Is your brand expanding into Europe? Navigating such a diverse market—with multiple countries, cultures and languages—requires local expertise. That’s why partnering with European social media companies can make all the difference.
Keep reading to learn why working with a European social media agency is crucial and how to choose the right partner to achieve your goals.
What does a European social media agency do?
While different European social media agencies focus on different areas, they share one thing in common: their expertise in the European market. They’re familiar with social media trends in various countries and have extensive knowledge of the best platforms and strategies.
While social media has no geographical boundaries, local knowledge is always best when communicating with current or potential clients.
Partnering with a European agency provides access to their expertise and a wide freelancer network. They fill knowledge gaps with local experts from your target countries, ensuring your brand’s presence is effectively managed and optimized across social media platforms.
“We have a trusted database of freelancers we know will deliver results. If not, we’ll find the right fit. This saves clients a lot of time—we handle finding the right profiles, assessing potential freelancers and onboarding them to match each client’s style and needs. Our team excels at assessing and guiding community managers.”
– Kyler Canastra, Head of Business Development at VeraContent
The capabilities of European social media agencies vary widely. Some specialize in promotions, others in advertising or creative services. Larger agencies often offer a full range of services, including strategy, account management and analytics.
Essentially, agencies help you connect with audiences, build loyalty and drive conversions. Their regional expertise ensures they can incorporate local cultures, humor and influencers to speak authentically to your markets.
“A big advantage we have is being multilingual. Clients may need campaigns in Germany but lack German speakers on their team. We provide linguists, translators and writers to create, localize and edit content that aligns with the brand’s voice. For clients, having a trusted partner who communicates in English but delivers market-specific content is invaluable.”
– Kyler Canastra, Head of Business Development at VeraContent
See also: Hiring a global marketing manager vs. an agency: How to decide
What to ask when looking for a European social media partner
Europe has no shortage of capable social media agencies. But how can you be sure which is best for you?
Here are the best practices to make your search for the right agency as smooth as possible:
Get clear on what you want help with
Do you need help with reporting, content localization or a full-service package?
Define specific goals for your social media marketing in Europe. This could be increasing brand awareness, generating leads, increasing engagement, boosting sales, creating a community or providing great customer service. While ideally, these are all goals you should be working towards, pick one or two that you want to focus on in your work with an agency.
Explain what you do and don’t want as clearly as possible, as well as your budget. Remember that you’re working with an agency because you want to work with the people who can most effectively achieve your goals. You don’t want to agree to someone’s pitch just because it “sounds good.”
Research and shortlist agencies
Start by researching agencies in Europe that specialize in your industry. If you’re only working in one or two countries, looking more closely at agencies operating out of those countries may be best. Focus on agencies that you know to have a proven track record.
Some good places to look for agencies are:
- Referrals from similar companies or associates in your industry
- Marketing events and conferences
- Google search
See also: Choosing the right transcreation agency for your business
Agency background info
When reaching out to a potential agency, figure out how well they understand your industry, target customers, competitors and social media trends in those markets. Check to see if they’re certified on platforms like Facebook Blueprint or Google Partners. Make sure they have experience working with the platforms you want to focus on.
Take a look at past and current clients. Are any businesses similar to yours? It’s a good sign if they’ve worked with both small and large companies in your industry. Request client stories, work samples, reviews and any concrete metrics they can provide, such as follower growth, engagement rates or conversion rates. If possible, contact two or three current or former clients for candid feedback.
An agency’s blog and social media accounts can also give you strong insight into their thoughts and processes. What kinds of content are they focusing on in their articles? What does it seem like they prioritize? Does their content showcase thought leadership or any particular knowledge the agency or specific employees may have? How creative are they in their own marketing?
Proposal
Request proposals from any agencies you shortlist. Explain your situation and goals and ask for a strategic plan, creative ideals, pricing, any additional case studies they can provide, relevant testimonials and their terms. They should come back with a plan that aligns with your goals.
“Make sure any agencies you’re interested in working with do a test assignment. We do that automatically. It’s part of our process. We don’t usually sign a contract without doing it. For example, if a client wants someone to manage their Instagram, we’ll offer two Instagram posts based on a provided brief as a test totally free. You want to make sure an agency can perform before you sign a contract.”
– Kyler Canastra, Head of Business Development at VeraContent
In their proposal, look for specific platform recommendations and strategies. Agencies that tailor their approach to your goals show more enthusiasm than those offering generic, one-size-fits-all plans.
Capabilities and processes
Regardless of your specific goals, make sure the agency can effectively monitor, measure, analyze and report on their performance to you. At a minimum, they should provide regular reports on KPIs and use their data to optimize and enhance their strategies.
Ask about their processes. What is their onboarding process like? How can you expect them to communicate with you?
“You need to know that you can trust your agency’s systems. Approving content is such a big part of running social media, and if you know you can do that all in one place in 10 minutes once a day, it will make your life so much easier. That’s what will save you time in the long run.”
– Kyler Canastra, Head of Business Development at VeraContent
Ensure the agency follows best practices for data privacy, compliance and security. Ask about data storage, software, cybersecurity measures and compliance with regulations like GDPR.
Also, make sure they align with your company’s values and culture. Since you’ll work closely with them, hold meetings to assess their fit. They should feel like an extension of your team.
“If I were looking for an agency, I’d want to challenge them a bit at the beginning and ask some questions in the initial phase of the conversation. For example, how would the agency handle a campaign idea you have that may seem a bit crazy? This reveals whether they’re open to taking risks and being bold—something important in social media today. To stand out, you need to follow trends, but more importantly, you have to start them.”
– Kyler Canastra, Head of Business Development at VeraContent
See also: How to choose the right multilingual SEO agency to grow your business
Pricing
Pricing is one of the most obvious areas where problems may arise. Be as upfront as possible about your budget. Ask for a detailed breakdown of their pricing that clearly shows costs for different services and retainer fees.
Are there any additional charges that may occur, and why? We’ll get more into pricing in the next section.
How much does it cost to hire a European social media company?
Pricing is one of companies’ biggest doubts when hiring social media agencies. Hiring an agency tends to come with some high upfront costs. European social media agencies have pricing that depends on many factors. For example, the amount or complexity of work you’re asking of them or even where their office is located.
For example, agencies located in places with a high cost of living, like Dublin or Stockholm, will usually be more expensive than agencies located in smaller cities or those with lower costs of living, like Belgrade or Katowice. Many current estimates show that a good social media agency in Europe costs about 90-120€ per hour.
However, any good social agency will try their best with your available budget. As we said before, it’s best to be as upfront and honest as possible with what you can or are willing to spend. Agencies can incorporate several different pricing options to meet your needs best.
Here are six common pricing options:
1. Retainer
The retainer model is one of the most common for social media agencies, as it’s a field that usually requires maintaining long-term relationships and services. In this model, you and the agency agree to a monthly fixed sum. This is either based on the agency’s monthly hours or on a set number of deliverables.
Money is paid upfront, and costs are fixed, so staying within your budget is easier. It’s also easy to scale operations month-to-month as needed. However, this model is one of the priciest ones from the outset, so it might not be the best if you’re just dipping your toes into the European market.
2. Recurring
This model is often used for long-term services like social media community management. You pay a flat fee regularly, which can be monthly, quarterly or annually. This way, the work can get done without you having to think too much about it.
Some agencies offer more flexible or even discounted rates for companies that commit to annual plans.
3. Project-based
In a project-based pricing model, an agency will charge you a flat fee for a specific project. This is a useful model if you’re unsure about committing a lot upfront to an agency.
You could start by doing a few projects with them with flat rates and then decide to scale up later if you’re satisfied with the results. Plus, the costs are clear and upfront, so you can avoid overspending.
4. Hourly
Smaller agencies are more likely to quote you using an hourly pricing model. It’s straightforward and transparent for you. It’s easy to manage your budget when you know how many hours of work you can get for your current spend, and it’s easy to increase or decrease hours as needed, offering plenty of flexibility.
However, pricing like this is usually more appropriate for one-off projects with unclear time commitment requirements, not something consistent like social media work. Any extra work, like edits or revisions, might eat a hole in your budget, so leave some “extra” hours in the budget for situations like those if you’re going with this pricing model.
5. Performance-based
To prioritize ROI, you should look into this pricing model. Typically, agencies with the strongest track records are the most open to working like this. It ties their payment to whether or not they achieve certain goals—for example if a certain number of sales or leads are generated.
This model ties the success of your business to the agency’s payment. Not only does that motivate the agency to get results, but it also makes their positive impact on your business clearer. Agencies under this payment model should be great at data analysis and reporting.
6. Customized
The social media landscape is diverse and constantly changing. As a result, companies often require a whole suite of services from a global social media agency—translation, community management, ad campaigns and more. The breadth of tasks may lead to them creating a customized pricing strategy for you.
This strategy lets you mix hourly, project-based and performance-based models, potentially negotiating lower costs for multiple services. While more complex, it offers flexibility and options.
Breaking into Europe: A VeraContent case study
Libby, an app that connects users to local libraries for borrowing ebooks and audiobooks, has seen great success in the US and is now expanding into the UK and Germany. VeraContent is managing Libby’s European Instagram accounts to support this growth.
In both markets, our team has hired local community managers to create content that appeals to readers, incorporating elements such as #Booktok trends in each country. Our goal is to engage a broad audience—not just book lovers but also pop culture enthusiasts—through memes, book recommendations, quizzes and more.
Our community managers combine their deep knowledge of local trends and books with extensive research to ensure our content resonates with audiences. We draw inspiration from past successful posts and actively follow popular book pages and authors in each country.
“I think what helps is that the content is written for the consumer. It’s a British account. You’re more attracted to getting content that’s geared towards you. We trust content that’s coming from someone who speaks our language more, even if we’re localizing from the same language, in this case, English.”
– Kyler Canastra, Head of Business Development at VeraContent
We’ve seen great success, particularly in the UK. The follower base and interactions have grown consistently month-to-month. We’ve started building a community with the libraries we’re working with as well—both accounts have shared posts that are collaborations with libraries featured on the app.
Your search ends here
At VeraContent, we’re a global social media agency based in Europe, with team members and collaborators spread across the continent. We know what works for each European audience and have the experience to prove it. Check out our client stories to see how we’ve helped brands like yours succeed in European markets.
Book a call with our team today to see if you qualify for a Free Content Consultation. Let’s create something amazing together!