Hiring A Virtual Marketing Assistant: The Ultimate Guide

When your company is fresh and attracting many clients, you’ll rapidly realize that you need assistance. You suddenly require more content strategists, graphic designers, social media influencers, and copywriters. There is a lot of work to be done, so having an extra pair of hands would be quite helpful.

At that point, the choice to hire part-time digital marketing assistance is made. Your clientele will remain delighted while you save time and effort with the aid of marketing assistance.

This article offers insight into the world of marketing assistants and highlights some frequent errors hiring managers make.

What Is a Virtual Assistant for Digital Marketing? What Else Can They Do?

A digital marketing assistant’s role in the marketing team structure is multifaceted, hence there is no specific job description for them. Basically, entry-level marketers that work in digital marketing are typically responsible with:

• Doing market analysis
• Conducting routine tasks, such as database updates
• Doing a keyword search
• Write short-form, occasionally long-form, social media copy
• Getting presentations ready

Digital marketing assistants can assist you with the following on a deeper level:

Content Marketing

Here, you can produce and distribute educational content—including text, video, photos, and audio—to a pertinent target audience. The objective is to either establish oneself as a thought leader in that field and their go-to resource should they face difficulties or to assist that target audience in improving their quality of life in your area of expertise.

However, content marketing is a time-consuming and sophisticated marketing technique. Unless you have a virtual assistant for marketing. However, you require a helper who is familiar with the fundamentals of content marketing. Your virtual marketing assistant can publish written content, manage your content calendar, etc.

Social Media Management

Your marketing plan also depends on your social media networks. But it’s simple to get caught up in the expansion of social media and lose sight of your business as a whole. To handle your social media accounts and social media marketing initiatives, it is best to hire a marketing virtual marketing manager.

Project Management

A project manager’s job frequently calls for a particular skill for management and leadership. Virtual assistants function as personal assistants to a whole marketing team by planning marketing initiatives, assisting with remote team coordination, and more. Of course, they should be well-versed in your company’s project management tool, unless you want to teach new hires.

As we noted before, marketing assistants are not only used in these positions. They are capable of filling several positions, which is a quality that can considerably aid in the expansion of your organization, particularly if it is a small or medium-sized one.

Paying for benefits, incentives, and the inefficiencies of paying people to be at work even if they aren’t spending that time for productive work are all involved in hiring a full-time employee. It also means spending money on vacation time and putting a new hire through a drawn-out onboarding process where you introduce them to your business’s procedures.

Contrast that with how a virtual marketing assistant typically conducts business. Because they have the option of working full- or part-time, they can set their own hours, which increases productivity. According to surveys, full-time employees are actually only productive for less than 3 hours every day. Wouldn’t hiring a virtual marketing Assistant who puts in three hours of productive work each day be a better use of your resources?

By doing so, you can reduce your spending while doing more work. According to data from Best of Budgets, a virtual assistant can cut annual running costs by as much as 79%.

In other words, using a VA can be both effective and cost-effective. You acquire the expertise in online marketing and years of marketing experience required to work productively at your business.

The Recruitment Method for Virtual Marketing Assistants That Produces Real Results

You must alter your VA hiring strategy if you want to receive value for your money. How can we find virtual assistants who actually deliver results?

• Document Your Process

It takes more than just explaining your needs over the phone and hoping they are addressed to work with a VA. Before hiring, we outline our workflow, marketing software, and strategy.

We also create guidelines for the new VAs to adhere to, reducing mistakes and guaranteeing the task is finished as we want. You could even develop templates that your new VA might use. It also pushes you to think about each step you’ll need to explain to your VA, which makes incorporating someone into your operations easier.

• Fine-Tune Your Job Description

Before rushing through the job description writing process, a lot of business owners should think about the possible impacts of a poor description on candidates or fit. This procedure serves as your candidates’ initial filter. Before you even start considering applicants, it helps you cut out unnecessary information.

To write a job description that communicates what needs to be stated, be specific when stating your expectations. Remember that this is also a virtual job!

As it’s far easier to find a VA with experience using particular programs (like Facebook, Hootsuite, and Zendesk) than to have to educate someone from scratch, it’s also critical to analyze the platforms and applications you use.

Additionally, be succinct in your descriptions. You’ll be astonished to learn that it often takes candidates just 14 seconds to decide whether or not to apply for a job.

• Use a Virtual Marketing Assistant Applicant Pipeline

To effectively track and analyze how your top fractional VA candidates are performing in the applicant pool, it’s a good idea to have all of them readily available. Utilizing OTT platforms is one method to achieve that.

This allows you to track candidates clearly and visually as they move from application to interview, interview to test project, etc.

You might also automate specific tasks as candidates move through the hiring process, such as sending an email or a link to set up an interview. Then, you may politely reject inappropriate applicants with an automated, customized email, maintaining your connection in case you ever need them.

Although it might seem like extra work, developing a clear applicant management procedure paves the way for future expansion and fosters a positive candidate experience.

Pro Tip: If you found any potential candidates on a marketplace, you should interview them through Zoom or Google Meets. Search for client endorsements and any proof of the virtual assistant’s prior success.

So that both of you can understand where their strengths lie, gradually introduce your VA to your business. Giving virtual assistants too much authority too soon could lead to negative outcomes.

Monitor Your Virtual Marketing Assistant’s Performance and Track Time

Calculating the amount of work or task completion rate your virtual assistant should manage per hour might be difficult. Here comes time tracking.

You can look into time-tracking programs for yourself, even though VAs typically have mechanisms in place to track time and report it on your bills.

Give your VA as much creative freedom as you can while checking in with them periodically to see if there are any ways you can expedite the process or improve their workflows.

Sometimes, your virtual assistant might offer a more useful method of finishing the task than you did. They can even be so accustomed to working for you that they begin to provide suggestions just like a regular employee might.

Should Your Marketing Team Outsource a Full-Time or Fractional VA?

Business owners frequently give full-time employees tasks they are not qualified to perform. The need to fill staff hours because they are paid leads to higher project expenses. Or, even worse, it can result in shoddy work that presents a poor impression to clients.

You are less likely to assign tasks that require greater expertise to fractional virtual assistants. This is so that the VA only receives payment for work completed. This enables the VA to use its strongest skills while saving the firm a large amount of money. However, things don’t end there.

Fractional virtual assistants must supply their own tools because they work remotely. They may also be treated as independent contractors and accountable for their own expenses and taxes. Before hiring your virtual assistant, make sure you verify with your accountant that they do not qualify as an employee for tax purposes.

Is Employing a Virtual Marketing Assistant the Right Move?

The case for virtual marketing assistants is undoubtedly compelling. A problem that is shared is a problem that is partially solved.

It’s undeniable that you are excellent at what you do. You need assistance because you’re attracting more clients with your excellent job. Getting help when you need it allows you to complete more tasks and gain back more time in the day without having to hire someone else. At a far lower cost, you may get professional assistance when you need it.

However, obtaining this assistance might be difficult, especially given how low the entry requirements are now. It is therefore advisable to have professionals handle the work for you, such as OTT.

You get a digital agency integrated within your marketing team when you use fractional marketing at OTT. You are assigned a seasoned Customer Experience Lead (CXL), who oversees workflow, quality, skill allocation, and timelines while acting as the main point of contact between your team and ours.