Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
Viral In Nature is a multi-award winning social media marketing agency ranked by three different market research companies as one of the top social media agencies in the world. Our team has achieved this success by staying focused and specializing in one area of expertise, social media marketing. We have developed an in-house Social Media Artisan (SMArtisan) Apprenticeship program to ensure our SMArtisans our some of the most highly trained in the industry.
My name is Shawn Michael Alain, and I am the President of Viral In Nature, a multi-award winning social media agency.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the Digital Marketing Strategy for a client.
We start with a discovery session. This is where we have a series of questions designed to learn about our client’s brand, the voice they want to portray, and goals they wish to achieve.
How does your company differentiate itself from the competition?
We have achieved success by staying on top of trends with the latest in new software and hardware, having a client care program and an in-house Social Media Artisan Apprenticeship Program for training our “SMArtisans”. No other social media agency in North America has won more awards than us.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
We have clients from many different industries. There isn’t really one we cater to; however, the vast majority of our clients are small businesses. Ma and Pa businesses look to agencies like us because we’re able to give them their own social media team that acts like their social media department, at a fraction of the cost compared to hiring someone in-house even at minimum wage.
Please share some of the services that you offer for which clients approach you the most for?
We specialize in social media management and paid ad social media management. This is what most clients ask for. We also offer web design, which we do in-house, and other digital marketing services.
What do you find to be some of the most key factors for running a successful agency in the field of Digital Marketing?
Two factors:
1. The team we have assembled. It’s not programs and algorithms that ultimately create great social media; it’s people. A well-trained staff leads to great social media.
2. Taking care of our clients. For our clients who have given us a chance to earn their business and put their trust in us to play an important role in achieving their goals, such as generating revenue, that a role we take very seriously. We also recognize that it is much more time and cost effective to put a greater focus on retaining those clients, than getting new ones.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a project?
We have standard rate cards for most projects, for those custom projects that don’t fit into our regular rate card we have an hourly rate.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients?
For social media, we charge first and last month at the start of their contract and bill once a month.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?
We have projects that range from around $3,000-30,000.
Name a couple of activities that you think provide the best ROI in terms of benefit/impact when it comes to different areas of Digital Marketing.
We are definitely most effective in our social media and paid social media ad management services.