Contents
A social media proposal is really another form of copywriting. And, like any other form of client proposal, if you want to win new business, or maintain a long-term business relationship, then you need to have both the language skills and the tools to write effectively in this medium.
Your proposal must convince potential clients of your skills, knowledge and ability to help them grow their own business through social channels.
Careful planning and execution are needed to develop the framework for your social media proposal. With planning you can be sure that the proposal covers all the necessary elements for convincing your prospective client to do business with you.
Let’s review the most important aspects of writing an effective social media proposal.
The key elements of your proposal should be:
- The ability to identify and analyse your prospects pain points when it comes to social media marketing
- A clear outline of your proposed solutions
- The scope and extent of your service delivery
- Time frames and costs
- Reporting
- Terms of engagement
- Your call to action
With these key elements in mind, let’s work through some of the processes involved in developing your proposal.
1. Develop a Strategy
You need to develop a strategy for how you’re going to write your social media proposal. This strategy should revolve around the information that you’ve gathered about your client’s company and their overall goals.
It should include research and where possible, results, on their current social media marketing efforts.
You need to demonstrate that you have expertise in marketing within their niche and be able to lay out a good case for your own service.
Without a strategy, your social media proposal will likely fall flat and fail.
Social media marketing is a content marketing strategy, and so, you need to demonstrate that you know how to write and deliver compelling content for your client’s target market.
Your strategy should include:
- A clear offer and call to action
- Clear features and benefits of your service
- At least one unique selling point that sets you apart from the competition
2. Know Your Customer
Research is critical. Don’t just treat your potential client like another generic customer. Your social media proposal should reflect your familiarity with their organisation and what they do.
Include some personalised information about their operations. Make reference to their own industries statistics and be specific. Ensure that it relates to the advantages of social media marketing with specific case studies of how this channel works within their niche.
Empathise with setbacks that are common to their industry and demonstrate truly workable solutions as a motivation for engaging your social media marketing services.
If you can show your prospect that you know them well, they will be more likely to initiate contact with you.
3. Include Images
The visual identity of your social media proposal is truly important. Don’t just send a plain-looking proposal because your clients probably get dozens of proposals every day.
Instead, your proposal should stand out by being more visually-based. Include images and pictures that relate to relevant points of discussion in your proposal. More importantly, they should demonstrate what you can do for them.
Use case studies – but be brief. Provide visual examples of other social campaigns, especially those that are in parallel, but non-competitive industries.
For example, if you are approaching a hair salon and you have worked with car hire or wedding celebrants in the past, use these closely related industries to provide examples of your expertise.
Include original graphics in your proposal and avoid the plethora of generic images that are currently available (and appearing on every second website).
4. Send Interactive Pricing
Clients are always thinking about pricing when they look at proposals. Don’t keep them waiting and wondering because they might assume the worst and look somewhere else.
Be transparent in pricing as well as time frames.
Include some interactive price quotes in your proposal. Sketch out one, two or three project proposal budgets and show clearly the differing levels of service and delivery
You will always have the opportunity to customise your pricing down the track but initial transparency here is critical.
Your prices should reflect the cost of various services and package deals that you’re offering and are an opportunity to demonstrate your unique selling points. It’s also a great way to upsell any additional services that you offer.
5. Use a Customisable Template
It is best to use a flexible template when you write your social media proposal. This will assist you with the visual and structural elements that you might not be experienced enough in to create from scratch.
The template needs to be “flexible” because you need to have as much freedom as possible in modifying it. A professional template can be used to ensure consistent branding and will include an attractive cover image for the proposal along with the ability to insert rich media, video, interactive elements and more.
It will also allow for collaboration with other team members who are working on the proposal.
As you dive deeper into the content of the proposal, a flexible template offers pre-written details about the services you offer. This is helpful in case you’re not good at describing your services and need quick help in filling in those blanks.
6. Retain Brand Focus
Your social media proposal should reflect your brand’s identity. Pay attention to the styles used in your proposals, such as logos, fonts and colours.
If you are using email as one of the marketing channels for targeting prospective clients, keep the introduction simple and avoid irrelevant or repetitive spin.
The elements within your proposal and the means of distributing your proposal should all reflect your brand name and image in order to create a predictable and identifiable pattern of communication with your target audience.
If you stay consistent with your brand image in all the proposals and other communications that you send, it creates a sense of professionalism in the minds of the clients and recipients.
The goal of your social media proposal is to familiarise your prospective clients with your services. It is not a contract, though it can be used this way. A good proposal is one that is persuasive and clear without the use of industry cliches and cumbersome language.
Because the proposal needs to be short you don’t have the luxury of outlining every step of your internal process. The focus should remain on deliverables.
The art of writing effective marketing proposals is to live by the maximum that, “less is more.”
Attempting to show your prospect every conceivable variation in terms of creativity and deliverables can be overwhelming. Ensure that your draft proposals are edited and re-edited and always look for an opportunity to articulate big ideas in brief sentences.
“The opinions expressed by BizWitty Contributors are their own, not those of BizCover and should not be relied upon in place of appropriate professional advice. Please read our full disclaimer."
