Many businesses choose to hire virtual assistants to manage time-consuming and repetitive administrative tasks. However, it is possible to expand the role of virtual assistants to include marketing tasks. Some businesses opt to train their virtual assistant in marketing skills, but it is more effective to hire a second person to serve as a dedicated virtual marketing assistant. This is similar to the idea of having a secretary or personal assistant and a separate sales manager, as each role requires different skills. By hiring separate individuals for each task, businesses are more likely to achieve greater success and value. There are many benefits to hiring a dedicated marketing assistant, and in this article, we will explore exactly how your business can benefit from doing so.
Understanding the Role of a Virtual Marketing Assistant
A Marketing Assistant is a professional who is contracted to provide administrative and project management support to a company’s marketing department or manager, but works from a remote location. While a company may not hire a virtual assistant for developing sales strategies or performing detailed market analysis, these professionals can help marketing managers and business owners tackle time-consuming tasks that can be a distraction during marketing campaigns.
When we spoke to Adam from Ignite SEO, he highlighted the many benefits of hiring a virtual marketing assistant. These trained professionals can provide remote support for tasks such as social media management, competitor research, target audience research, and data entry, among others. The proven benefits of hiring a marketing assistant include boosting productivity, saving resources, and expanding the customer base.
In essence, a virtual marketing assistant is suitable for handling repetitive marketing project tasks that can be delegated, freeing up the marketing team’s time to focus on more complex tasks. If you’ve been considering hiring a marketing assistant, it could be a good option for you.
The Importance of Productivity in Marketing Teams
Marketing is a crucial aspect of every business that helps promote their products and services to generate regular revenue. It involves a lot more than just finding new customers and requires a significant amount of research and data analysis. Businesses compete with each other to win the loyalty of their target audience, and marketing is the chief strategist in this competition. This means that the field of marketing is constantly evolving, developing new approaches to reach and establish new markets. With modern technology and communication methods, marketing has drastically changed in the last decade.
Core Requirements for a Virtual Marketing Assistant Job Description
Whether you’re searching for a marketing assistant or creating a job post, it’s important to have a clear idea of the marketing assistant duties you need to prioritize. Some of the core requirements for a marketing assistant job description include email marketing, data entry, online market research, social media marketing, search trend analysis, content writing, and online ad campaign experience. You may need to hire multiple marketing assistants to ensure all these skills are covered, which can be a challenge.
Fortunately, outsourcing companies like Outsource Workers can help simplify the hiring process. They have a pool of skilled virtual marketing assistants to choose from and can help you find the right person for the job. They can also handle the hiring process for specialized skills so that you can remain focused on your marketing project.
Certain skills should be sought after when recruiting a virtual assistant. These include excellent attention to detail, strong decision-making skills, a passion for learning and excelling, social media management, project administration, time management, and proficiency in information technology.
The Impact of Digital Technology on Marketing Strategies
Digital technology has changed the way companies approach marketing. With the internet connecting around 7.1 billion people globally, businesses are faced with the challenge of reaching these audiences and directing them to their website.
To take advantage of online marketing opportunities, the first step is to create a website as the company’s virtual storefront. Next, companies need to select the right digital tools to drive traffic to their website.
There are several popular strategies to choose from, such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, email marketing, link building, pay-per-click advertising, blogging, and online paid advertising. The key to creating an effective digital marketing campaign is to have a clear understanding of business goals. Although planning is critical, the hard part is executing the strategy.
Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Marketing Assistant for Your Business
Virtual marketing assistants are now being hired for more than just clerical duties and personal assistant services. As marketing has become more specialized and shifted to digital technology, companies are seeking experienced digital marketers who can contribute to the team without breaking the budget.
Hiring an online marketing assistant can result in significant cost savings for a company. While an experienced marketing assistant or manager in an office can cost at least AUD$30 per hour plus benefits, an online marketing assistant typically charges an hourly rate of AUD$7 to AUD$10 per hour without benefits. This results in a potential cost savings of up to 80%.
Moreover, a marketing assistant can boost productivity. Companies only pay for the hours worked by a marketing assistant, and their work is limited to the scope detailed in their contracts. Marketing assistants have the knowledge and experience in running digital marketing campaigns and can manage and implement these campaigns during off-hours, ensuring projects can continue with forward momentum almost 24 hours a day.
In digital marketing, consistency is essential to achieve online visibility. Marketing assistants can assist with implementing social media strategies, making postings and shares, and updating blogs consistently during key hours of the day. Companies can schedule these posts before the rest of the team arrives at the office, ensuring that their social media presence is maintained even during off-hours.
Another critical aspect of social media marketing is engagement with followers. Marketing assistants can help monitor and respond to comments and inquiries, presenting an opportunity to highlight the company’s expertise and credibility.
Lastly, bridging the time lag between an inquiry and a response is crucial. Companies need to issue prompt responses, and marketing assistants can monitor incoming queries, prioritize them, and respond themselves or list them in priority order for other team members to address. This ensures that time is used efficiently and that prompt responses are provided to clients.
Marketing Tasks That Can be Delegated to a Virtual Assistant
To improve your marketing team’s productivity, you can delegate repetitive and time-consuming tasks to a virtual assistant. These tasks can be identified by meeting with your marketing team or by reviewing your marketing-related business processes. The more tedious tasks that are handed over to a virtual assistant, the more time your core marketing team can focus on tasks that generate revenue for the company.
Tasks that can be given to a virtual assistant include formatting and posting blog posts, managing social media accounts, responding to social media inquiries, monitoring email marketing campaigns, writing content for blogs and posts, managing Google and Facebook ad campaigns, researching competitor websites and social media, designing marketing materials, video editing for YouTube channels, and managing website SEO.
There are other tasks that a business might need help with to manage leads and existing customers. Once you have started working with a virtual assistant, you can give them more responsibilities and even hire additional assistants to help with other tasks.
Instead of going through the time-consuming process of posting a marketing assistant job and screening candidates, consider hiring a virtual marketing assistant. This type of assistant can help ensure that your digital marketing strategies are implemented and running on schedule, freeing up more of your time for a better work-life balance and increased productivity. With a marketing assistant, you can test the impact of having additional support without the hassle of a lengthy hiring process.
