"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
No matter if you’re a small but mighty marketing team of one or a robust marketing department dozens strong, 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 weekly on routine tasks like 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, preventing them from focusing on high-value, strategic work.
The good news? Virtual assistants are becoming an increasingly popular solution.
28% of executives will use executive assistants in 2024. The potential cost savings are even more compelling: hiring a virtual assistant instead of a full-time employee can save up to 78% in annual operating costs.
What Outsourced Marketing Support Can Do
Outsourcing marketing support can significantly reduce your team's workload. It frees them from time-consuming tasks while keeping marketing operations running 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 explore the key areas where a virtual marketing assistant can make a significant impact:
Content Marketing
Virtual assistants can streamline your content marketing efforts 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 crucial for online visibility, and virtual assistants can contribute by:
- Conducting keyword research
- Updating metadata
- Assisting with technical SEO tasks
- Performing backlink analysis
- Generating SEO reports
For example, eCommerce websites must implement advanced eCommerce SEO to stay competitive in this fast-paced industry. Thus, virtual assistants can be key in effectively managing and optimizing these tasks.
Social Media Management
As we often say at Prialto, marketing virtual assistants are curators, not content creators. They excel at the administrative side of social media management, 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 help optimize your customer engagement platform, ensuring timely interactions and fostering stronger relationships with your audience across various social channels.
As Maitte Loria, the Marketing Assistant to Prialto’s own marketing team, explains 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 kind of crossover can be highly effective for maintaining alignment across your sales and marketing teams. Or, you might consider hiring a sales virtual assistant instead – or in addition to a marketing VA.
Reporting
Marketing virtual assistants support your team in executing routine reporting so that you’ll have more time to analyze trends and adjust your marketing strategies. VAs support 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 handle any repetitive, process-driven tasks that are critical but shouldn’t take up valuable time, including:
- List pulling and cleaning
- Team calendar management
- Documentation
- File organization
But remember, a virtual marketing assistant can focus on administrative work, not creative work. They aren’t going to be designers or marketing strategists. They work best with repetitive, templated, or routine tasks. They can also work on a project-to-project basis, depending on the project's parameters!
Benefits of Working with a Marketing Virtual Assistant
Outsourcing administrative work to a virtual marketing assistant offers numerous advantages, all contributing to increased efficiency and the ability to refocus on strategic priorities. Here are just a few:
- Increase marketing productivity by freeing your team from repetitive tasks.
- Handle project and task management 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 a wide range of 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
If your marketing team spends too much time on administrative tasks or struggles to keep up with the demands of your marketing calendar, you may want to consider hiring a virtual marketing assistant.
Hiring a Marketing Virtual Assistant at Prialto
At Prialto, we considered how hiring virtual assistants can supercharge your marketing efforts. Our unique approach? We offer what we call a Prialto Unit—about a third of a full-time employee's capacity. You can easily add or reduce units as your needs change, giving you the perfect amount of support without the hassle of hiring full-time staff.
What really sets us apart is that when you work with us, you're not just getting an assistant. You're getting a dedicated assistant, plus their team of managers and backup support staff. Together, your team will provide seamless coverage and ongoing process refinement—your experience will improve as long as you work with your VA!
Our team is trained to handle all sorts of marketing tasks. Need help with social media, content calendar management, SEO, or reporting? We've got you covered. As your marketing needs grow or shift, we're with you, adapting our support to match.
Think about what your marketing team could achieve if they could focus on the big picture. With Prialto handling the day-to-day 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.