A Guide to Outsourcing Social Media Marketing in 2025
As we approach the end of the year, many companies are reflecting on their marketing strategies and planning for 2025, including considering outsourcing social media marketing.
This is a major decision that can significantly impact your brand's online presence, and there are plenty of things to consider if you’re thinking about it.
This blog is here to guide you through these considerations to help you find a compatible agency that aligns with your brand's vision.
Define Your Goals and Objectives
Before approaching agencies, clearly outline what you hope to achieve with your social media marketing and identify your specific needs.
These could be things like brand awareness, lead generation, customer engagement, or sales.
Define how you’ll measure success with your social media marketing by setting measurable KPIs (key performance indicators) such as engagement rates, follower growth, and website traffic.
Depending on your KPIs, make sure you have everything else in place before your Google Analytics setup, for example lead generation landing pages.
If you need these created, make this clear to the agencies you’re approaching for outsourcing social media marketing.
Understand Your Brand Identity
If you’re looking into outsourcing social media marketing, you’ll need to know the brand identity you want represented online.
It might be that you don’t have one and you want guidance on this; we help plenty of businesses with establishing a brand identity – contact us to find out more.
However, if you have an in-house marketing team and your social media is an extension of what’s happening everywhere else in the business, you’ll need to provide the below to agencies which could help you with outsourcing social media marketing:
- Articulate Your Brand Voice: help the agency understand your brand’s personality, values, and target audience.
- Consistency is Key: find an agency that can maintain your brand’s voice across different platforms; if you have a brand guideline, supply it and ensure it’s up to date for digital use, not just for offline/print.
- Give Instagram Examples: if you use Instagram, provide grid examples that you like and don’t like , and explain why in both cases.
- Provide platform info: If you are B2B or B2C or both let them know the platforms you are already on, provide URLS and struggles you are encountering on them all. It might if you are both you need to change up the content on the more business platforms aiming at Trade, this will mean your messaging and approach is totally different.
- Humanising Your Brand: including people in your posts helps engagement, so think about how the agency can humanise your brand without working with you in person. Could you provide photos and videos of your team, or could the agency visit regularly?
- Voice Formality or Informality: is there a line the agency cannot cross in terms of how familiar you appear online? If so, set those boundaries now.
- Continuing Brand Voice in DMs: what level of interaction do you want from your outsourced social media team? Do you want them to answer any questions that people post in the threads or DMs? You could suggest a WhatsApp group for the team and the agency for urgent replies required.
Research Potential Agencies
If you’re considering outsourcing social media marketing, you want to make sure the agencies you approach are congruent with how you want to be represented.
Make sure you look at their portfolio, reviewing past work to gauge their expertise and creativity. They may have a showreel of their work, like we do. Which you can watch below...
You can also read their reviews online, to see how previous clients have fed back on their strengths and weaknesses. You could even ask to speak to current clients of theirs for an up-to-date insight into what they’re like.
It’s good to assess the agency’s expertise in your industry; if they have experience in your sector, they’ll already understand your audience and competitors.
You should continue to evaluate their communication as they interact with you; how responsive are they during this initial contact?
Evaluate Collaboration
Outsourcing social media marketing will naturally involve collaboration with a person or agency, so you need to establish how you envisage this working.
What will your approval process be?
Would you like to see and tweak everything before it’s posted, and how often will this occur – weekly or fortnightly, via email, Slack, Google docs or OneDrive?
You need to set clear expectations and be realistic as time is money.
Now is also the time to talk about which collaboration tools they use for project management and communication, to ensure that things run smoothly.
Understand Their Social Media Strategy
This is crucial if you’re planning on outsourcing social media marketing to them!
What’s their approach to content strategy, including types of content they produce (e.g., graphics, videos, blogs)?
Make sure they’re prepared to provide regular analytics and reporting, and remember they’ll need access to your Google analytics here to see the full picture.
Clarify your views on the usage of stock imagery and video. Stock images won’t help to build trust in your brand, so could you provide an image library or ask someone internal to update the agency on what’s going on?
I’ve written before about how keeping your social media social and personal will help your audience to engage, so you need to make sure that you have a natural way of communicating the personal side of your business so that it can be shown online.
Treating the agency as an extension of your internal marketing team will work best, perhaps through providing access to webinars, courses, or industry events.
Consider your CTAs! What Calls to Action's are already in place within the business, can the agency use them, and are they traceable? Or does the agency need to use new ones?
Discuss Budget and Pricing Structure
Understand their pricing model, retainer, project-based, or performance-based, and ensure it aligns with your budget.
What’s the value for money?
Look beyond the price tag; assess the potential ROI from their services, and how much time will this free up of your staff to be doing other things.
If you don’t have the budget for a longer-term commitment, then be realistic and honest with the agency. Perhaps they could provide an easy-to-replicate style, create a content plan, train your staff in using it and then leave you to it 4-6 months down the line.
If this is an approach you’re interested in, you should look at our Marketing Strategy Starter Kit which does exactly that!
Plan for Long-Term Partnerships
Once you’ve found an agency to work with, it’s great to build a long-lasting relationship with them.
Look for scalability by choosing an agency that can grow with your business and adapt as your needs change.
Try to find a flexible agency.
As well as outsourcing social media marketing, if your agency can do more than just social media, they could also write a blog for you in the same tone of voice, run Meta ads alongside the posts, create a landing page or a download for lead gen purposes or create a LinkedIn training programme to help get your internal team on the right page sharing your posts… the list goes on.
Finally, it needs to be a good cultural fit.
Ensure the agency’s values align with yours for a more cohesive working relationship. It may be best to find someone local who can meet in-person.
Talk to us about outsourcing social media marketing for your business
Outsourcing social media marketing can be a game-changer, but choosing the right agency is crucial.
If you’re ready to elevate your social media strategy, contact The Thinking Cap today for a consultation and let us help you find the perfect fit for your marketing needs!
At The Thinking Cap, we specialise in tailored marketing and social media solutions that resonate with your brand and audience.
We know how hard it can be to keep your social media fresh, so our dedicated team is committed to driving results and fostering meaningful connections online.
Book a chat through our Calendly link, or send us an email and let’s chat about outsourcing social media marketing today!
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I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post.
If you’d like further help, let’s jump on a call and have a chat.
