Marketing in any organization includes thousands of variable factors and is determined by current trends and the nature of the targeted audience.
A Virtual Marketing Assistant improves the scope of multi-channel marketing strategies for organizations and for sure is bliss.
Did you know that 14% of small businesses fail because they ignore the real customer needs and due to their poor marketing skills? – (Source: Fortunly)
So, if you are also part of this stringent race to win; strategizing and delegating work to experts are mandatory.
Clearly, this blog introduces to the marketing super heroes of our generation: Virtual Marketing Assistant.
Old school marketing is dead, today everything happens online.
Digital marketing, online marketing, internet marketing, etc is the insinuation of the word ‘marketing’ for the today’s generation.
We have come a long way from word-of-mouth marketing to personalizing, automation and storytelling.
Earlier, if it was a Herculean task to identify the marketing opportunities through manual research and market surveys, today we have analytical tools that give data within the blink of an eye.
Organizations are also slowly realizing how their marketing processes are resulting in economic development or decline.
With more opportunities, tools and tighter competition; businesses are always in search for new ways to innovate and create marketing strategies that actually works.
So, when most organizations think about trends; their major focus is on exploiting internet and online opportunities.
The following sections too emphasis on how a virtual marketing assistant would help immensely in making digital and online marketing a grand success.
A SNEAK PEEK INTO 2023 MARKETING TRENDS:
- Shoppable posts have taken the world by storm
- Personalization is the new acceptable norm
- Brands utilize Influencer collaborations
- Content is the king as always
- Voice search is gaining more popularity
- Consistency in marketing efforts is a must
- Authenticity is the key to any brand success
- Ad costs are increasing
- Story-telling creates emotional connects with the target audience
Yes, marketing is multifaceted and calls for full time attention from experts who can dedicatedly work in relevance to a marketing landscape that is ever evolving.
A start-up or a medium scale business cannot always afford to hire a highly talented marketing professional.
Here is where the requirement for a virtual marketing assistant comes into the picture.
A SHORT DAILY TASK LIST OF MARKETING PROFESSIONALS
- Conducting market research
- Strategizing market plan
- Sales tasks
- Branding efforts
- Delineating marketing policies
- Building brand awareness
- Coordinating with other in-house teams
- Public relations
- Monitoring competition
- Exploring and implementing new marketing tools
- Manage marketing budget
- Calculate ROI
Clearly, for establishing a marketing department that has all the experts, demands for a considerable budget to be set aside.
Did you know that this tension can be avoided by completely relying on a virtual marketing assistant agency?
WHO IS A VIRTUAL MARKETING ASSISTANT?
A Virtual Marketing Assistant is a self-employed person contributing towards the completion of a specific marketing task assigned by an external client.
Businesses rely on these professionals to get done the marketing tasks in a cost-effective manner.
These professionals often have years of prior work experience and have had decided to give their service to multiple clients in order to enjoy the work flexibility.
Like any other freelance professionals, the charges of hiring them totally depend on individual competency, skills, nature of the project, time taken to complete a task, etc.
However, if you search popular freelancer finding online websites such as Upwork, Fiverr or Mechanical Turk; average pay of a Virtual Marketing Assistant is less than $20 dollars per hour.
This is so affordable for organizations that cannot keep aside a budget for hiring a full time marketing specialist.
SKILLS REQUIRED BY A VIRTUAL MARKETING ASSISTANT
A Virtual Marketing Assistant will often be working from a remote location and the first skill that he or she requires is the proficiency of using computers.
Second, it is crucial to have good communication skills. Obviously, a clean communication is expected of any marketing professional.
Exchange of information, scheduling a meeting, having conversations with a third party etc, these are all regular responsibilities of a Virtual Marketing Assistant.
Other Skills Required:
Time Management: Unlike an in-house marketing professional, a Virtual Marketing Assistant deals multiple clients and project.
These professionals will always have an elaborate checklist and time limits.
Flexibility: A Virtual Marketing Assistant should be flexible enough to accommodate client decisions.
Reliability: As the services are provided remotely, businesses will choose only a reliable assistant to entrust their marketing tasks.
As part of project completion, businesses would require to share various credentials and discreet data with their chosen marketing assistant. Such information in the hands of a wrong person will lead to utter chaos.
Marketing Knowledge: Updating one’s knowledge on marketing trends, tools and technology are indispensable when it comes to becoming a marketing professional.
A Virtual Marketing Assistant should be keen on staying up to date with the industry news.
The person should be knowledgeable to suggest solutions to a client’s situation and that too the best strategy to stay ahead of the competition.
Quick Thinking: Marketing is truly a fast-paced sector calling for professionals who is witty enough to handle any critical situation and can take risks.
A Virtual Marketing Assistant should be capable of taking quick and right decisions.
Good Communication: It’s a fact that only a people’s person can make a good marketer.
It is all about dealing with a set of prospects, targeted audience and a society as a large.
A global perspective and great communication skills will help Virtual Marketing Assistants find better ways to take each project to success.
Writing skills are mandatory because a wide range of projects handled by a Virtual Marketing Assistant would require it.
From writing emails to creative scripts to social media posts or even to generate a simple one liner for advertisements, writing skills are a requisite.
MARKETING CHORES OUTSOURCING
You can now stop juggling between tasks that are so mundane and concentrate more on core business activities that yield profit for your business.
Yes, with the help of a Virtual Marketing Assistant, you can now complete some of the most time taking marketing chores.
Well, you don’t even have to micromanage these specialists and instead, they will give you far-fetched winning strategies and set right achievable goals.
But before anything, you have to be careful enough to understand what kind of tasks that can be outsourced to a Virtual Marketing Assistant.
Very often, the agencies that provide virtual marketing services or a virtual assistant who is a marketing specialist, take up clerical and marketing project management chores.
Here is a short list of tasks that can be outsourced:
- Market/product/ Competitor research
- Database Management
- Keywords Research
- Handling SEO
- Preparing Marketing Reports
- Blog Management
- Creating marketing campaigns
- Email marketing
- Track trends
- Monitoring ROI
- Social media marketing
- Search engine marketing
- Real estate marketing
- Networking
- Digital marketing tasks
- Website marketing
- CRM maintenance and much more
OPPORTUNITY FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
If you are a small business owner or a struggling startup, you need to find your market and promote your brand more than an established organization.
On an immediate note, try and outsource the following task to a Virtual Marketing Assistant:
Market Research: To gather information that is so valuable takes time.
It is not the practice of pinpointing a set of assumptions or jotting down the ongoing trends; a Virtual Marketing Expert will indulge in understanding the market and creating a space for a brand in it.
Social Media Management: In 2022, 3.6 billion people are having presence on social media.
A Virtual Marketing Assistant can find life-changing digital accessibility and connection with the prospects.
As a startup, your organization cannot afford to have an in-house professional to handle only social media pages.
The in-house employees focus will be on primary revenue generating chores.
Content Creation: As a new brand in the market, you would want to create information of all sorts and send it to public.
Content creation can easily be done by a Virtual Marketing Assistant.
These independent professionals can help you in building marketing awareness and a name for your brand.
Hack the market growth with viral strategies. For this you definitely need an expert’s guidance.
OPPORTUNITY FOR BIG BUSINESSES
Even if yours is an established firm, outsourcing marketing tasks to an expert will only bring value additions.
As a part of streamlining processes or automation; one can even ask for expert advices from these highly experienced professionals.
Here are the marketing tasks that big businesses can outsource:
- Research on newer marketing strategies
- Monitoring and managing multiple social media channels
- Analytics
- Managing internal and external communication
- Plan for increased visibility leading to better sales outcome
- Collaborating with influencers
- Online re-targeting
- Budgeting
- Digital marketing assignments
- Marketing innovation
- Quality Checks
- Finding ways to improve brand values
- Supporting in-house marketing team with project completion and a lot more.
BENEFITS OF HIRING A VIRTUAL MARKETING ASSISTANT
Enhanced Productivity: Milan Kundera, a writer and a playwright had once rightfully said that a business has just 2 major functions
Marketing and Innovation.
If one is able to align tools, talent and processes that help completing all the marketing functions, then businesses can enhance productivity.
This is what a talented Virtual Marketing Assistant will offer; a chance to complete marketing tasks in an efficient manner resulting in operational excellence.
Cost Effectiveness: If you are a company owner, you know how much additional budget you should calculate for each of your in-house employees.
Transportation allowance, stationary, food coupons, etc. Well, but a Virtual Marketing Assistant doesn’t need any extra allotment of money and other resources.
These professionals do not expect anything other than what they charge initially for the services.
As a remote external team member of your marketing arm, they charge truly very reasonably.
Generally, remote employees are much more productive than in-house employees.
Other potential benefits of a remote workforce for an employer over cost effectiveness are reduced payroll cost, reduced absenteeism and quality output.
World Class Talent: Not everyone can afford to hire all top marketing professionals under 1 roof.
For instance, a social media manager will have a set of knowledge that a product marketing manager lack.
So, now the question is who to consult or hire to get the best of every marketing service.
An outsourcing agency or a Virtual Assistant firm will provide full-fledged Virtual Marketing Assistance at a packaged cost.
These professionals chosen by top agencies not only have high degrees from popular institutions, but also hold experience working for companies around the globe, making them have marketing tips and trick on the tip of their fingers.
24/7 Support: Though many organizations claim that they are serving 24/7, but most of them have it added to their brochure only for the namesake.
I am sure all of us have this experience calling a customer care or marketing department at odd hours, waiting for long hours for someone to pick the call and talk.
Either someone will definitely pick the call and give rude replies or nobody will pick at all.
24/7 is an assurance for customers and others that their problems or need will be solved or served at any time of the day.
With the help of a Virtual Marketing Assistant, businesses can strategize to gain happy customers and more sales around the clock.
These Marketing Assistants will be an added advantage to any firms looking for business expansions in multiple countries.
To understand the marketing opportunities and vibes of the public demand, only a marketing professional belonging to a particular country would come as an aid.
For the rest of them the knowledge is gained through media of various kinds and this may not always be right.
To know what is happening in Afghanistan or say Morocco, marketing knowledge and information is not enough; one should have experience dealing with Afghan or Moroccan people and market.
Legal compliances can also get a business into trouble, if not careful enough.
So, it is always best to outsource the marketing tasks to those virtual assistants of a particular geographical area in which a business expansion is planned.
Improved Work Quality:
Project management is a science in itself.
A small organization cannot always afford to spend resources in checking, rechecking and bringing out an almost zero error project output.
However, this is not case with an agency with a full-fledged Virtual Marketing Assistants wing.
They adopt systems and processes that have multiple quality checks, dedicated professionals having eye-for-detail, scrutinizing each step with utter carefulness and a single point of communication, with whom the customer can discuss everything about the project at any point of the day.
It is definitely not how many employees an organization has in-house for sales and marketing but it is about how efficiently the team handles it.
Often, these agencies automate the task flow with project management tools.
From customizable task calendars to ways to reduce emails sent between people in the team; innovation in project management tools has no end.
These tools will also help the experts in having greater control over project versions management, simplified document proofing and approvals, ways to manage the resources better, time and budget tracking etc.
Most of these tools come with a high cost, which can be afforded by Virtual Marketing Assistant agencies as they are dealing with multiple clients at a time.
What is to be noted is that an agency that provide Virtual Marketing Assistant services may or may not offer other virtual assistant services.
For example a virtual assistant agency like Ossisto will offer more than marketing services.
For a reliable price, one can opt for bulk services and that too of high quality.
More Me Time:
Entrepreneurship is a bumpy road. 24 hours in a day may not be always enough to complete the tasks on the to-do list, then how will one who holds an important position in any organization take time for himself or herself.
‘Me Time’ is so important for increasing the happiness quotient. A Virtual Marketing Assistant is a savior for people struggling to manage stress factors.
A few of the tasks that stress out a Chief Marketing Officer or those busy professionals in a marketing sector are:
- Making important decisions
- Creating presentations
- Strategizing marketing road maps
- Calculating marketing budget
- Tracking Key Performance Index (KPIs)
- Designing marketing campaigns
- Attending conferences
- Presenting Annual Marketing Reports
- Suggesting improvements
- Keeping up-to-date with latest technology
From the above given list of tasks, there are certain duties that can be performed by the marketing leaders, and there are tasks that can be done by Virtual Marketing Assistants.
Well, delegation of tasks to an assistant will reduce the burden drastically.
We live in an era in which Mental Health is discussed openly because people experiencing stress has reached its upper limit. In such a scenario, professionals should come up with conscious ways to reduce stress factors.
Delegating is the easiest ways to escape from being stressed out.
Gallop Wellbeing Index reported that 45% of entrepreneurs are stressed compared to 42% of other workers.
An alarming situation, isn’t it?
Creativity, Personalization and Story-telling:
Today, any business focusing on marketing success is not trying to copy what the competitors are doing.
Instead, they are trying to be authentic, creative and personalizing information for the targeted public.
An agency that provides Virtual Marketing Assistant services will offer dedicated marketing support by specialists who can create better connections with the audience through unique brand story-telling and personalization.
Making each brand narratives striking will result in faster brand recognition and improved sales.
Global Companies like Coca-Cola stopped relying on bigger agencies and using up huge budget to showcase creative stunts.
In fact the aim is to concentrate more on personalized content.
Creativity after certain extend becomes too evident that it’s a highly paid marketing stunt.
The audience has become smarter these days, so marketing content weighs above anything else.
The fat and fertile idea to reach marketing success summit is to shape the content and creativity around customer/ audience expectations.
Creativity, personalization, story-telling and every other marketing effort should rally towards an intention to open-up a great communication channel between the brand and the information receivers.
Brand stories that add value to people’s lives will easily be accepted.
But creating personalized brand stories for people takes time and this is why businesses should rely on a Virtual Marketing Assistant.
They will provide the new world digital consumers with trendy, memorable and share-worthy content, while the in-house professionals can concentrate on revenue-generating primary tasks.
GREAT MARKETING CHALLENGES OF OUR TIMES AND SOLUTIONS
CHALLENGE #1
Pandemic and post-pandemic struggles
The year 2022 has seen the highest number of people working from home and from their comfort zones.
The Coronavirus pandemic has distorted our idea of how a workforce should function.
Sales and marketing professionals too had to resort to remote communication model to fix meetings and make deals.
Traditional marketing firms have taken a big hit.
Online marketing and social media ad spend has increased.
The billion dollar question is what will happen to those small and medium organizations that are not good with modern technology?
Solution
Not sure when the economy will be free from the chokehold of the Virus.
However, any business can rely on a Virtual Marketing Assistant to continue its marketing efforts.
By doing so, there will be no tension of dealing with enormous costs demanded by digital marketing or advertisement agencies and professionals.
All of the Virtual Assistant agencies that offer wide range of services aim to give the ultimate convenience for its customers along with an opportunity to save money.
CHALLENGE #2
Access to Expert Solutions
If a company wants to hire a marketing professional, there will be hundreds of them waiting to get hired.
However, how many marketing professionals can yield an improved result?
A debatable topic isn’t it?
For success, any organization would require assistance from a full-spectrum marketing team or an agency’s help.
If an organization is planning to hire a single person to do the entire digital marketing task, it is foolishness.
A content writer may not be able to do what an Search engine optimization expert does or a graphic designer may not be able to do what a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) manager does.
A small or medium sized organization cannot afford to hire all the specialists under one roof.
Solution
To win the online competition, it is advisable to rely on Virtual Marketing Assistants and Virtual Digital Marketers of any Virtual Assistant Agency.
More than cost-effectiveness, businesses gain confidence as they will get an extended remote team of experienced professionals to handle their marketing needs.
One of the important digital marketing report published online by Smart Insights in the year 2022, around 45% of organizations don’t have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy.
This shouldn’t be the case with your organization.
Consider Virtual Marketing Assistant.
CHALLENGE #3
Information Overload
As of December 2020, there were 1.7 billion registered websites. (Source: Techjury)
Definitely, we live in an era of information overload.
Also, marketing trends list change every year.
What one set of marketers believe and suggest may not be approved by another set of marketers.
It is tricky; there is no specific standardized step to be followed in the marketing journey.
No books or the so called marketing gurus can pinpoint and tell an entrepreneur, what would work for him or her.
To filter out information, one needs to be aware of the economic, political, technological and social realities.
Not everyone can do that.
Not every marketer, an organization hires would dedicatedly give reasons on why a strategy should be made actionable or not.
Look back at your entrepreneurial journey, how many times have you nodded ‘yes’ to a marketing plan just because your digital marketing person suggested?
How many times have you posted a business blog just because a marketing guru said it is a trending topic?
How many times you were disappointed with failed online strategies, despite spending a great budget?
Information overload is nothing but causing confusion.
Solution
One of the important key to any marketing success is ultimate patience.
If time is not in favor, delegate the tasks to an expert Virtual Marketing Assistant.
Most of them ignore fad and suggest custom solutions.
Well, information overload will worsen the quality of decision making.
So, these remote strategists are smart enough to give reasons on why certain marketing plan would work for certain businesses and why it would fail for another business.
This comes from years of experience working with multiple clients from various sectors.
If you have thought that a VA is a freelancer with no degree or experience, it was a misconception.
Most of them are advanced than your regular in-house marketing professional.
VIRTUAL MARKETING ASSISTANT CHECKLIST
Now that you learned who Virtual Marketing Assistants are, their roles and responsibilities and how these professionals would be a value additions to your organization, it is time to decide whether you need to opt for the services or not.
Just because everybody does, you don’t have to follow their path.
Well, here is a check list. If your answer is ‘yes’ to the most of the questions listed below, then get virtual marketing assistance without any delay.
- Is developing your organization’s marketing plan, a part of your business vision?
- Are you worried over marketing budget and hiring marketing specialists?
- Are you not aware of the current marketing trends and ways to utilize the neo-modern ideas in favor of your business?
- Are you stuck in your office doing more than you can actually do?
- Are you trying to have a good work-life balance?
- Have your previous marketing plans failed despite multiple efforts?
- Does your team struggle with creativity, innovation and story-telling?
- Do you yearn for an additional opinion at every crucial step?
- Have you recently realized that for overall organizational progress, marketing success is unavoidable?
- Are you ready to entrust all the marketing tasks with a trustworthy remote workforce with deep knowledge in marketing and its applications?
CONCLUSION
The future of marketing is bleak and unpredictable. The right choice would be to rely on professionals who can withstand any challenges on the way.
Whether yours is a small, medium or big organization, outsourcing tasks to a Virtual Marketing Assistant would only make your company see right opportunities ahead.
Simplicity is not too simple.
This is what you can expect from your Virtual Marketing Assistant.
Complex processes will get broken down, simpler messages will be sent to right audience and the marketing flow will get consistent.
If you don’t know where to hire some of the best Virtual Marketing Assistants or you want to explore more about this subject, write to us
Be ready to embrace a way of marketing that don’t feel like marketing at all. A Virtual Marketing Assistant will show you authentic ways to earn more hearts and mind for your brand.
| “Brand equity is the sum of all the hearts and minds of every single person that comes into contact with your company.” — Christopher Betzter, Brand Strategist |
