The Year SMMA Dies? (Or the Biggest Opportunity Yet?)
Kyle Fernandez, a 6-year agency founder with over $1M profit, argues SMMAs aren't dying but consolidating. Most fail because founders stay creators instead of becoming operators. With 500M new social users last year and AI augmenting rather than replacing human work, he sees demand growing through 2035.
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Well, if you have an agency or you're looking to start one, these are some major things to consider before doing so. One of the hottest things to hit the market was social media marketing agencies. And while everybody and their mom wanted to start an agency, are they still viable in 2025 and onward? But here's the thing. SMMA isn't dead. It's just evolving. The industry is shifting. Competition is rising, and AI will change the landscape of this industry forever. I've been running my agency for the last 6 years, and we've generated well over $1 million in profit and well over hundreds of millions of views just on YouTube alone. In doing so, we've also generated hundreds of millions of dollars for all of our clients. And I've been blessed to work with some of the biggest names online. Some of these names like Robert Kiyosaki, Patrick Bet-David, Carlton Dennis, Mark Moss, and the list goes on. And I say that not to flash or flaunt who I've worked with. I say that so you understand you're listening to somebody speak who has done it for years and who currently does it at this exact moment. So in this video, I'm going to be breaking down what is the state of SMMA moving forward into the future and what exactly you need to know in order to be relevant moving forward, because if you don't make these changes, I'm afraid the business that you want to start or the business that you have currently will be obsolete because of how things are changing. So pay close attention. Now, before I talk about the future, it's extremely important and more viable that you understand the evolution and the history of SMMA. In short, SMMA is known as social media marketing agency. It's a simple agency that helps influencers, brands, and businesses grow and manage their online content through many different strategies, whether it's organic, known as paid media, So they're managing what you're watching right now, and then they're also managing the ad roll that comes on in all of these videos across multitude of platforms. If you have an SMMA, you are a very vital part to a business and not only their online presence, you actually help them in the real world because everything is now online, which brings loads of notoriety to the real world. Now here's the timeline of SMMA. In the mid-2010s, this is when SMMA really emerged as a business model. And at this stage, social media wasn't a major priority of businesses. So agencies that could manage it for them started popping up like crazy. Now fast forward to 2017, SMMA became very well established. Even retail businesses started dedicating part of their marketing budgets to social media management services. So 2020 was a turning point for a lot of people. More businesses realized they needed an online presence to survive. This led to a massive boom in demand and suddenly everyone wanted to start their own agency. Shortly after 2020, this led to the exaggeration phase. This is where all influencers were teaching you and talking about their SMMA and showing you how you can get rich doing so. In fact, many big figures, one that you may know, like Iman Gadzhi. And we all know one of the best ways to start a revolution is to sell poor people on a dream. And this is where the mania happened around the term SMMA. So now that you're up to speed on where it started and how it evolved, Where does that leave us now moving forward into 2025 and onward? A lot of people say that SMMA are saturated, but here's the truth. It's not even close. Yes, a lot of people are trying to start their own agencies, but most of them fail because, because they lack a multitude of things. A lot of the times you have people that are creatives, like an editor, an artist, or somebody that's just fascinated with online art. They are freelancers and they typically always stay that way and they don't really ever start a business because Their passion isn't really starting a business. This is why a lot of SMMA fail, because the people trying to run the business are stuck being the artist. And when you're stuck being an artist, you can't run a business. Here's the crazy part. I've had my agency for over 6 years and I've never edited one video in my entire life. So not only is it that they lack those skills, they also don't see the massive opportunity. Now let me put that into perspective for you. This year I did 5 presentations., and each time I'm diving deep into data and analytics. Now, with that being said, one of the coolest things that I found that helped me become more convicted in why my business model will be around for a very long time is that last year we had almost 500 million new users come to the platform. Now, with that being said, when more people come to social platforms, what do they need? They need teams to manage it. They need content creators. They need strategy. So this means we have an influx of forever new clients because I do not see social media saying no more people allowed. In fact, I only see it ramping up more and more. Now, it's not only people and individuals that are starting new accounts that will potentially become influencers one day that need a team. They need editors, they need videographers. We also have businesses. So over 90% of retail businesses have two social platforms which they use very actively. And it is only 2025. If we were to look out a decade, I'm forecasting that every single business will make sure that there is a social media manager for all of their platforms. Managing all the content, distributing it, and editing it. Reason being is because there's a 52% increase in how people are searching for businesses. So when I did my talk, I also dove into how people are finding businesses. And one of the shocking ways is through social media. There is a massive decrease in the way that people are looking for things. In fact, the traditional way of just popping up Google and looking for something is dying down. Gen Z is looking for things through Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Now, with that being said, these individuals will soon have businesses and they will continue to do business and be part of the economy. And the only way they're going to do that is through social media. So then when people say it's too saturated, I get excited because that means they don't see the actual opportunity here in front of us right now. Another big thing to consider is AI, and the elephant in the room is people claiming that AI will 100% eradicate content creation. And this couldn't be further from the truth. Here's why. AI doesn't run itself. I could literally drop the mic and shut this video off now, but I'll go a little bit further. Using AI could actually make your business more efficient. And not only that, reduce costs on how many people you have. For instance, we range from 8 to 12 employees, and that payroll could be significantly reduced as AI progresses further and further, ultimately increasing my margins as a business owner. And not only that, if you know how to use it, you also have faster turnaround times for all of your clients. So AI is not here to replace you. That is a scarcity mindset. AI is here to enhance you if you know how to use it. It's basically survival of the fittest. You either make a pivot and become the person that knows how to use AI for your clients, or you could sit there and be scared to continue your business because of these claims. And the most important thing about AI is it cannot replace creativity, storytelling, and your fingerprint. When people look at you, there's a certain intimacy and connection and trust that happens when you look at a real person. So having AI that could replace it and have just UGC AI content and have all this AI stuff going on, it's going to destroy the trust that people have with brands. So I don't see AI actually replacing people by any means. The people it will replace are, are jobs in factories where robots can actually literally come in and move something from here to there. Another very important key factor. If you have an agency at the moment or you're looking to start one, make sure that you don't just sell edits. One of the biggest shifts that I've made for myself is actually teaching the strategies that I've accumulated over the last 6+ years growing YouTube accounts to hundreds of thousands of subscribers and even some accounts to a million. And in that time span, I've picked up a lot of tools and tactics that creators use when it comes to making videos and making sure that their audience is engaged with them. And I've packaged that up into a very clear, concise strategy that I teach people. So now people don't only hire the agency because of the edits that they get, because technically anyone can get an editor and then sell it to someone else and just put a fee on top and call themselves an edit broker. That's typically what an agency is. What they're really paying you for is the strategy. They're paying you for results. They're not paying you for edits. Anyone can give you edits. So make sure with the agency that you're actually learning as you're doing these things, because as you're learning, this is going to be the fuel to your next offer and the next echelon of your agency's performance. So what do I think about agencies in 2025? I think they're extremely lucrative, and I think that they're more viable than ever because of social media needs. And I think that AI cannot replace what humans do because humans are the ones that are using the AI to get the jobs done. And if you're looking to start or keep your agency profitable now and in the future, there is loads of tricks that I've learned over the last 6+ years that I'll be dropping on this channel. So if you subscribe, you'll be up to date in how you could actually be more profitable than if you didn't subscribe.
