In tough times, marketing budgets are often the first to be slashed. But, studies show that companies that keep on marketing during a recession ultimately come out on top.

While it can be challenging to increase your marketing budget if conversions and sales are down, there's a solution: make your marketing more efficient.

Whether you're looking to build a strong online presence, streamline your digital marketing strategies, or enhance customer engagement, hiring a virtual assistant (VA) gives you the freedom and flexibility to focus on the bigger picture, and the peace of mind that the smaller details are being handled in the background.

What is a virtual assistant?

As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you know that managing everything on your plate can be tough. While having an extra pair of hands can make a big difference, the costs associated with hiring a full-time employee can be a real obstacle. Between wages, insurance, benefits, and office space, it's often just not practical.

That's where virtual assistants come in.

A virtual assistant, or VA, is an independent professional who provides administrative support to clients from a remote location, usually their home office. The role of a VA can vary widely depending on the needs of the client, but some common duties include managing emails, scheduling appointments, data entry, financial admin, online research, and marketing admin.

Rather than recruiting someone full-time to help you with a portion of your workload, virtual assistants provide support on an as-needed basis. This means that you only pay for the time they spend completing your tasks, right down to the minute.

Outsourcing to a virtual assistant also means you don't have to worry about office space, equipment, employee benefits, vacation days, or sick days. When you tally it all up, this could save you up to 90% compared to a traditional hire.

Plus, these highly flexible services can scale up and down with your business so you can easily adapt to fluctuating workloads and get the support you need at all times.

How can a virtual assistant help with your marketing tasks?

Entrepreneurs and small business owners are locked in a never-ending productivity battle. With so many jobs that need to get done, too many small business owners end up neglecting the bigger picture, like family, work-life balance, and the strategic planning needed to grow and scale their business.

Before we share some of the marketing tasks that you can outsource to a virtual assistant, it’s essential to understand what kind of duties are best suited for delegation.

A virtual assistant can take over many of the menial, repetitive, or time-consuming tasks involved in marketing. However, if you need help devising a marketing strategy, branding, or campaigns, you need the help of a dedicated marketing specialist or consultant.

Marketing tasks you can outsource to a virtual assistant

OK, so now you know the benefits and parameters around hiring a virtual assistant for marketing tasks, let’s look at the kinds of tasks you can get help with.

Market research

No matter how much you invest into your ads, no marketing campaign can hope to be effective if there’s no market research to guide your decisions.

Without this crucial step, businesses risk sailing blind, missing out on opportunities, and potentially alienating their audience.

But when you're busy juggling so many different responsibilities as a business owner, finding the time to keep up with what your competitors are doing, what your customers are looking for, and what's happening in your industry can be much easier said than done.

Luckily, that's where marketing virtual assistants can save the day.

• Understanding your target audience and customer base: How well do you know your customers? Virtual assistants can create customer feedback forms, send out surveys, monitor online reviews, and utilize analytics tools to help you gain a deeper understanding of your customers and uncover their preferences, pain points, and purchasing habits.
• Competitor analysis: A marketing virtual assistant can also gather information on your competitors' products, pricing strategies, marketing campaigns, and customer feedback. Using these valuable insights, you can identify areas of opportunity, differentiate your brand, and optimize your marketing efforts to attract and retain customers.
• Industry trends: Keeping your finger on the pulse of customer behavior, emerging trends, technological advancements, and market disruptions is crucial for your business to stay agile and adaptable. But instead of losing yourself for hours down a research rabbit hole, let your virtual assistant take care of it.

Social media management

Social media is still an incredibly valuable tool for engaging with your customers, sharing helpful information, and establishing yourself as a credible source in your industry.

But let's be honest, with so many social media platforms around these days, the time it takes to keep all those tweets, stories, and updates flowing can really add up. As a business owner, you've got a million other things on your plate, and spending ages trying to craft the perfect caption and replying to all your comments just isn't feasible.

With the right instructions, a marketing virtual assistant can help make sure none of those routine tasks slip through the cracks, while you're free to focus on your core competencies.

• Visual assets: Using simple design tools like Canva, a virtual marketing assistant can create professional-looking visual assets that reflect your brand's identity and help your social media posts stand out in a crowded and competitive landscape.
• Written copy: From catchy captions to informative descriptions, marketing virtual assistants can help make sure your business always conveys its message effectively.
• Scheduling: Experts say consistency is one of the most important factors in social media success, but it's one of the hardest to implement when there's so much else vying for your attention each day. Hiring a VA to schedule your posts makes sure that your content is regularly delivered to your audience, keeping your brand top of mind.
• Audience engagement: With plenty of instructions and guidance, a marketing virtual assistant can respond to comments and direct messages to answer simple queries, recommend products, and address customer concerns before they escalate.
• Tracking metrics: Understanding what resonates with your audience is crucial for growth, and tracking metrics such as impressions, likes, shares, and comments is a great task to outsource to a virtual assistant. These insights will help you refine your content strategy and optimize your social media presence for maximum impact.

See: 10 Social Media Tasks To Delegate To Your Virtual Assistant

Content marketing

Content is the lifeblood of your brand's online presence. But just like with social media, finding the time to keep up with a consistent content schedule can seem like a luxury you can barely afford.

So, what do you do? Do you let it fall to the wayside and risk losing out on the benefits? Or, do you invest your time and focus on content creation, leaving yourself with less time for your other priorities?

Here’s how a marketing virtual assistant can help solve this conundrum.

• Blog posts: All an experienced VA needs is clear guidance and a brief of your needs and they can research and write posts that add real value to your readers. Not only will this help drive organic traffic to your website, but it will also boost your authority within your industry.
• Visuals: It's no secret that visual content reigns supreme in the digital world. Whether it's simplifying data into easy-to-understand infographics or creating eye-catching videos, an experienced virtual marketing assistant can help your visual content stand out, reaching more people and boosting your brand's online presence.
• Podcasts: Podcasts are another fantastic way to connect with your audience, but they can be a lot of work. That's where a virtual assistant comes in handy. They can handle everything from booking guests to recording sessions and even adding some basic video editing touches, so you can focus on having great discussions.
• Content curation: It’s not just the content that you create that can help your business. A marketing virtual assistant can find and curate articles, images, videos, and more that resonate with your brand and build trust with your target audience. They can then share this content on your socials or via a newsletter.

See: How To Successfully Outsource Your Content Writing To A Virtual Assistant

Third-party outreach

Working with influencers or partnering with related brands could be just what you need to put your products or services in front of the right audience and unlock new levels of business growth.

However, there are a lot of nitty-gritty administrative tasks that go into finding and nurturing these professional partnerships. The great news is that you can easily hand them over to a virtual assistant.

• Cross-promotions: You can hire VAs to research suitable options for cross-promotions, guest posts, sponsorships, or brand mentions, saving you valuable time.
• Relationship management: Your marketing virtual assistant can reach out to potential collaborators on your behalf. Once you've sealed the deal, they can help manage these relationships by handling correspondence and keeping the flow of content and assets running smoothly between you.
• Networking: A virtual assistant can also help you find the perfect online forums, internet groups, or events where like-minded people in your industry gather. Plus, they can even lend a hand in reaching out to potential connections to start building meaningful relationships.

Email marketing

Email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective and high-return marketing channels. You can use it to engage your existing customers with cross-selling and upselling campaigns, generate leads, and convert email subscribers into paying customers.

Unlocking these benefits is easy when you hire VAs to handle your email marketing tasks.

• Campaign creation: With the right instructions, an experienced digital marketing virtual assistant can put together promotional emails, e-newsletters, or drip marketing campaigns for your subscribers, and schedule them for delivery according to your marketing plan.
• List management: No matter how great your email marketing campaigns are, it's all in vain if they're going straight to spam folders! That's why keeping subscriber lists and databases in good health is so important for small business owners. Instead of doing it all yourself, however, your digital marketing VA can regularly add new subscribers to your lists and remove any inactive or unsubscribed contacts.
• A/B testing: Whether you're devising new digital marketing strategies or fine-tuning your existing ones, it can be tricky to know exactly what works best for your audience and what doesn't. To help you get a clearer answer, your assistant can help you test out various subject lines and content, giving you the best chance of improving open rates and conversions.

See: 10 Email Tasks To Outsource To A Virtual Assistant Today

Print collateral

While they may be "virtual" assistants, that doesn't mean their support is confined solely to digital marketing tasks!

Based on the findings of recent reports, 73% of consumers say they prefer receiving print advertisements because they can read them when they want, and 82% of consumers consider print ads to be more trustworthy than digital ads. According to Top Media Advertising, a combination of print and digital can make your ad campaigns a whopping 400% more effective than just through online marketing alone.

If your business harnesses the power of print marketing, here's how a VA can help.

• Design: An experienced virtual assistant can create visually appealing marketing materials like posters, brochures, flyers, and business cards.
• Printing: Virtual assistants can also handle other administrative tasks such as researching printing options, getting quotes, coordinating with printing vendors to produce the final materials, and managing invoices.
• Distribution: Once everything's printed, the work doesn't stop there. A virtual assistant can help get your materials to where they need to be by handling the logistics with distribution companies, as well as coordinating the delivery of your materials to any interested parties and prospects.
• Inventory management: The last thing you need is to run out of posters, brochures, flyers, or business cards when you need them the most. Marketing virtual assistants can also help maintain digital records of stock levels, track usage patterns, and replenish supplies when they're running low.

Event planning and coordination

Organizing a successful event is no walk in the park. It takes a lot of hard work and careful planning for all the moving parts to come together seamlessly.

Despite the fact that hosting events can offer significant benefits, for business owners, the time and effort it takes to organize them could be much better spent elsewhere.

If you’re planning a workshop, product launch, conference, or an appearance at a trade show, a virtual assistant can provide the support you need for a successful day.

• Planning and logistics: From researching venues and coordinating vendors to organizing guest lists and sending out invitations, a VA can handle many of the behind-the-scenes tasks that help bring your event to life.
• Promotion: Whether it's generating buzz on various social platforms or reaching out to local media outlets, your marketing virtual assistant can help make sure that your event garners the attention it deserves, maximizing attendance and impact.

What's the bottom line?

Hiring a virtual assistant for marketing support can be a game-changer for your business. It's more than just getting tasks off your plate—it's about maximizing your efficiency, creativity, and overall effectiveness as a business.

With your promotional emails, market research, social media platforms, content marketing, printed assets, and events in the hands of an experienced professional, you can make the most out of your marketing efforts, reach new audiences, and focus on delivering the kind of service that will help make sure you retain your existing clients and attract valuable new ones.

So, if you feel like there's always too much to do and never enough hours to do it all, Time etc is here for you.

Since 2007, our mission has been to help business owners feel less stressed and more organized by matching them with the best virtual assistants to tackle all those repetitive routine tasks that are weighing them down.

Each step of the way, our expert team will carefully assess your needs to make sure you get the right support you need to succeed.

Ready to give it a shot?

Speak to our expert team to get started and we’ll set you up with a professional assistant based on the skills and experience you need.

Still on the fence?

You can try us out for free!