"Do more with less" – the mantra across marketing departments everywhere. As budgets tighten and expectations soar, marketing teams are trapped in a cycle of administrative tasks and routine operations. The result? Creativity suffers, strategic thinking takes a back seat, and growth stagnates.
But what if there was a way to break free from this cycle? Enter the marketing virtual assistant. By outsourcing marketing tasks to skilled virtual assistants, marketing professionals can reclaim their time and focus on what truly matters: crafting compelling campaigns and driving meaningful engagement that converts.
Whether you're a marketing leader aiming to optimize team performance or a marketing professional looking to amplify your impact, discover how marketing virtual assistants can help you streamline processes, become more efficient, and, in essence, do more with less.
Table of Contents
- What the Data Says
- What Outsourced Marketing Support Can Do
- Benefits of Working with a Marketing Virtual Assistant
- How to Know if a Virtual Marketing Assistant is the Right Choice for You
- Hiring a Marketing Virtual Assistant at Prialto
What the Data Says
Whether you’re a small but mighty marketing team of one or a robust marketing department with dozens of members, time is your most valuable asset. Yet the data shows marketing teams of all sizes often waste significant time on administrative tasks — work that could be outsourced to a virtual marketing assistant.
According to a HubSpot survey, the average marketer spends around 16 hours per week on routine tasks, such as sending emails and organizing data. Executives also spend that amount of time on day-to-day administrative work.
These statistics highlight a critical issue: marketing professionals and leaders spend over a third of their workweek on routine tasks that could be easily outsourced, leaving them unable to focus on high-value, strategic work.
The good news? Virtual assistants are becoming increasingly popular.
By 2024, 28% of executives are expected to utilize executive assistants. The potential cost savings are even more compelling: hiring a virtual assistant instead of a full-time employee can result in annual operating cost savings of up to 78%.
What Outsourced Marketing Support Can Do
Outsourcing marketing support to a virtual assistant can significantly reduce your team's workload. It frees them from time-consuming tasks while ensuring that marketing operations run smoothly.
As Tim Parkin of Parkin Consulting notes:
“I’ve talked to many marketing directors and VPs who need trained marketing assistants who can execute campaign tasks with minimal direction. I think a lot of marketing teams could benefit from Prialto for remote marketing assistants.”
Let's dive into the main areas where a virtual marketing assistant can have a major impact:
Content Marketing
Marketing virtual assistants can significantly streamline and improve your content marketing strategies, reducing your workload and boosting your campaign effectiveness by:
- Managing editorial calendars
- Tracking tasks and deadlines
- Uploading and publishing content across multiple platforms
- Coordinating with team members and freelancers
SEO
Search engine optimization is vital for online visibility, and virtual assistants can help enhance it by:
- Conducting keyword research
- Updating metadata
- Assisting with technical SEO tasks
- Performing backlink analysis
- Generating SEO reports
Social Media Management
As we often say at Prialto, marketing virtual assistants are curators, not content creators. They excel at managing the administrative side of social media, like:
- Managing social media calendars
- Scheduling and publishing social media posts across platforms
- Responding to comments and messages
- Building templated assets from stock photos
- Managing routine social media reports
Your social media virtual assistant can boost your customer engagement by delivering quick responses and building stronger relationships with your audience across multiple social platforms.
Maitre Loria, who works as the Marketing Assistant on Prialto’s marketing team, shares more about what she does:
"Scheduling newsletters, LinkedIn posts, and blog content requires staying relevant and understanding the importance of company branding. My tip? Ensure every piece of content reflects the brand's voice and values—consistency and relevance build trust and engagement."
Project Management
Virtual marketing assistants can act as the operational backbone of your marketing department by acting as a project manager, in capacities such as:
- Working within project management software like Asana or Trello
- Creating and assigning tasks to the right members
- Sending deadline reminders
- Updating task statuses
- Coordinating remote teams
- Serving as an executive assistant for your marketing department
CRM Management
According to HubSpot research, 78% of sales leaders say their CRM effectively improves alignment between sales and marketing teams. A marketing virtual assistant can be instrumental in CRM management, helping to improve this alignment by:
- Categorizing and assigning leads properly
- Maintaining the cleanliness of your CRM
- Scheduling follow-up
- Updating customer data for accuracy
This type of crossover can be very useful in keeping your sales and marketing teams aligned. You might also think about hiring a sales virtual assistant, either alongside or instead of a marketing VA.
Reporting
Marketing virtual assistants support your team with routine reporting tasks, allowing more time to analyze trends and improve your marketing strategies. VAs help with reporting by:
- Managing marketing dashboards
- Pulling routine reports
- Maintaining spreadsheets and data sources
- Preparing data visualizations
- Keeping track of important marketing KPIs
Prospecting
Virtual assistants can support your lead generation efforts by handling prospecting tasks, such as:
- Conducting initial research on potential clients
- Organizing and updating prospect lists
- Leveraging tools for email scraping
- Assisting with outreach campaigns, including on LinkedIn
- Setting up appointments with prospects
Market Research and Competitor Analysis
Stay ahead of the curve with virtual assistants who can:
- Perform market research
- Conduct competitor analysis
- Document findings and insights
- Prepare summary reports
Routine and Templated Tasks
Virtual marketing assistants can manage any repetitive, process-driven tasks that are essential but shouldn’t consume valuable time, including:
- List pulling and cleaning
- Team calendar management
- Documentation
- File organization
However, keep in mind that a virtual marketing assistant primarily handles administrative tasks instead of creative work. They are not designers or marketing strategists. Their strengths lie in managing repetitive, templated, or routine tasks. Moreover, they can operate on a per-project basis, depending on the project's specific requirements.
Benefits of Working with a Marketing Virtual Assistant
Outsourcing administrative tasks to a virtual marketing assistant offers many benefits, boosting efficiency and enabling a renewed focus on strategic priorities. Here are just a few:
- Increase marketing productivity by freeing your team from repetitive tasks.
- Manage projects and tasks by tracking deadlines and milestones.
- Allow marketing teams to refocus on high-value work, such as campaign ideation and strategy.
- Streamline marketing operations by delegating routine administrative tasks.
- Identify and reduce ineffective marketing spend with data-backed reporting.
- Scalable and flexible support that adapts to your team’s evolving needs.
- Faster turnaround times for admin work.
- Cost-effectiveness compared to bringing on new full-time marketing hires
How to Know if a Virtual Marketing Assistant is the Right Choice for You
Virtual marketing assistants can benefit various organizations, including:
- Small teams with limited resources
- Growing companies managing multiple campaigns
- Teams juggling numerous marketing projects simultaneously
- Companies with complex marketing processes that need continuous administrative support
- Bootstrapped businesses seeking to optimize their marketing spend
Consider bringing in a virtual marketing assistant if your team is bogged down with administrative tasks or struggling to keep up with the demands of your marketing schedule.
Hiring a Marketing Virtual Assistant at Prialto
At Prialto, we considered how hiring virtual assistants can enhance your marketing efforts. Our unique approach? We offer what we call a Prialto Unit—approximately one-third of a full-time employee's capacity. You can easily add or reduce units as your needs change, providing you with the ideal amount of support without the hassle of hiring full-time staff.
What truly differentiates us is that when you collaborate with us, you're not just gaining an assistant. You're gaining a dedicated assistant along with their team of managers and backup support staff. Together, your team will deliver seamless coverage and continuous process refinement—your experience will enhance as long as you partner with your VA!
Our team is equipped to handle a variety of marketing tasks. Need help with social media, content scheduling, SEO, or analytics? We are here to assist. As your marketing needs change, we will adapt our support accordingly.
Consider what your marketing team could accomplish if they could concentrate on the big picture. With Prialto managing the daily tasks, your team can do just that.
Ready to provide your marketing team with that extra boost of support? Let's chat about how Prialto can help. It's time to do more of what you do best – and let us handle the rest.