Ask HN: What are some Paid Ads/Social Media agencies early-stage startups use?

[lionhead]

I just launched a new business with a co-founder, we basically organize summer short-term study programs in Korea for high school students, and we would like to advertise on social media, google, reddit etc. and while we are good at what we do, we have ZERO clue about online advertising in general and we would like to hire an agency to handle all that for us, any recommendations? Thank you!

[aketchum]

You can hire one for sure, but in my experience they are of dubious value for very early companies. I would focus on understanding your customers. Do you have product market fit proof? Have you strongly defined who your customer segments are? If you have not then I believe you will waste money with an agency. To get the most out of them, you need to have clearly defined audiences and what the value add to the customer is. These are needed to make an effective ad campaign. But also once you have these details you can also start running the ads yourself.

I don't know what your runway looks like but I think for early stage you should try doing it yourself. Otherwise you are going to run into issues of high minimums for larger agencies.

[lionhead]

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer! I do think I have at least product market fit, we know exactly who our customers are, we closed 10 of them and their reaction to your product is ecstatic. I really don't think we have a product problem, but reaching these customers is definitely harder than expected. We did run into high minimums with agencies sadly, so I guess we will have to invest the time and learn what we can!

[ericzawo]

Working with new startups and businesses that have identified social as an effective area to grow their business is my area of focus. Happy to chat anytime [e-mail]

[cm2012]

That early, you want a contractor, not an agency. And more to pay them to give you advice so you can build it, I suspect.

[codingdave]

Have you already proven that your target audiences respond to ads on social media? Because I find that social media ads underperform compared to more targeted channels for just about anything. Social media is the lowest common denominator of marketing - it works because of scale, not because of efficient marketing spend.

So any agency that says, "Yeah, we can do that!" probably doesn't have the depth you really need. Hire the ones who challenge your assumptions.