When marketing trends and social media algorithms are constantly changing, a Digital Marketing Virtual Assistant may just revolutionise the way you work.
A recent survey showed that up to 82% of creative professionals in the content marketing niche have noticed a significant increase in their daily workload. This is because people are consuming online content at a faster rate than ever, so the churn of content has accelerated over the past few years 📈
This is why many marketing managers are now realising the true benefits of hiring a virtual marketing assistant 🧑💻
Recently, CEO & Founder of Outsourcing Angel, Linh Podetti, interviewed our Marketing Manager, Annie, about:
- The 4 common problems marketing managers face
- Tasks you can outsource to a Marketing Virtual Assistant
- Advantages of hiring a Marketing Virtual Assistant
- Tips for marketing managers (before you get started!)
4 common problems marketing managers face
Before we get into specific Marketing Virtual Assistant tasks, it’s important to address the common problems that marketing managers face today.
These issues can manifest at work and beyond:
1. Creative blocks
Marketing managers are creative at heart, but those creative juices need time to replenish and refill!
This means they need time to switch off between project management, social media strategies, marketing campaigns, research, reporting, and more.
Unfortunately, there’s not enough time in the day to do all these things. So it’s easy to fall into a ‘creative block’ because they just don’t have the time and brain capacity to think outside of the box.
2. Lack of focus
You’ve heard of the term ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’? Being a marketing manager involves so many moving parts; juggling all the different social media platforms is already a task in itself!
This is why lack of focus becomes an issue for marketing managers, especially those who don’t have the resources of a marketing team.
3. Finding the right tools
As a marketing manager, a typical day usually involves using a project management tool, social media content scheduler, CRM, hashtag research tool, website analytics and more.
Some don’t even have time to research the best solutions for their marketing needs ☹️
When you struggle to use the right tools, this ironically lowers the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
4. Burning out
All the other factors ultimately lead to burnout.
When you’ve got too much on your plate like graphic design or video editing, it becomes an overwhelming process. This is why so many marketing managers end up throwing in the towel and leaving their jobs.
So when you’re dealing with all of these problems, what’s the best solution? 🤔
At Outsourcing Angel, we’ve personally witnessed how a virtual marketing assistant can turn things around for marketing managers.
Tasks to outsource to a marketing virtual assistant
Many marketing managers outsource tasks to our virtual assistants based on the following traits:
- Strong communication skills
- Written and verbal English proficiency
- Attention to detail
- Great organisational skills
- Works well autonomously and with teams
- Can work in the client’s desired timezone
- Experienced in marketing and social media
We only hire marketing virtual assistants from our trusted talent pool (read more about how we hire our VAs here).
And once they’re hired, they work on the following tasks:
Virtual assistant task 1: Social media management
Outsourcing social media tasks is one of the biggest time savers for marketing managers.
Having a virtual assistant manage your social media schedule means you can outsource the following tasks:
- Basic video editing (iMovie, inShot)
- Design and source social media content (Canva, Photoshop)
- Manage social media schedule/calendar
- Schedule social media posts
- Improve online presence
- Respond to messages and comments
- Manage Facebook Groups
- Schedule YouTube videos
- Upload Instagram and Facebook stories
- LinkedIn lead generation
- Update social media reports
- Social media research
- Pinning and uploading posts to Pinterest
Virtual assistant task 2: Content creatio
Content creation doesn’t just stop at designing graphics for social media.
It also involves:
- Writing social media captions, video descriptions and blog articles
- Researching Instagram hashtags
- Designing email campaigns
- Designing social media banners, blog banners, infographics and Instagram Story templates
- Updating website content
- Preparing video transcriptions
- Basic video editing
You can easily outsource these items to a digital marketing virtual assistant. The only task you’ll have to do is to review, approve the work, or provide further feedback.
Here are some content creation samples from our social media virtual assistant pool:
Blog Banner
Instagram Stories
Hashtag Research
Virtual assistant task 3: Lead generation and Sales
Lead generation is an area that falls between marketing and sales departments.
While the sales team manages their own outreach, marketing should still invest time and resources into an effective lead generation strategy.
A really great strategy we implemented was our LinkedIn Lead Generation plan with a marketing virtual assistant.
Here’s how it goes: every time we collect a new email subscriber or a website enquiry lead, our marketing virtual assistant would connect with this person and their company’s page on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
This allows our marketing VA to actively comment and stay in touch with these leads by:
- Liking, commenting and sharing their social media posts
- Joining similar LinkedIn Groups
- Contributing useful information to these LinkedIn Groups
- Initiate a conversation via Direct Message (only when relevant)
This activity eventually converts our leads into some of our most valuable clients. It’s definitely a great example of an ‘outside-the-box’ lead generation strategy that we wouldn’t be able to implement without the assistance of a virtual marketing assistant.
Virtual assistant task 4: Executive and Administrative work
Marketing managers can benefit from having a marketing virtual assistant who can take on the admin work too!
This includes the following tasks:
- Database management
- Follow-ups & reminders
- Data entry, transcription
- Project management – schedule, templates creation, etc
- Email and calendar management
- Booking appointments and making travel arrangements
- Creating, storing and organising documents
- Creating presentations
- PDF conversion, splitting & merging
- Basic bookkeeping
- Invoicing & payment reminders
- Sending special occasion greetings (birthdays, anniversaries)
- Organising eCards and gifts
- Transcribing meeting minutes
These are repetitive tasks that are essential to the day-to-day running of your business. They can also impact your marketing efforts and deliverables!
Without someone to take on these items, you’ll end up being the bottleneck of your business.
Virtual assistant task 5: Website management
What do people see when they visit your website? Hopefully, a well-designed, and well-maintained page with lightning speed loading time! ⚡
To achieve this, you can hire a virtual assistant to manage these basic website tasks:
- Updating site plugins
- Scheduling blog posts
- Updating website products
- Updating site information
- Designing website banners
Outsourcing these tasks can be particularly important for businesses that don’t have a dedicated website developer.
Virtual assistant task 6: Client support management
Having great client support and response times ensures happy customers and more referrals. A virtual assistant can take care of incoming enquiries at a professional level, which will set your brand up for customer loyalty and lifetime value.
Some client support tasks a marketing VA can assist you with include:
- Responding to customer emails and support tickets
- Sending follow-up emails and reminders
- Adding content to your FAQs
- Updating CRM with customer information
- Compiling reports and feedback about customer satisfaction
As long as you fully equip VAs with your brand and communication style, you’ll have a great customer support representative on your side!
FREE eBOOK: 100 Tasks to Outsource to your Virtual Assistant
For a full run-down on 100 tasks a virtual assistant can do for you, a computation of hiring costs, and the benefits of outsourcing based on evidence, grab our free eBook!
Advantages of hiring a virtual assistant for marketing
What are the advantages of hiring a digital marketing virtual assistant?
Here are the standout advantages, according to business owners primarily in Australia:
More time to allocate to Marketing Strategy and Research
When marketing managers let go of repetitive and time-consuming tasks, they can allocate more time to strategy, which impacts results drastically.
Managers will be in the headspace to improve on branding and catch up on competitor and trend research too.
Learn and develop your skills
In marketing, constantly learning and upskilling sets you apart. When a marketing manager outsources and rededicates time to learning, growth will only come naturally— both for the manager and the company.
Increase collaboration
Getting an online marketing VA is a huge win on its own, because someone new pitches in on the planning and ideation processes.
With an additional person to provide insight and perspective on an idea or campaign, marketing managers get someone to bounce ideas off when coming up with new ways to build a brand or promote a product or service.
Experience work-life balance
Nothing solves professional burnout better than creating work boundaries. Outsourcing marketing efforts makes that more attainable.
Think of the overtime that marketing managers clock in to get things done. They usually sacrifice their time outside of work. With more hands on deck, managers can instead unplug when the workday is done.
Deliver better results
When all is said and done, experiencing all the above benefits will have a significant impact on the company’s bottom line.
When marketing managers get to strategise more, learn more, collaborate more, and even rest more, conversions and sales increase.
Hiring a social media virtual assistant will take time and cost money. But considering what they give back to managers, entrepreneurs and business owners, it’s a cost that will bring an immense amount of value in return.
A virtual assistant helps you become more productive, leads to more sales, profit, and focus on self-improvement, high-yield work, networking, and even self-care.
Tips for hiring a marketing virtual assistant
Here are our top tips before you start hiring a long-term virtual assistant for marketing:
1. Learn how to delegate
Marketing managers who struggle with outsourcing usually have a mindset of “It’s faster if I do it myself,” or “I’ll end up spending the same time re-doing it anyway.” As a result, they end up drowning themselves in a never-ending to-do list.
Being proactive entails building and empowering a team and delegating tasks to them. It’s normal for VAs to take some time to adjust to your workflow, brand, tone of voice and company culture. But with patience and time, they’ll start getting the hang of it! 👌
2. Create a system
You’ll need a system for managing projects, ad hoc tasks, and deliverables. If you use tools and create a structured workflow of instructions, this gives your virtual assistant clarity and confidence when they start working with you.
At the very least, you’ll need three systems— one for project management, one for file sharing, and one for communication. Here are the most common tools for each category:
| Project Management | Communication | File Sharing |
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3. Think long term
Getting the results you want from outsourcing might take more time, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be long-term results.
To get long-term results, you need to hire someone who can grow with the team and commit to a long-term working relationship. Not someone who’s just looking for a quick buck and will be out of touch for a while!
4. Invest in training your Virtual Assistant
There’s an old adage about a conversation between a CEO and the company’s CFO where the latter asks his colleague the question: “What happens when we invest in our team members and they leave?”
The CEO then responds with another question: “What happens when we don’t and they stay?”
Putting in resources to train and improve your team isn’t a company expense. It’s an investment. The more your outsourced talent grows, the better they get and the more they can do for your company. That’s why Outsourcing Angel invests in training our virtual assistants—so that our clients experience more growth.
Don’t do it alone!
Like most aspects of a business operation, marketing is best accomplished within the context of a team.
You could be the best marketing professional in your business, but if you do things alone, you’ll always be limited by what you’re able to do. Having a marketing virtual assistant, or even a team of assistants, can help multiply your marketing efforts and achieve more 📈
