Starting your own marketing agency can be difficult if you have little or no experience. Today, there are many Youtube videos or online digital marketing programs designed to help you develop your business skills and become a social media marketing expert. Among the popular training courses is the Tai Lopez Social Media Marketing Agency (SMMA).
According to the SMMA sales page, more than 35,000 people have signed up for the course to date. But is this online course by Tai Lopez legit or a scam? This review hopes to give you an honest answer by providing insight into the Tai Lopez SMMA course. Let’s proceed.
About the Social Media Marketing Course
Social Media Marketing Agency 2.0 is a 4-month course created by Tai Lopez that is laid out into video-style lessons. This program is an in-depth guide teaching you how to get small businesses to pay you $1,000-$10,000+ every month for managing and running social media campaigns for them. Tai targets small business owners because a majority struggle to find clients online.
Tai brings in other industry experts and 6-7 figure earners to help teach and elaborate on specific topics. He wants you to be able to make money online and create an amazing lifestyle, like traveling the world while working from your phone.
About Tai Lopez
Tai Lopez is a top social media influencer and full-time internet entrepreneur. He is an investor and business owner with over +12m followers and fans across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Early on in 2015, he became an online sensation by spending tens of millions of dollars on Youtube ads. He is the virtual mentor you need to take on the competitive business world.
Through the promotion of his products, he quickly rose to become one of the most well-known tech development gurus on the web. He was the first to produce an online course to leverage AdWords on Google and created a personal brand by working with other well-known entrepreneurs in the marketing industry.
Tai also owns the largest book shipping club in the world, Mentor Box, and was voted the Number 1 Social Media Influencer by Entrepreneur Magazine. He also created an alternative to the traditional business school. This “Business Mentorship” program combines the best of self-learning with the best of a University degree without all the downsides of burdensome costs and inefficient methods.
Other Expert Instructors
Tai brings in other industry experts to help teach the course. In my opinion, this is where most of the expertise comes from. The CEO of Revenue Inbound, Joe Soto, teaches several lessons and brings incredible amounts of insight into Facebook Advertising and how to boost pages organically.
Another key instructor is Dan Fleyshman, who teaches the power of collaboration with influencers and how to increase engagement on your first day. Dan is an angel investor for 24 companies and helped grow several businesses to multimillion-dollar status. Others include Alex Muhr, CEO of MentorBox, and Jennifer Baca, the CEO of the Knowledge Society.
SMMA 2.0 Course Pricing
Tai’s Social Media Marketing Course has a price tag of $697, making it a sizable investment that may not be suitable for you. However, Tai is an expert in social media and his course shows you how to start from square one. The course includes worksheets, PDFs, and access to the SMMA Facebook Group. When you join the program, you are automatically included in an active Facebook page.
The Facebook community puts you in direct contact with people who are motivated and working in the same field that you are. It is a good reference for collaboration and it gives you the ability to ask questions from like-minded individuals.
Here Are Some Similar Social Media Marketing Courses for 2019
- The SMMA BluePrint created by David & Derek: $749
- 30-Day SMMA created by Choose Pristine: $497
- Six Figure SMMA created by Iman Gadzhi: $997
- UnHustled created by Sean Donahoe: $998
- Social Media Marketing Agency 2.0: $697
Compared to other courses, Tai’s pricing is relatively low as some of them can cost up to $1000. The only course that is less is the 30-Day SMMA by Choose Pristine – $497. Social Media Marketing Agency 2.0 teaches you a solid business model and clearly explains key marketing strategies that are useful in any industry. Giving you significant value regardless of your career path. But the question is: is it worth it?
Let’s find out.
Course Curriculum
Unlike other social media courses, the Social Media Marketing Agency is a 4-month comprehensive course with more than 64 hours of video training, making up 130+ lessons on everything marketers need to know about mastering social media marketing. The full program is organized into four main modules:
Module 1: Business Set-up
Module 1 is an overview of the course, explaining how you should go about the rest of the lessons. The importance of being an active listener and note-taker is sacred to Tai, and he insists that this is done to maximize retained learning. It is safe to assume that watching Tai Lopez’s SMMA video tutorials won’t be enough to make you a master of all social media and marketing business.
KEY POINT: You must be motivated to be able to speak Tai’s language and retain industry knowledge. In the first month, you will learn how to create a website, pick a niche, and set up your business model. You will also receive information on the things to keep in mind when starting a social media agency.
This module helps you with your business setup and teaches you how to form your company. You will start by practicing social media on yourself.
M. 1 Lesson Examples:
- The Business Model
- Naming Your Company
- Setting Up Your Business Entity
- Picking Your Domain name
- How to Set Up Your Pricing
- Acquiring Your First client
- VRIN Scores
- Getting Equity With Josh Earp
- Finding Your Niche
- Building and Promoting Pages With Raymond Ahn
Module 2: Mastering Social Media Marketing
Module 2, explains many different tools, tips, and techniques that are necessary to become a master social media marketer. If you can implement the practices and principles in your own social media, you will be able to help small businesses build their brand and generate value.
This section discusses the industry vocabulary, key tools/websites, and metrics to create valuable content. You will be provided with templates, checklists, and guides that are given and updated consistently to make sure the information is relevant. It is very information dense and is relevant to marketers and business owners at any skill level.
M. 2 Lesson Examples:
- Instagram Growth Hacks with Nathan Chan
- Advanced Youtube Marketing Techniques
- Audience First With Raymond Duke
- Facebook Ad
- 7 Social Media Copywriting tips
- Website Optimization
- Get Customers to Write For You
- Building a Sales Funnel
Module 3: Acquiring Clients
In Module 3, you will learn all the strategies that go into finding qualified clients and how to present yourselves to them. These lessons will show you how to find local businesses in your area, and convince them to work with you by increasing their sales, using advanced marketing techniques identified in the course.
This is a crucial aspect of the Social Media Marketing Agency. Once you become a social media master, it will be easy to talk about specific media channels and how to optimize them to produce quantifiable results for your clients. You will be given checklists of small businesses to contact as well as real scripts to show you how to close the deal.
M. 3 Lesson Examples:
- Finding Your Clients Specialty With Jaiden Gross
- Understanding Objectives vs Complaints
- Qualifying Business Owners
- Strategies to Acquire Clients
- Telemarketing and Phone Sales
- The Power of Collaborating
- Advanced Tips to Increase Engagement
- How to Acquire Bigger Clients +$10m in Revenue
- Google Ads
Module 4: Automating, Servicing & Building Your Team
The 4th and final module of the course ties it all together. You will learn how to build and handle a social media management team, service your client base, ensure quality communication, and automate your business into a cash-flowing asset. If you complete the brief worksheets, at the end you will receive a Social Media Marketing Certification. This sounds very promising, however, this will not be necessary to build a successful agency.
M. 4 Lesson Examples:
- Outsourcing
- 6 Steps of the Sales Process
- Know When to Start Building Your Team With Jennifer Bacca
- Setting Up Your Hiring Process With Jennifer Bacca
- Managing Multiple Clients
- Fundamentals of Client Retention
- Going from Zero to One Million in Revenue
- Live Calls
Other Video Lessons Include:
- Naming and forming your company
- Finding your niche
- Building a website
- How to build a following on all the major social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)
- Facebook ads
- Google ads
- Copywriting for social media
- Email marketing
- Building funnels
- Search Engine Optimization
- Retargeting
- Finding clients/local lead generation
- Closing the sale
- Negotiation
- Increasing the lifetime value of clients
- Outsourcing
- Scaling the business
The creators spent so much time on these course materials and it was designed to make you very knowledgeable in all aspects of social media. There are several different social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube channel, etc) and each one of them has a strong point and a different way to be optimized. You will learn how to use each platform effectively to create strong branding and marketing strategies for any business!
Social Media Marketing Course Quality
The production of the course is done well. The video quality is very clear and the content is laid out with descriptive titles if you ever need to go back and find specific information. However, it seems that a lot of the production was done from an iPhone but the quality is still great and the content is edited in a timely manner to make sure no video is longer than 25 minutes.
Does the Course Deliver?
In terms of what is promised by Tai, the Social Media Marketing 2.0 course delivers on all fronts. In his advertisements, Tai promotes his course as very high and if you take it religiously you will come out of it with incredible marketing knowledge. Plus, your training comes from real social media influencers, who have in-depth knowledge of social media business.
Who Is Tai Lopez’s Course Best For?
Tai’s course is great for anyone who wants to learn more about marketing. It is incredible for people who want to start a new opportunity, whether to make passive income or generate more money for themselves. This online business course will give you a foundation on how to start your own business or social media marketing company.
Tai’s Social Media Marketing is good for beginners and advanced marketers as it gives meticulously detailed information that is very hard to find anywhere else. Additionally, Tai gives you lifetime access to his course material so you can always go back to have a firm grasp of the process.
Is Tai Lopez’s Social Media Marketing Course Worth the Money?
There are many people who ask if Tai and his team are legit. If you are on social media, then you will know that Tai is very active on the web; he runs his own very successful social media advertising and branding content. However, if you jump into the course and expect to be successful without putting in the effort, you will be very displeased. In my opinion, this course is fully worth the $700 you will spend.
Also, my personal experience showed me that a certificate in this course is like having a marketing degree without paying thousands and thousands of dollars. There are large amounts of real testimonials of successes and stories from people who have taken the SMMA course and landed high-paying clients.
The Final Verdict
If you put in the effort you will come out of the course with amazing knowledge that is relevant in any business today. After I took this course, I didn’t start my own agency but I took the knowledge to several small companies I worked for, and I was very highly regarded by my bosses for knowing this information.
You will become an asset to nearly any company. Also, the course helped me grow my family’s European Tour business and a family friend’s aesthetic lounge company significantly. Therefore, I highly recommend this course.
Pros
- Very Comprehensive with an incredible amount of information
- Tai uses several experts that have different specialties to help teach certain subjects
- Active Facebook Group helps you collaborate with other social media marketers
- If you research Tai’s SMMA 2.0, you will find many testimonials and real success stories
- The other SMMA online courses are roughly +$300 more than Tai’s.
- There is excellent value for money spent
- Successful students are equipped with all the materials and advanced techniques they need to help small enterprises solve problems related to their social media.
Cons
- The course has two welcome videos which contradict itself in some places
- If you are not keen on watching videos, this course may not be for you. Personally, I learn really well from video explanations rather than reading text and this course is mostly video.
Considerations
Although the course is said to be 4 months long, all of the information is immediately available. If you wish to complete the course quickly, you can move at a faster pace. The only thing that is not instantly available is the Facebook group. To get access you must send an email and request to join.
PS: Since this review, Tai Lopez has released SMMA 3.0. It has most of the information in the 2.0 and serves the same purpose. You can find more information here.
