In the last Part we started looking at niches.

Here’s the truth - if you are just starting out then it’s unlikely you’ll instantly succeed.

The chance of choosing the right niche and nailing product market fit out of the gate is almost zero.

Instead we need to test our market first. We may need to test out multiple market niches before settling on one that works for us.

In this Part we’ll look at how we test rapidly.

Instead of immediately building up a social media marketing agency and hoping for the best that the market niche will be interested we’re going to start by lowering the stakes.

We first advertise our freelance services.

Once we’ve found a receptive market for freelance services we can then formalise our service offer and business.

Too many early entrepreneurs jump straight in and start building an agency without first testing the waters. Don’t do that!

Here’s the prompt to get use started:

Act as a freelance strategist. 

My niche is : [niche details]

I provide social media marketing services to this niche. 

Design a basic package focusing on one social media channel with one basic service offering. 

Write a Fiverr gig description for this service 

Provide 3 tiers of pricing - low cost, core and premium.

I fed in “nutritionists in the UK” as the niche for the example.

Prompt Output:

The prompt will generate a basic freelance gig for you to test out. For this niche ChatGPT has suggested Instagram as the channel of choice.

I’d agree with this in this case. But obviously adapt and respond to ChatGPT with adjustments as required.

ChatGPT will also generate a set of three pricing tiers. Here are the first two:

These are specifically created for Fiverr but they can also be used on Upwork Projects. For this basic test I’d recommend using Fiverr though as it’s easier to get rolling on in order to verify the market for your idea.

Right now just this a basic gig like this to gauge market demand and hopefully gain some early low cost clients. The goal here is not profit - it’s simply to see if there’s any appetite for our social media service.

Don’t agonise over this step - get something spun up and published fast as a MVP (minimum viability product).

In the next Part we’ll look at properly working out your offer stack for pushing ahead once we’ve confirmed a market exists.

Premium Prompt - Build your own account first

This is a big one.

Everyday I get pitched by social media growth services. Via X, LinkedIn and email.

The problem is that they themselves have low follower counts and limited engagement!

If someone is offering me X growth services and they themselves have 32 followers what do you think my response is?

For this reason if you are building a social media marketing agency please please please build up either your own social media accounts first.

This can be the agency accounts or your personal account. My recommedation here would 100% be your personal account.

Why?

Social media marketing agency accounts tend to be very boring. The content you can produce is relatively limited - what’s the new X algorithm like, what’s the new Instagram video format etc. Very dull.

If you focus on a personal brand you can talk about all this for sure. But you can also talk about a wide range of other topics, making the account itself worth a follow.

Here’s the real reason here. Your clients don’t care about social media. They care about customers for their business. Social media is just a means to an ends for them. And they’d prefer to hire someone else (you!) to do it for them.

If you focus on generally growing your personal account, being engaging and likeable, sprinkling in the odd bit of social media growth advice you’ll beat all the faceless boring agency accounts.

I’m planning to do full guide on personal branding in two weeks - keep your eyes peeled for that here in the newsletter.

Pulling it together

We’ve taken our basic niche idea and converted it into a rough and ready freelance service. We’ve also (hopefully!) published it to see what sort of market reaction we get.

If we get nibbles: fantastic.

This suggests a market exists and we can start to think about what our SMMA looks like.

No nibbles? Adjust the niche until you find something that is more attractive.

A reminder of what we’re covering this week :

Part 1: Find Your Profitable SMMA Niche (Niche Finder prompts)

Part 2: Gain Experience Through SMMA Freelancing (Freelancing prompts)

Part 3: Create Compelling SMMA Service Packages (Package Maker prompts)

Part 4: Use Outreach to Attract SMMA Clients (Client Catcher prompts)

Part 5: Scale Your Agency With SMMA Outsourcing (Biz Booster prompts)