Growing the Client Base of an SMM Agency by 215%
We’ve talked to Victoria Lee from 100 Pound Social about how she’s successfully grown her agency by 215%. Check out the full interview below.
Deciding to launch an SMM agency
Victoria started to look into a way to work from home in 2013, when she began her social media marketing activities as a freelancer. She quickly noticed a gap in the market. Talking to her clients, many of them couldn’t afford the high-priced social media marketing services offered by other companies. Their budget was around 200 GBP per month.
Coming up with the main selling point
The branding of 100 Pound Social makes it easy for customers to know what to expect: for a certain price point, they get social media marketing services in return. The brand selection resulted after interviewing potential clients about their budget, and what they could afford to spend on this type of service.
While the core service is available, there are multiple pricing tiers small businesses can choose from, going all the way to 300 GBP/month plus add-on fees.
On introducing new pricing tiers
During COVID times, the only service available was the 100 GBP one, with paid add-ons available. Due to customer demand, more pricing tiers (for 200 and 300 GBP/month) were introduced. While the original plan is still being offered, the higher tiers allow for more flexibility due to rising costs.
Bringing all data into a single tool
Victoria talks about 100 Pound Social being a very process-driven business from the get-go. The idea is to run a lean business that doesn’t require a lot of admin time, or leaves questions unanswered. In the beginning, many different tools were in use, causing issues with data being spread across them. While Zapier was a thing back then, it wasn’t as powerful as it is today.
Now that we work with SPP, that allows us to have this really smooth onboarding process and client management process.
The biggest milestone was the change to SPP. It allowed 100 Pound Social to create a smooth client onboarding process for new clients. Everything is in one place, from the checkout to invoices, tickets, and the system to track affiliates.
Customizing the client portal
Victoria knew already what their dream system would look like. Luckily, SPP supports all the major features she had in mind.
When it comes to customization, 100 Pound Social opted for these two:
Every client has a dedicated customer success manager. The CS manager’s name is displayed in the client portal thanks to SPP’s support for template variables.
As an SMM agency, 100 Pound Social uses a separate tool to schedule social posts. The login for that tool is on a separately created page inside SPP.
Outgrowing a mishmash of tools
As 100 Pound Social grew, they quickly struggled to keep up with the demand due to client information being spread across different tools. Another factor were the costs: imagine having ten team members and five tools in use, each costing ten to 15 GBP a month. You’re looking at up to 750 GBP in costs just to run the software.
SPP has been key to scaling up my social media agency. Since joining SPP, our client base has grown by 215%. It allows us to easily sell services, manage client and team communications, organize payment subscriptions, and run our affiliate scheme.
Another problem were that many automations in Zapier stopped working, and troubleshooting those took time—time which could’ve been spent on taking care of the customers.
Setting 100 Pound Social apart
Compared to other SMM agencies, 100 Pound Social’s main selling point is—not just the price—but also the team. The all-female team is based in the UK, ensuring that the clients receive skilled people who are well versed in the English language.
On top of that, everyone in the company loves 100 Pound Social, making it easy to dedicate their job to the customers and their brand. Based on the case studies 100 Pound Social does, clients are very happy with the quality of the content, and the stellar customer service.
Creating a B2B referral program
According to Victoria, B2B customers want to be more genuine with their referral, so a monetary incentive isn’t interesting. To make their referral program work, 100 Pound Social added a charity donation option.
Convert your clients into brand ambassadors.
There’s still an option to get the referral reward either via a bank transfer, or as a discount on the next invoice. Another option clients can choose from is to give the person they are referring a discount.
Victoria’s tips to grow an SMM agency
Victoria shares her number one tip on how to grow an SMM agency: automating repetitive tasks as early as possible. Another tip she shares is to hire amazing people. It allows you to build an agency team that thrives, which trickles down to amazing customer service.
Victoria also talks about the future of 100 Pound Social to grow the company further, such as introducing a LinkedIn lead generation service, based on customer feedback they’ve received. The agency has also become more proactive in asking their customers what kind of services they need.
If your customer success managers care about your business, they’re going to care about the quality of work that’s being delivered to clients.
The last thing Victoria talks about is white labeling. One of their biggest sectors are other agencies who use 100 Pound Social’s services for their own clients.
Interested in connecting with Victoria to chat about her social media management services? Visit her agency website on 100poundsocial.com for more information.
