Expanding the services your agency offers is one of the most reliable ways to grow revenue without having to win entirely new clients. But expanding usually means hiring, and hiring means salaries, management time, desk space, and all the commitment and complexity that comes with growing a team.
Social media is one of the few services where there is a well-established alternative: white label delivery. Here is how agencies are adding social media to their offering without taking on a single new member of staff.
The traditional route and why it is expensive
Building an in-house social media capability from scratch is a serious undertaking. You need at least one skilled social media manager, ideally with design skills and video experience, to cover the range of formats clients expect. At current UK salaries, that is a minimum of £25,000 to £30,000 per year before employer costs. Then there is the recruitment process, the onboarding, the management overhead, the risk if the hire does not work out, and the inflexibility of a fixed cost if client demand fluctuates.
For an agency that wants to test whether social media is a viable addition to its offering before committing fully, that is a very expensive experiment.
The white label alternative
White label social media means partnering with a specialist provider who delivers the service on your behalf, under your branding, while you handle the client relationship. Your agency sells the service, sets the price, and manages the account. The white label partner creates the content, manages the posting schedule, and does the day-to-day work. Your client sees only your brand throughout.
The cost structure is completely different. Instead of a fixed salary cost, you pay a per-client wholesale fee to your provider and charge your client a retail rate on top. The margin is yours. You scale up as you win more clients and scale back if you need to, without any of the HR implications of hiring and firing.
What you need to manage on your side
White labelling is not entirely hands-off. You still need to brief the provider properly on each client, review content before it goes out, manage the client relationship, and act as the point of contact for questions and feedback. The work is lighter than delivering the service yourself, but it is not zero.
Most agencies find that adding a white label social media service requires an additional few hours per client per month in oversight and communication. At that level of effort, the margin per client can be very attractive.
How to price it
Pricing depends on your market and your existing fee structure, but a common approach is to apply a markup of between 50 and 100 percent over the wholesale cost. If your provider charges you £99 per month per client, you might charge your client £150 to £200 for the same service, positioned as part of your agency’s managed social offering. Clients who are already paying your agency for other services tend to accept social media fees without much resistance, particularly when the service is presented as part of a broader marketing package.
Choosing the right white label partner
The quality of your white label partner reflects directly on your agency. Choose a provider whose content quality you would be comfortable putting your own name to, because that is exactly what you will be doing. Look for clear communication, reliable delivery, genuine flexibility around your clients’ needs, and a working relationship where issues get resolved quickly and without drama.
At 99social, our white label service is built specifically for agencies who want to add social media to their offering cleanly and profitably. We handle the delivery; you handle the relationship. Get in touch to find out how it works.
Interested in reselling our service? Find out more about our white label social media management at 99social.co.uk.
For a detailed financial comparison, read our analysis of white label social media vs in-house team costs and profitability. To learn more about the advantages, check out these 5 reasons why your agency should outsource social media management.
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