The Big 5: Essential Tools for Social Media Marketing Agencies

Combine this with the platform’s group functionality and their agency has managed to save loads of time all while reducing human error. What’s more, during the time that Brafton’s social media team started using Sprout’s approval workflows, they also managed to grow clients’ follower growth by nearly 60% across LinkedIn, Facebook, and X.  

When it comes to reporting, it also takes it one step further by offering post-level reporting and competitor reports. Both these reports make it easier to identify content that resonates with target audiences and uncover which channels present better growth opportunities. 

One unique feature that sets it apart from other popular social media marketing tools aimed at agencies is its Agency Partner Program (APP). Basically, it’s a hub with resources and support. Partners gain access to exclusive content like templates and training opportunities.

While Sprout Social is slightly more expensive than similar tools, it offers a variety of packages. Based on the size of our team, budget, and requirements, you can find a custom package which could end up working out more cost-effectively. 

Key Features: 

• Calendar link sharing
• Custom user roles and permissions
• Social listening
• A smart inbox

Pricing Plans:

After a generous free 30-day trial, pricing starts at $199 per seat per month.

What makes the dashboard such an asset is that it provides a central place from where you can manage comments and DMs or assign a specific thread to another team member. Depending on your plan, you can also add custom colors, a business logo, tabs, and pages. These elements can also be applied to create branded reports allowing you to showcase your branding across multiple touch points.  

For example, VOIMA, a small ad agency in Zurich, has found that Sendible’s white-label solution has helped them to improve their credibility. This, in return, has enabled them to sell their services with a good margin and charge a premium for all of their services.

Sendible also offers great flexibility. So, if you have clients that want to create some of their own posts, you can set up the approval process to accommodate this. The flexible approval process has also helped VOIMA to increase the volume of work that they can handle. 

Key Features:

• Tailored posts for each channel
• Post previews
• A built-in image editor
• Smart queues 
• A priority inbox that gives an aggregated overview of alerts that need a response

Pricing Plans:

After a free 14-day trial, agency pricing starts at $89 per month for four users and 24 social profiles.

In terms of reporting, you can use Agorapulse to track the performance of your clients as well as your own team. Depending on your plan, you can get access to a basic report, social media ROI reports, advanced power reports, and white-label reports. 

Features like the saved replies and built-in reporting features have helped Moov Media Group, which manages over 100 social media profiles for dozens of brands, to reduce manual tasks. On top of that, they could also improve their average response time by 17 hours. 

The reporting function has also played a role in improving their response times and overall productivity. Now, they can get a quick overview of their community managers’ workload and assign extra resources when their responsibilities pick up. 

Key Features: 

• Instagram product tagging
• A unified calendar with calendar notes
• Content queues
• An advanced social inbox
• Integration with Google Analytics and Canva

Pricing Plans:

After a generous free 30-day trial, pricing starts at about $110 per month for access to a plan with collaboration features. 

This way, you can get a unique dashboard view for all your individual clients. It further lets you customize your interactions with clients by letting you create custom roles for team members and assigning these to specific clients.  

It’s this feature that Wundertre, an online marketing agency in Texas, has highlighted as a favorite feature. It adds to the overall simplicity of the software, without taking anything away from its capabilities. Instead of first having to place all your clients into one big group and then use tags to separate them, you can start immediately.   

Then, to ensure that your branding matches the part, you can add elements like your business logo, agency domain name, and favicon. Another way that it lets you customize your branded reports is by selecting which data you want to include. 

Key Features: 

• Approval workflows
• A content calendar
• Social metrics monitoring
• Real-time analytics
• An AI assistant that can share hashtag and picture recommendations and repurpose content 
• Integration with Canva and Zoho CRM

Pricing Plans:

After a free 15-day trial, pricing starts at $275 per month for agencies. 

From creation to publishing to engagement to analytics, it has enough features for all the phases involved. Features that agencies specifically will like include tags to organize campaigns and a hashtag manager which you can use to create hashtag groups for certain clients. 

Then, to help you manage what gets posted when, it offers essential team management features. These include custom access and permissions, approval workflow tools, and internal comments. 

It also shines in the reporting department. You can, for example, automatically generate a cover page and add a custom logo to all your reports to help maintain professionalism. 

In terms of intuitiveness, your team should have no problem. Switching between different accounts and channels is easy, eliminating the need to log in and out. Not only is the actual platform user-friendly, but learning how to use the different features is uncomplicated too.  

In fact, it’s Buffer’s user-friendliness that big agencies like WebFX and small marketing agencies like Tempt have praised as the dealbreaker. For example, Tempt, a UK-based agency working with the lifestyle, hospitality and retail industries, uses it for scheduling, engaging and generating analytics reports on a daily basis. It has become their go-to tool for scheduling, analytics and reporting, with its analytics tool listed as a favorite feature. 

Key Features:

• An AI assistant that can create new posts, repurpose old ones, and suggest ideas
• Post previews
• Custom schedules
• Tailored posts for each channel
• First-comment scheduling for Instagram and LinkedIn posts
• Historical data access
• Audience demographics
• Custom and branded reports
• Unlimited users
• Dozens of third-party integrations

Pricing Plans:

After a free 14-day trial, agency pricing starts at $120 per month for the first 10 channels. For extra channels, it’s $6 per month per additional channel.