing, the marketers can identify these areas more efficiently and thus make strategies relevant to consumers’ needs.

“Buy, buy, and buy” is the worst mistake in marketing strategies to engage to retain the customers. I would suggest opting for “guide, guide, and guide” towards the value offered using various techniques, including content marketing, email marketing, eBooks, etc. Interaction is the key to retaining customers. It is not enough to have followers if they are ghosts, and do not interact with your brand.

In many strategies, little thought is given to the interaction with the followers. In fact, this is a way to get closer and strengthen the relationship. Depending on the type of communication and the creativity and authenticity used, an interaction can be the key to retaining potential customers to remember your brand forever. Hopefully, this answer is helpful to you. You can contact me at the same email address for any follow-up questions. Also, feel free to modify or edit the answer to support your publishing requirements.

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Angelica Makljenovic

Creator of She Can Blog

As a Pinterest manager, I attract almost all of my clients for my services through Instagram. Your clients can follow you for a while and become comfortable with you before they make the decision to do business with you.

Most of my clients also indicated that they felt comfortable with my vibe and felt connected to me even before they started doing business with me. So definitely get started on Instagram and put yourself out there every once in a while!

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Robert Welch

CEO of Projector1

Don’t provide the same treatment to every client but customize it. Nowadays, everybody likes customized plans depending on their needs. Hence, ask what your client’s wants are and how they want everything to be.

Once you get it, work on it and deliver the results. *Customization is the key to preservation.* Hence, use it to the fullest to retain the clients and gain new clients.

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Thomas Niemczewski

Founder of Dream Chasers XYZ

The first thing that a Social Media Manager should do is to create a list of their ideal clients. They should work on developing relationships with these clients by doing things like following them on social media, attending events that they are invited to, or even sending them emails.

Social Media Managers also need to be patient because finding the perfect client takes time. They need to be able to wait for the right time and not rush into anything just because they want more business.

They need to find ways to make their clients feel special. This will make them feel like their business is more personal and that they are always getting updates from their favorite account.

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Steve Anderson

CEO of Junk-Yard-Near-Me

Here are some ideas for finding new clients and retaining them for your social media agency.

1. Your network is your net worth. When you’re looking to land clients for your digital marketing agency, your network is a great place to start. Start by letting your friends and family know that you’ve decided to launch your own social media agency.

2. Connect with other agency owners/find other businesses within your niche One of the best ways to land clients for your social media agency is by partnering with a non-competing service provider in your niche.

3. Check out Upwork or Fiverr Upwork or Fiverr can be a great place to find new clients and retain them for your social media agency. Both platforms allow you to create an agency account to find new clients and hire freelancers to support your workload.

4. Let your clients build your business for you through referrals The best way to leave a positive and lasting impression and retain your clients is by making sure you do remarkable work for them. The goal is to let then them build your business through referrals.

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Simon Hansen

Entrepreneur & Blogger | Top Work Life

As an experienced marketer myself, I can definitely say that the key to effective social media marketing is strengthening your social media presence and keeping your audiences engaged.

You see, building a strong social media presence expands your reach and helps you further establish yourself as a strong figure in your industry. Sharing your expertise and growing a strong reputation will help rid your audiences of worries and make it easier for you to earn their trust and convert them into customers.

Now that you’ve established customer relationships you need to maintain them which you can do by delivering quality service and keeping them engaged. Making your business reachable on social media will make it easier for you to connect with your customers and create content that they need and want to see more of. Knowing how and where to find customers and keeping them engaged will help you grow your business and reach more people.

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Linda Thompson

Co-Founder of Notta.ai

Social media marketing may be quite cross-cutting, but one needs to have a target niche in order to build expertise. Social media marketers who narrow down on a niche may not have the advantage in terms of numbers, but they certainly have it in terms of quality.

Working within a niche allows you to build expertise within the nuances of your trade because each niche has its own quirks and specific needs.

For instance, a social media marketer who focuses entirely on Saas marketing will get more quality clients than one who’s a jack of all niches. As a marketer, knowing the niches within which you’re most effective can help you build a reputation within the niche. The niche determines your target market, and how you go about your client acquisition.

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Isaac Mashman

Founder of Mashman Ventures

Look local! Take your focus offline if you are looking for new clients for your social media business or career. I know that this may sound counterproductive, but people are used to being bombarded with offers in the digital space.

Try doing some market research about your local area and you would probably be surprised at how many businesses lack a proper presence online. The fact that you are also a local, you have a degree of trust already. By explaining the importance of social media in the present day, you have the keen advantage of being the person who can completely evolve their business!

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James Green

Owner of Build a Head

A great way to find and retain clients for freelance social media managers is to leverage your already existing network. If you were working as a social media manager for a company before, you can contact previous clients, let them know you’re striking out on your own, and ask if there’s anything you can help them with.

Also, letting your friends and business acquaintances know that you’re freelancing is a good way to get referrals. If your network knows what you’re doing, they can send potential clients your way if they run across them. If you’re freelancing, you should also be working on growing your network to increase your potential for referrals and new clients.

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I would like to thank you all for taking out the time and sending in your responses!
See you all later! 🙂