While digital marketing unlocks more than traditional marketing techniques with less investment, it is a time-consuming method and needs to be well planned. As a small business owner, you just don’t have the time to undertake keyword research or handle social media and content marketing.  What’s great is that you can hire a virtual marketing assistant to do your digital marketing at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time employee.

A virtual marketing assistant can help you do a lot more with your time and can improve productivity. Simply improve the quality of your digital marketing by integrating a virtual assistant into your marketing strategy.

The benefits of having a virtual marketing assistant

Maximizes efficiency

By hiring virtual marketing assistants, you can focus on core activities and not worry about neglecting your marketing. You cannot spend your time focusing on your marketing efforts and you also need to be careful with your spending. Instead of hiring a full-time employee to do a small job, you can hire a virtual marketing assistant to do it for you. Virtual marketing assistants are skilled in multiple areas and they have the knowledge and expertise to assist you. This will give you can focus on other tasks that boost your bottom line.

A virtual marketing assistant can manage the following tasks:

• Content creation and blogging
• SEO
• Social media posts
• Other digital marketing campaigns like Facebook and Google ads.

Helps you reduce costs

One of the major benefits of hiring virtual marketing assistants is that you save on operational costs such as office space, fixed salaries, utilities, and equipment. Additionally, because they are working remotely, you won’t have to pay for overheads like their laptop, internet connection, and other office-related expenses. Since you can hire from anywhere in the world, you can hire top virtual marketing assistants from less-expensive countries with lower salaries.

A larger pool of talent

Once upon a time, you only had access to talent that was within the specific area that your business operated in. Businesses are no longer limited to hiring in specific areas. Remote work opportunities give you direct access to talent all over the world. Your virtual marketing assistant can live anywhere in the world and still get the job done effectively and on time.

 More productive than office-workers 

Steve Pavlina, a personal development coach, states that typical office workers only spend about 90 minutes of real work per day. They spend most of their time on activities that are not work-related such as coffee and smoke breaks, chats at the water cooler, and using the office Wi-Fi for their own personal reasons. On the other hand, virtual marketing assistants are paid by the hour or by task so they make sure that they maximize their time. Therefore, hiring a virtual marketing assistant is cost-saving and turns out to be more productive in the long run.

How can a virtual marketing assistant help your digital marketing?

1 Improve your digital marketing strategy

Having a comprehensive digital marketing strategy helps you build a stronger base for your online marketing efforts. It is crucial that your virtual marketing assistants are familiar with the marketing platforms that you use so that they can provide valuable insights on how to improve your current campaigns. The virtual marketing assistants can also suggest new channels that your business can use to maximize your online reach.

2 Create a strong social media presence

A well-managed social media plan is key to effective lead generation. Your online presence should be effective in driving customers to your business. However, managing multiple social media channels is time-consuming and requires consistent effort.

Therefore, a virtual marketing assistant can help your business:

●     Effectively curate your social media presence

●     Post regularly on your social media channels

●     Keep up with the latest hashtags and trends

●     Respond to comments on your social media platforms

3 Use content marketing to increase online presence

As the saying goes, “content is king”. If you consistently produce quality content, your articles and websites will rank higher on Google and ultimately increase your online visibility. So that’s why you should hire a qualified virtual marketing assistant who will focus on creating authentic content for your digital marketing strategy.

A virtual assistant can also help you:

●    Rank higher on Google using SEO

●     Develop an email marketing strategy

●     Design website opt-ins

●     Optimize landing pages to maximize conversions

●     Analyze Google Analytics data to evaluate how campaigns are performing

What can a virtual marketing assistant do for you?

1 Email marketing

Email marketing is the preferred online marketing tool for many companies today because it has one of the highest ROIs. Your virtual marketing assistant can relieve you of the time-consuming process of engaging with your customers by developing and managing your email marketing content. Virtual marketing assistants can create your newsletters, attractive mailers, and schedule email communication on a regular basis.

2 SEO

SEO is one of the most popular ways to increase website traffic today. The content you post online is pointless if its not optimized. Once you find a virtual marketing assistant who has knowledge in SEO and can run successful SEO campaigns, you can offload more of your digital marketing tasks. Choosing the right keywords for your content is a key component of SEO. A virtual marketing assistant will conduct thorough keyword research to ensure the usage of high-volume keywords in your content. Then you’ll be providing your audience with the quality information they’re looking for.

3 Content marketing

Inbound marketers need to create spectacular content to attract visitors and convert them into customers. A virtual marketing assistant who specializes in content marketing can write engaging content, handle your content calendar, and promote your content on your social media platforms. Content creation is time-consuming and requires a lot of attention. It also includes other tasks such as tracking blog performance, managing guest posts, and responding to comments. Having a virtual marketing assistant take care of your content marketing needs is definitely worthwhile.

4 Social media marketing

Social media marketing has risen significantly in the last 10 years. Successful digital marketing requires consistent social media engagement. Social media can be used for customer service, promotions, relationship building, and building website traffic. Increasing brand awareness and building a loyal following takes a lot of time and effort. Hiring a virtual marketing assistant will benefit your business immensely as it will do routine social media tasks and get the work done without having to be monitored.

Where to find the right virtual marketing assistant?

Now that you have more knowledge about virtual marketing assistants and what they can do for your business. The next step is finding one for your business.

Where to find a virtual marketing assistant?

1 Virtual assistant agency

Virtual assistant services are basically online agencies for virtual assistants. So you don’t need to find a virtual marketing assistant yourself, they do all the work for you. Virtual assistant agencies give you full agency support and have a database of skilled and qualified virtual assistants. They will also replace a virtual marketing assistant if you find it isn’t the right fit for you.

Virtual assistant agencies such as AVirtual, and VAConnect have been meeting the demand for quality virtual assistants. They have made it easier for companies to find qualified virtual assistants that can be a good fit for their companies. When you go through virtual assistant companies, you don’t pay for individual virtual assistant jobs, you usually buy packages. These are time-based and can range from 10 – 75 hours or more. This gives you flexibility and much needed support to meet your demands.

2 Freelance marketplaces

The freelance marketplace has made it easier to find contractual workers. You can now post the tasks you need to be done on sites like Upwork and Fiverr and freelancers will respond with their information and rates. Using a freelancer gives you more options but it also has many downsides. You will have to go through a number of applications yourself. Popular posts can get between 25-100 bids. You will be forced to go through the company’s messaging system and billing tools because contractors are penalized for moving outside of the system. Because contractors have to account for fees that the marketplace charges them means that they will look elsewhere to get better rates.

It’s a no brainer to seek the assistance of a virtual assistant agency. You’ll find that once you make the initial investment, you’ll never look back!