If you’ve been successfully freelancing as a social media manager for a few years, you might be looking around and wondering, “What’s next?”
As a solo freelancer, there’s a limit to how much income you can make — typically based on the amount of time you dedicate to client work each month. Even if you raise your rates every so often, you’re just one person with only so much time.
This is why many successful social media freelancers look to the next step in their career: starting a social media marketing agency. If you’re considering taking this step, we’ve got the perfect guide for you. In this video, our Social Media Manager Christie will walk you through the steps of launching an social media management agency, starting with deciding if its the right track for your career.
Keep reading to learn more about the difference between freelancing and running an agency, signs you’re ready to take this step, and how to start your own social media agency.
Let’s get started.
Social media marketing freelance vs. running a social media marketing agency: What’s the difference?
Is running an agency really all that different from freelancing? Yes and no. There are certainly differences — but there are also a lot of similarities.
Let’s cover some of the main similarities:
- The skilled work you do: Your freelance work has likely helped you establish a set of services that you enjoy and are good at. Those core services shouldn’t change when you transition to an agency.
- Your existing clients: Many new agency owners start their business with a client roster from their freelance days. These loyal clients have been with you for a while, so pitching them to become your agency’s first clients just makes sense.
- Pitching new clients: Freelancing and agency work both involve going after new clients. Though your agency tactics might change subtly, the art of selling never stops.
However, there are a lot more differences between these two styles of working:
- You have more administrative work: Your day becomes a whole lot more than just completing client work and submitting invoices. As Ilia Tretiakov of agency So Good Digital says, “I spent most of my time working with clients as a freelancer, but as an agency owner, I have to spend more time on things like payroll, invoicing, and legal compliance.”
- You can take on bigger projects: If you grow your freelance business to agency level, you’ll likely build a team to help you take on larger-scale projects that aren’t manageable for a one-person team.
- Your business becomes a sellable asset: As agency owner Kyle Prinsloo shared on LinkedIn, “Agencies can be sold, whereas a freelancing business is more difficult to sell.” This is a huge difference, especially if you decide to move on from the business one day — you still have a sellable asset to cushion your accounts while you look for your next venture.
- Your day-to-day is less flexible: Agency life often comes with a more structured schedule and scaled demands. You’ll probably put in more than 40 hours each week, have less flexibility throughout your day, and be unable to take as many days off (at least at first).
- Your clients have bigger expectations: Freelance work is often ad hoc and assignment-based, whereas agency work is usually full-service, continuous, and requires you to lead. Keep this in mind as you navigate through the start of your agency — your clients will be expecting more (this is also why agencies tend to charge more).
If you’re ready for the additional responsibilities and feel certain you can meet expectations, why not consider scaling your freelance business to an agency level? But first, ask yourself the big question — covered in the next section.
Are you ready to start a social media marketing agency?
If you’ve decided starting an agency is your main aspiration for your social media career, let’s talk about how to know you’re ready to take that next step.
Six questions to ask yourself before you make the leap from freelance to agency
There are a few common themes we see when we ask agency owners how they knew they were ready to make the move.
Client load
As a solo freelancer, you have a cap on how many clients you can take on. If prospects are still knocking on your door after you’ve reached your client load, bringing on some additional help and making the transition to agency might make sense as a logical next step.
Marc Bishop of agency Wytlabs explains, “I knew I was ready to start an agency when my freelance projects began to require more hands than I had. The logistics of managing multiple clients and projects was becoming increasingly complex, and I found myself spending more time coordinating than creating. This shift signaled the need for a dedicated team to maintain the quality of work and client satisfaction, pushing me towards the agency model.”
Consider whether you’re happy with the number of clients you have or if you’re interested in scaling even more. If the idea of scaling and taking on more work excites you, it may be the sign you need to get your new agency going.
Experience
If you know you have the experience and skills necessary to succeed as an agency, why not take that next step? Recognizing a gap in your industry for someone with your specific skill set can be the perfect nudge.
Arham Khan of agency Pixated shares, “Through our years in the industry, [my co-founder and I] saw many impersonal client-agency relationships and we knew we could do better. As founders, we are both passionate about leveraging our expertise to help brands scale rapidly and efficiently in a competitive online landscape.”
Timing
Taking on an agency is a huge commitment, and you’ll need time to get it off the ground. That’s why timing is key: You need space in your calendar to do this successfully.
Caroline Marshall of agency Upsource says, “I always wanted to go from freelancer to agency route, but maternity leave was the perfect time to take the plunge. It meant I had an excellent reason to step away from the clients I freelanced for and hand them over to a team, invest the time in setting up the processes an agency needs and build the right team. I had worked for an agency before and learned a lot about what I should (and very much shouldn’t!) do. That gave me confidence I could, but maternity leave was excellent for me not being able to question if I was ‘ready’ and just do it.”
Desire for collaboration
Freelancing is a very solo sport. If you work better on a team, or simply miss that collaborative atmosphere, you might be chomping at the bit to try something different. Starting an agency can give you that team to work with, fueling your creativity in a way you’ve been missing.
Tretiakov shares, “The opportunity to establish a collaborative atmosphere was one of the particular reasons I chose to launch an agency. I missed the team spirit of working together to achieve a common objective as a freelancer. I was able to assemble a group of people that shared my values and establish a positive work atmosphere by starting an agency.”
Passion for the work
If you simply love what you do and want to do more of it, that can be the perfect fuel to get you started. You can tell how passionate you are about your work if you’re itching to learn more about it. Are you always reading books, listening to podcasts, attending webinars, taking notes on TikToks? That’s a good indicator that you’re passionately curious about the industry. Being passionate about your work is a key part of becoming a successful agency owner — especially in those demanding first years.
Aurrie Hicks of Hopson Rae shares, “There was no better time than now (now = 5.5 years ago) to take the leap of faith. I have a passion for truly helping business owners bring their brand to life visually and strategically, without the expense of hiring a large advertising firm. We're passionate about understanding how our branding, marketing and social media efforts help our clients reach their business goals.”
Funds
Finally, sometimes it’s simply that you’ve saved enough money to take the leap and have enough financial padding to fall back on in case you have a month (or several) that are slower.
All in all, Tretiakov puts it best: “If you have a clear vision and are ready for the challenges of leading a team and expanding the business, I suggest launching an agency. However, if you'd rather have more freedom and flexibility in your employment, freelancing can be a fantastic choice.”
If you’re in a place where starting an agency seems attainable without being a huge risk, why not give it a try? Follow along with our quick guide to turning your freelance career into an agency, or check out our step-by-step guide to starting a social media marketing agency from scratch.
How to turn your social media freelance offering into a social media marketing agency: Step-by-step
If you’ve been freelancing as a social media manager, you already have a great starting point: a client list, service offerings, and an existing process. Now it's time scale all of that and learn how to start your social media marketing agency.
1. Choose your niche
The first step is selecting a niche. Even as a freelancer, you’ll want to solidify your niche.
Examples of niches in social media marketing include:
- Specific sets of services, like focusing only on social strategy building, social media management, or social content creation
- Specific platforms, like focusing exclusively on TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, or LinkedIn
- Specific industries, like focusing exclusively on hospitality, travel, B2B, or beauty
Niching down your services or the companies you work with can help you become more specialized, creating a bigger value proposition for clients within your focus. On the other hand, it can also narrow down your client options.
Deciding how specialized you want to get with your new agency is key. Consider what types of clients, platforms, or services you’ve had the best results with. It’s a good idea to settle on a niche that highlights your experience rather than committing to a skill, specialty, or industry that you don’t have experience with.
2. Set your services
Once you’ve chosen a niche, it’s time to build out your list of social media marketing services. When you shift towards an agency rather than freelancing, this typically involves building out a team. That means you have more people to help with your projects, making more services accessible to your agency.
Decide what you want to offer. You may even consider hiring specialized roles in order to offer services that you’re not able to complete on your own.
Common services that a social media marketing agency might offer include:
- Platform setup
- Social media strategy building
- Social media audits
- Social media management
- Community management
- Influencer marketing
- Social content creation and publication
- Social media analysis
- Social media listening
You can choose to act as a full-service agency, meaning you offer a full range of services to take over a company’s social media completely. Or you can create a more à la carte menu of services (or a mixture of the two).
3. Set your budget and pricing
Once you’ve settled on your services, it’s time to figure out your pricing. Because working with an agency tends to be a more premium experience, you can typically charge more than you used to as a freelancer.
Your pricing should be based on your overall expenses. Running an agency typically comes with increased overhead and overall cost of doing business — including staffing, which we’ll get into a bit later — that must factor into your pricing.
Start by pulling together a list of your expected monthly business expenses, including administrative fees, software fees, marketing spend, and salaries or contractor invoices. Use this as a baseline for how much your agency needs to bring in just to break even.
From there, try to do some competitor research to see if you can discover what similar agencies are charging. You want your prices to reflect the quality of your services while still remaining competitive. On the other hand, you don’t want to vastly undercharge for your services.
Other factors to consider are how to charge for your services: by the hour, by the package, or via custom proposals depending on each specific client’s needs.
Once you’ve put all of these pieces into the equation, you should have a ballpark idea of what you can charge clients.
4. Work on the business side
Next, you need to consider the logistics of switching from freelancing to an agency. The first is setting up your business legally.
In the U.S., there are a few different types of business structures or classifications to consider. It depends on how you want to handle your revenue and taxes, plus important legal distinctions. We suggest you read up on all of these options in detail, but here’s a primer:
- Sole proprietorship: An unincorporated business run solely by a single person, with no distinction between owner and company.
- Partnership: General partnership or limited partnership are two different options here, and can be a good idea if you plan to start your agency with one or more additional partners.
- Limited liability company (LLC): A business that separates the owner from the company, providing some protection for the business owner.
- Corporation: There are many different types of corporations (S corp, C corp, B corp), and these establish the business as a legal entity.
This is not a choice to enter into lightly — speaking to a local small business lawyer and accountant can be extremely valuable.
Keep in mind that if you already had your freelancing business set up as a corporation or LLC, you may be able to use that to start your agency. However, if you’re changing your business name, it may be easier to set up an entirely new LLC, rather than a DBA (doing business as) trade name.
Again, working with a small business lawyer can make this process much simpler, especially if you plan to dissolve your existing LLC at the same time.
- Other logistics to consider include:
- Creating business bank accounts
- Opening a business credit card
- Updating your website to match your new agency
- Writing up a sound business plan
Make sure everything is ready on paper before you move onto the final steps.
5. Create systems and document your processes
Because you started out freelancing, you may already have some processes in place that work perfectly. In the next couple of steps, you’ll be building up a team for your agency. This will be seamless if you have all your processes documented.
Ilya Nejdanov of marketing agency Axellerato explains, “One of the most important lessons I learned was the need to create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) early on. Documenting tasks and creating training materials, like using Loom to record processes, is vital for scaling.”
Be sure to create clear, repeatable guidelines around processes like:
- Onboarding
- How to provide services
- How to document your work
- How to communicate with clients
- How to share results and deliverables with clients
Audrey Bakhach of Custom Digital Solutions shares, “My advice for running an agency is: Build your systems. If you don't have systems in place for everything, you leave a wide open gap for something to fall through the cracks and fail. Get your project management software in place. Hire the right people. Document everything so you know where every penny is going and can track profit and loss.”
Having systems in place before you start to scale is also crucial. Providing full-service work to multiple clients means juggling a ton of processes at the same time. An easy way to get ahead is to have your software on lockdown, especially the tools you’ll be using to collaborate with clients. Pick a social media management platform that has easy-to-use client management tools built in. More on that in the next section.
6. Find the right tools
Creating the right tech stack will be another major step when building up your agency. While you can always test out new tools down the road, you want to have the basics set up.
Some of those basics may include:
- Accounting software like QuickBooks or Wave
- Project management tools like Asana or Trello
- CRM like Mailchimp or Keap
- Communication tools like Slack or Google Workspace
And of course, you’ll need a tool you can use to help provide your services. A social media management tool like Loomly makes it easy to work with clients within a single dashboard. We have easy-to-use client management tools that are perfect to get your agency off the ground, like dedicated calendars and campaign tools, custom approval workflows, exporting for offline collaboration, and team workflow tools.
7. Increase your client list
When you build a team of multiple employees or subcontractors, you’ll need to increase your client list in order to cover their salaries. Plus there’s your newfound additional expenses and everything else that comes with the switch from freelance to agency.
First, make sure that all of your existing clients are happy to stay on with the new agency. Start outreach explaining the change and sharing information about the new services you’d like to offer them. Some won’t think twice about joining you, but others might prefer a one-on-one experience, or they might not be able to afford your new agency pricing.
Once you’ve touched base with existing clients, you’ll have a better idea of how many new clients you might need.
Put together a pitch deck to use as a part of your sales process. This will become an important client conversion tool because they help to fully explain your agency, your services, your team, and what sets you apart from the competition. You can tailor your pitch to each client lead, adding or changing slides that focus on their specific needs or problem and how you plan to help.
As part of your pitch package, consider creating a case study. Use on of your existing freelance clients who has seen success based on your work. Identify the problem they had and the approach you took to solve it. And don't forget the key to a convincing case study: measurable results. Place those upfront, so potential clients can see the social media success metrics you're capable of driving. We put together a free case study template that includes sections for all of this content. Download it here.
Download our free case study template.
Down the road, you may consider bringing on a salesperson specifically for bringing in new business so that you can focus on offering better services, training your team, and managing the agency.
Other marketing tactics that can help you increase your client list include:
- Creating a weekly email newsletter
- Writing valuable blog content on your website
- Sharing helpful tips on LinkedIn and building your network
- Creating TikToks/Reels that entertain and educate your audience
- Writing and publishing ebooks that can offer additional insights
- Creating a referral program that incentivizes existing clients to send referrals
- Putting together case studies as useful sales collateral
Be prepared for the other side of the client coin: having too many, or having the wrong kind. As you build your client list and begin working with more accounts, you'll develop a sense of your best fit clients. This is called your ICP, or ideal customer profile. Not every client fits this perfectly, but it's important for your business and your sanity to keep your ICP in mind and say no to potential clients who don't match your service offering or working style.
Angel Holmes of social media coaching and content business Sipindipity has some advice on this front. "A big lesson was not saying yes to everyone who reached out to hire me. Make sure it is a good fit and that you can do what it is they want you to manage. The expectations need to be clear and outlined."
Check out our case study on Angel's social media business and how she implemented Loomly to manage her clients.
8. Build a team
You have two options here: build your very own rockstar social media team of full-time employees, or consider running a solo agency where you hire part-time or contract help from other freelancers (i.e., subcontracting).
If you choose to hire, some roles you might consider filling in the beginning include:
- Social media manager: Similar to the job you’ve been doing for your clients, a social media manager can handle accounts and complete deliverables.
- Social media strategist: Hire someone specialized in building out social media strategies for your account managers to employ.
- Social media analyst: Hire someone specialized in analyzing social media trends, performance, and results to help you provide better offerings to your clients.
- Graphic designer: Bring on someone who can create templates for client graphics.
- Virtual assistant: Hire someone to help with administrative tasks around the agency.
Keep in mind that there are software and AI assistants that can help keep costs down in the beginning before you need to consider building out a full team. Some agencies might start by subcontracting roles to get the business off the ground; then they can assess which roles need dedicated, full-time attention.
Building up your agency team is going to take time. Be smart about hiring and investing in tools to make sure you can consistently cover salaries and other expenses.
Ready to start your own social media agency?
Making the switch from freelance to agency life doesn’t have to be daunting. If you have the client list and the passion to get started, you can make it work.
Plus, Loomly can help. Our social media management platform for agencies lets you manage all of your clients in one easy-to-navigate dashboard, so you can switch between client accounts seamlessly to monitor their performance, share new content, and engage with their audiences. Loomly was built for agencies just like yours.
