A marketing virtual assistant (VA) can assist small businesses in optimizing their campaigns for maximum online visibility and customer engagement. Similarly, this specialized VA can lend a helping hand to marketing managers to keep up with all their deliverables. If you are one of those who need assistance, we've put together the six significant functions you can delegate to a marketing virtual assistant. Let's begin!
Common Problems of Small Business Owners and Marketing Managers Before diving into the specific marketing virtual assistant tasks, it is crucial to identify the common problems many marketing managers and business owners face today. Likewise, you must know how these issues manifest at work and beyond.
1. Creative Block Marketing managers are naturally creative. However, creative juices also need time to replenish. This means taking a break from all the project management, social media management, marketing campaigns, and daily administrative tasks. When there is limited time to do all these tasks simultaneously, you may not think and act creatively.
2. Lack of Focus If you are an owner of a growing business, you tend to juggle different roles at the same time. This is why lack of focus can become an issue, especially if you don't need the means to create a Marketing Team.
3. Burn Out Having too much on your plate or wasting time doing things that are not your strengths can cause burnout. So, if you need graphic design or video production assistance, you might need to outsource the tasks to a VA who can do these things on your behalf.
4. Finding the Right Tools Zoom, Trello , Slack, Asana, Monday, Hubspot, WordPress, and the list of automation tools keeps growing! As a marketing manager, there are so many tools to manage. A usual day involves using a project management tool, CRM , content planner, keyword research tool, web analytics, and more. When you need help to use these tools, it ends up being a challenge that ironically reduces the effectiveness of your efforts.
Tasks to Delegate to a Marketing Virtual Assistant Need help in keeping up with marketing tasks? A marketing virtual assistant can be your reliable partner. They can handle common burdens and allow you to focus on more extensive strategic initiatives.
1. Social Media Management Outsourcing social media tasks can be one of the biggest time savers for Marketing Managers. Having a Virtual Assistant manage your social media schedule means that you can outsource the following tasks:
Design and source social media content (Canva, Photoshop) Basic video editing 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 3. Content Creation Content creation continues beyond 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 projects to a digital marketing virtual assistant. The only task you'll have to do is review and approve the work or provide further feedback, and your VA can take care of the rest.
4. Lead Generation and Sales Lead generation is an area that falls in between the marketing and sales departments. While the sales team can manage its outreach, marketing should still invest time and resources into an effective lead generation strategy to close the link between all online inquiries and subscribers.
For example, whenever you receive a website inquiry lead, your Marketing Virtual Assistant will connect with this person and their company's page on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. This allowed the Marketing Virtual Assistant to comment and stay in touch with these leads by actively:
Liking, commenting, and sharing social media posts Joining similar LinkedIn Groups Contributing helpful information to these LinkedIn Groups Initiate a conversation via Direct Message 5. Administration Admin VAs are highly requested, and marketing managers can benefit from having a marketing virtual assistant who can also take on the admin work, too. This includes the following tasks:
Database management Project management Data entry and transcription Email and calendar management Booking appointments and making travel arrangements Follow-ups and reminders Creating, storing, and organizing documents Creating presentations Transcribing meeting minutes Basic bookkeeping Invoicing and payment reminders Sending special occasion greetings These repetitive tasks are essential to the day-to-day running of the business but can impact your work efficiency and marketing deliverables. Without a marketing virtual assistant to take on these tasks, you'll become the bottleneck of your business.
6. Website Management What do people see when they visit your website? Hopefully, it will be a well-designed, well-maintained page with lightning-speed loading time!
Hiring a VA to manage these basic website tasks can free marketing managers from things like:
Updating site plugins Scheduling blog posts Updating website products Updating site information Designing website banners Outsourcing these tasks can be valuable for businesses that need a dedicated website developer.
7. Client Support Management Having excellent client support and response time ensures happy customers and more referrals. So, having a VA to handle incoming inquiries efficiently will set your brand up for customer loyalty and lifetime value.
The client support tasks that a marketing virtual assistant can also assist you with include:
Responding to customer emails and support tickets Sending follow-up emails and reminders Updating CRM with customer information Adding content to your FAQs Compiling reports and customer feedback As long as you train your virtual assistant to learn everything about your brand and communication style, you'll have a great customer support representative!
Final Thoughts Many advantages come with hiring a virtual marketing assistant. By delegating critical tasks to a marketing virtual assistant, you can maximize your time and focus on the strategic aspects of scaling your business. With a skilled VA handling the day-to-day marketing, you can develop winning campaigns, analyze results, and build stronger client relationships.
