SMMA (Social Media Marketing Agency) Startup costs for 2020

Derek DeMike
5 min readNov 25, 2019

One question that I see asked BY FAR more than any other question ever is… What are the costs associated to start an SMMA or a Social Media Marketing Agency?”

When it comes to a service-based business or a business, in general, a lot of times people think you need a lot of capital to start and that’s completely not true.

Something you might not realize is one of the beautiful things about the social media marketing agency model is there’s almost zero upfront cost and almost zero operational costs when starting out.

Getting Started (THE DEETS…WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW)

You can start a business here in the United States for $100 to $150 dollars and get your LLC registered. As long as you have a computer, laptop, internet connection basic things like that you can start reaching out to clients and start fulfilling services.

That's right… if you want to spend even less than that, You can be a sole proprietor and not even have to pay incorporation costs. The actual cost related to starting your agency can be as little as $17 dollars. For your website builder… $12 dollars... To buy a Google domain and G Suite…$5 dollars.

More freebies to get you started…

Facebook ads manager it’s a free platform. MailChimp it’s a free platform. Canva it’s a free platform.

But wait…What about employees and hiring? That’s gotta be expensive right? WRONG.

Your initial hires should actually, in my opinion, be very inexpensive. Virtual assistants or commonly known as “VA’s” can cost as low as $3 to $5 an hour that you can pay per project to get you off the ground while starting your agency. Once you start to grow, you can get a more advanced team with expensive hires like media buyers as you scale.

There’s no excuse in 2019 why you can’t start and operate a social media marketing agency. The excuse of “I don’t have enough money” it’s just not the case.

I always wanted to start a business but thought investing a lot of capital was the only way to get started. Again…not true

Starting a Social Media Marketing Agency (SMMA) changed everything.

Picture this…

It’s 9 am on a typical Monday you’re stuck in traffic…

Heading to that soul-sucking 9–5 job that you’ve always wanted to leave, but have had no way out, no other option available.

Money is Money,” you say. “Gotta pay the bills somehow” 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Well…not this Monday.

This Monday is different. This Monday, you walk into your job eagerly waiting for that impromptu meeting set with your manager to tell them…

“…I QUIT…”

**Exhale**

Instantly you feel a sigh of relief knowing this is the first day your actual life begins. The one where you answer to no one and begin building your dreams.

Working for yourself. Every bit of effort now goes directly towards building equity in YOUR OWN DREAMS…. No longer working to make someone else’s dreams come true.

Driving away knowing you have a couple of clients already, paying you more in monthly recurring revenue, than what you’re making today, stuck at that 9–5 job.

That’s exactly what I did. In just two weeks from starting my Social Media Marketing Agency, I had landed my first client paying $2,500.00 a month USD.

That’s one client that took one DM, and two short phone calls.

That simple.

I’ve laid out The SMMA Blueprint if you’re interested on how to do this yourself while still working that 9–5 and need help escaping that life!

I just got a DM here where someone asked: “I want to make sure that I’m not getting over my head to get that first client.”

To get that first client you need nothing.

The reality is it’s extremely cheap to get started in the social media marketing game. As opposed to other types of businesses that require a lot of overhead.

Other popular online businesses like Amazon FBA or dropshipping require a certain amount of upfront costs.

All you need is knowledge and a skill set. You need to be able to reach out to clients and retain them, get them to pay you, and fulfill services… and promise on the things that you said you would deliver.

Even with dropshipping if you never plan on fulfilling the product yourself, you’re still going to want to get those prototypes, you’re still going to want to invest in those inventories, so you can get product photos and stuff like that. Whereas when starting an SMMA it’s almost nothing at all.

It’s not an excuse that you don’t have any money.

If you don’t have any money a service-based business is the best business that you can do.

You don’t need Capital, you don’t need an audience, you heard me say it before…

All you need is a laptop, phone, initiative to go out there make some sales, and you need some knowledge.

So either invest in a course like The SMMA Blueprint.com or go on Google, go on YouTube, and research it for yourself….

If you want to start this business it’s very simple. We have The SMMA Blueprint on exactly how to do that. David and I, we started this business over 3 years ago and we’ve haven’t looked back since. It’s been fantastic, we continue to reinvest, but if you’re on the fence and you’re thinking about starting a social media marketing agency and you’re afraid that you don’t have enough capital to get started. Erase that from your mind right now because that excuse is just not relevant in 2019.

I hope to see you on the inside and don’t forget — access to The SMMA Blueprint comes with access to the Inner Circle — our amazing private coaching group which gives you 1:1 access to my business partner and myself. This way we can answer any and all challenges that you face with your agency journey!

If you found this article helpful, I hope that you will give me some claps to recognize! 👏👏👏👏

You can follow me on IG here https://www.instagram.com/derekdemike/

Also, you can find our entire documented journey to starting and scaling our social media marketing agency all on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUoXIkRM0FHQ9sWWHjNpYNQ

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Derek DeMike

SMMA Social Media Marketing Agency Owner & Operator