Should You Consider Hiring a Virtual Marketing Assistant?

What does a virtual marketing assistant do? What can they bring to your team? And what will your life look like after you hire one? Simple questions—but the answers are myriad. That’s why we’ve put together a brief guide on hiring a virtual marketing assistant: some important statistics you need to know, how a virtual marketing assistant can help with your basic marketing tasks, and what your business or solo enterprise might look like after you hire one.

But let’s get specific. What does a virtual marketing assistant do, and do they have the skills to take over sophisticated operations like your marketing strategy, your email marketing, or even your digital marketing? Here’s what you’ll need to know.

What a Virtual Marketing Assistant Can Bring to the Table

It all comes down to one basic question: what do you get in exchange for hiring a virtual assistant with a background in marketing? You should expect that they have the marketing experience and skills to fit in seamlessly with what you’re doing, whether that includes keyword research or using business development software. But there are some broad categories of skills that C-level executives down to solo entrepreneurs need to know that their virtual assistants can handle:

Content marketing. Content marketing is a vital piece of the digital marketing puzzle, and you need a virtual assistant who understands the basics. They should be able to pitch in with managing a social media content calendar, help you with blog creation, understand the different types of content you can create, and be able to manage them all with an eye for detail.
Keyword research. So much of digital marketing these days comes down to the keywords you research. This helps you find an audience that’s looking for your service. A virtual assistant should understand the top keyword research tools and how to use them.
Social media management. Social media is just as indispensable as any CRM tool you use. That’s why it helps to have a virtual assistant who can help with lead generation via LinkedIn, Twitter, and more.
Strategy. Can your virtual assistant handle overarching strategy on your latest marketing campaigns? A marketing assistant can be more than a personal assistant here. They can be a member of the team that leverages their experience and expertise to optimize your campaigns.
Project management. Serving out the project manager role often requires a specific talent for leadership and organization. But as you expand your team, there’s no reason a virtual marketing assistant can’t help out. They can organize marketing activities, help coordinate a remote team, and otherwise serve as the personal assistant to an entire marketing team.
Lead generation. How do you bring in new leads to your business? Is too much time spent focusing on lead generation rather than doing great work for those clients you already do have? If so, hiring a virtual assistant can be a way to “shortcut” your lead generation so you’re free to focus on other elements of your business.

This is just a sample of what an experienced virtual marketing assistant can do. Remember that each situation is flexible, and if you have more specific needs and holes to plug in your own marketing campaigns, you can always search for the VA who has that kind of flexibility.

Getting A Marketing Virtual Assistant To Fit Into Your Organization

Whether you’re C-level with a large organization to whip into shape or a solo entrepreneur making your first outside hire, hiring someone like a VA can feel a bit tricky at first. That’s why we like to paint a picture of what your life after the hire might look like:

Outsourcing your basic marketing tasks. You might have a detailed marketing plan and simply need an extra pair of hands to help execute it. That’s exactly what an experienced, skilled marketing VA can do.
Managing your e-commerce needs. If you run an online shop or otherwise have to dedicate a lot of time to the maintenance of your e-commerce marketing, you can find a VA who has experience with handling these issues. This frees up your time to focus on what you’re selling—and not always on how you’re selling it.
Marketing support. Sometimes, the marketing team just needs an extra pair of hands to make their lives easier. That’s true whether you work at a big organization or just need someone to help out with your online marketing efforts as a freelancer or solo entrepreneur.‍
Scheduling your marketing calendar. Between all of the social media tasks you have and setting up content for the blog, the scheduling of your organization’s marketing efforts can seem downright confusing at times. Having a VA to oversee the scheduling and remind you when something needs to get done can be a vital step in the process.

Virtual Marketing Assistant Working with Coffee

Why a Virtual Marketing Assistant in the First Place

We’ve tackled the “what” thus far: what an assistant does and what your organization might look like after hiring one. But what about the “why”? Why should you hire someone for marketing support on a virtual basis when there’s always the option to add someone to your team who can show up to the office in person? Here are a few ideas.

The first: cost. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hire across all industries and skill levels is a surprising $36 per hour or so. If you were to hire someone with marketing experience and specific skills as a full-time member of your team, then it might help your marketing efforts, but you’d also be surprised at the hidden costs associated with that move.

Hiring someone full-time means paying for benefits, bonuses, and the inefficiency of paying someone to be at the office even if they’re not dedicating that time to productive work. It means funding vacation time and conducting a relatively long onboarding period in which you familiarize someone with the way your business works.

Contrast that with how a VA often works. Because they can work on a full-time or part-time basis, they often get to set their own hours. That often leads to more productivity. According to some statistics, full-time employees are only really productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes per day. It’s often simpler—and easier—for an employer to outsource to a VA who works for three full productive hours per day.

That productivity, in turn, becomes money saved on your end. Some statistics suggest that a virtual assistant can save up to 79% in operating costs every year.

In short, a VA can be highly productive, highly cost-effective, and still have the marketing skills and experience required to fit in at your organization.

How to Hire a Virtual Marketing Assistant Today

Already convinced? There’s no reason you have to wonder anymore. You can get the process started today. Here’s how.

Sign up. We make it easy and simple to create an account and take the first steps toward hiring your first VA.
Connect with a customer success manager. It’s not just about hiring any old VA. We want to make sure that your virtual marketing assistant is a precise fit.
Choose and hire your VA. You’ll have plenty of options when you sign up with us, and we want to make sure that you hire someone who’s not only a fit, but a specific fit for your current needs.‍
Onboard your new VA. Now it’s time to plug a VA into your system. Make sure they know the online marketing skills you’ll need and that they can fit into your overall marketing plan.

FAQs for Hiring a Virtual Marketing Assistant

While hiring a VA can be a surprisingly intuitive way to expand your marketing team the way marketing agencies might, it always helps to know the answers to the most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) before you start. Here are the things you’ll need to know.

What does a Virtual Marketing Assistant do?

One great fear that businesses have is that a virtual marketing assistant will function like any other executive assistant—and rather than filling in as part of the marketing team, they’ll be relegated to data entry duty. But a virtual marketing assistant can help with content marketing, marketing support, lead generation, and more—so it’s important that you invite them to be a part of those processes at your company.

How do I get the virtual assistant familiarized with my company?

We like to recommend that you create an onboarding document. This document will help your VA understand which tasks they’ll be expected to take on most often. You should also be interactive with them. Ask them what they’re good at. What would they do to improve your lead generation? Your marketing support? Your most basic marketing tasks?

What are the limits of a virtual assistant?

The most obvious is that they won’t be at your office in person, so you can’t expect them to pick up the morning donuts. The physical limitations are the most obvious. But in the age of project management software and remote workers, it’s far less a limitation than you might imagine.

What tasks are appropriate to assign to a virtual marketing assistant?

Treat them like you would any employee who deserves your consideration and respect. But don’t forget that a virtual marketing assistant is going to have specific experience in this field. You might hire a more generalized virtual assistant for help with office tasks like accounting, bookkeeping, expenses, data entry, and email inbox management.

What if my assistant messes up?

Would you fire an employee for one mistake? We don’t recommend that you fire a VA for one, either. There’s nothing wrong with having a clear set of standards and high expectations for someone with a lot of virtual marketing experience, but we’d encourage you to be flexible as your assistant learns how your business runs.

What should I look for in a marketing assistant?

This answer can be complex, because it’s different for each person and each company. You might need someone to function as a sort of marketing project manager, keeping a remote marketing team on schedule and on task. In other cases, you might outsource basic marketing tasks to a virtual marketing assistant and plug them into a larger team where they won’t have scheduling and management duties. What’s important is that you make sure to match what you need with the specific skills of the assistant you hire.

How easy is it to hire a virtual assistant?

Surprisingly easy. We’ve outlined the steps above, and we’ll even assign a customer success manager to help ensure that you have everything you need to get started. Remember: a VA is about making your life easier. Don’t look at it as a chore. Look at it as your first step to a more independent way of running your business.

Should You Consider Hiring a Virtual Marketing Assistant?

In this article:

What a Virtual Marketing Assistant Can Bring to the Table

Getting A Marketing Virtual Assistant To Fit Into Your Organization

Why a Virtual Marketing Assistant in the First Place

How to Hire a Virtual Marketing Assistant Today

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