When it comes to marketing, there’s no off switch. It’s a to-do list without end.
You can’t check everything off and sit back to take a break. There are always social media posts that need publishing, email lists to communicate with, and content to create.
Bottomless to-do lists are terrifying and it’s hard to be consistent with that kind of pressure.
Yet you need to be consistent, because consistency in marketing makes your brand worth 20% more. Unpredictable marketing defeats itself.
As a business owner, how do you manage it all when so many other things are pulling at your attention? Running a business and creating consistent marketing at the same time is almost impossible.
The good news is that there’s an easy solution: a marketing assistant. They can take that pressure off of your plate and bring your marketing output into a consistent and effective range.
The trick is to hire the best marketing assistant. There are three angles you need to keep in mind to make that happen.
Write The Best Marketing Assistant Job Description
To start, you have to get the job description right.
Use a template to get you started if you have to, but don’t take a cookie cutter approach—you’re trying to attract marketers after all! You know your company best.
Writing the job description is a great exercise, because it forces you to think about what you really want and need. It also determines which candidates will ultimately apply for the position. Those candidates are looking for a few things:
- An overview of your company culture to provide a basic understanding of underlying principles, so candidates can see early on if they’d be a good fit
- Specific responsibilities or job duties they’ll be expected to perform
- Requirements necessary to complete those duties successfully
- Expectations on commitment, quality of work, and team culture
Here’s the thing: you need to define requirements instead of just listing responsibilities and job duties.
It’s the requirements that let candidates know whether they qualify. What passed for acceptable completion of a task somewhere else may not meet your expectations, and candidates need to know that.
The job description may start with a few introductory paragraphs that cover these broadly. It’s the three-minute elevator pitch about your company and the job. From there, you list the specifics.
Responsibilities might include:
- daily coordination with other departments,
- supporting team members or executives,
- preparing promotions and presentations internally and externally,
- updating spreadsheets or databases with related data,
- working directly with clients,
- creating and managing copy for the company’s online and print properties,
- staying ahead of trends related to marketing,
- and general office work.
Requirements might include:
- a specific education level or degree,
- a set amount of experience working in the marketing field,
- experience using software or other tools your team relies on,
- and great interpersonal skills.
These are the basics, of course. You’ll probably have some responsibilities or requirements that are unique and necessary to your organization that go beyond these.
Know What Marketing Assistant Qualifications To Look For
Now that you have the tasks, and what’s required to fulfill those tasks, you’re looking at overall qualities you want your marketing assistant to have.
A bare minimum list of qualifications for a marketing assistant might look like this:
- Great communication skills, particularly written
- Good time management
- Organized
- Self-motivated
- Detail oriented
But here’s a question: why would you want the bare minimum for your marketing assistant?
Wouldn’t you rather have someone who has been doing the work for more than seven years, at least? Someone with experience in Fortune 500 companies? Someone with the ability to be flexible and adapt quickly to how you work? Someone who brings qualifications to the table you didn’t even think to ask for?
The best marketing assistant qualifications should be apparent on day one, and they should far exceed the minimums. Take that basic list and think about adding:
- Content creation, including managing guest post content and coordinating multiple writers.
- Social media analytics and ad campaigns.
- Managing all social accounts, from content to list management to setting up new accounts.
- Ability to research and stay on top of trends.
- Ability to research for content creation, and to find images that generate engagement.
- Optimal scheduling and automation of all content across all platforms, including email and marketing materials.
- Creation of landing pages optimized for engagement.
- Reaching out and engaging with influencers.
- Complete blog management, including WordPress, from setting up themes and features to managing permission settings.
This isn’t a complete list, but you get the idea. It’s specific, and it’s finely tuned toward generating growth and engagement through your marketing from the start.
That list, by the way, is only some of what we require from our marketing assistants at Boldly.
What Should A Marketing Assistant Do From Day One?
In a typical scenario, the first day with your new marketing assistant might be spent filling out forms with HR. There’s onboarding and team training, and you might spend the day showing them the basics and hoping it won’t be too long before you really reap the benefits of your new hire.
But in the back of your mind, you wish you could get someone ready to go right away.
Someone who understands the tech, who already knows the dos and don’ts of social media. Someone who knows how email lists, and list segmentation, work. Someone who knows the language of marketing and how to translate it from team members to clients. Someone used to working with a team and communicating what’s happening. Someone who adapts quickly to new settings and is productive almost right away.
A traditional hire isn’t always ready to burst out of the gate on day one, no matter how talented they are. Red tape, forms, explanation of systems—that all takes time. You hire knowing you’re a week or more from full speed marketing.
With that in mind, let’s go back to that earlier question: why would you settle for the bare minimum when it comes to a marketing assistant?
If your answer was because of your budget, we can solve that problem and check the boxes on everything else too.
At Boldly, we have those Fortune 500 level remote marketing assistants, the ones with the serious qualifications who start making a difference on day one. Even better, they are completely within your budget because of the subscription staffing model.
What you need and what fits in your budget determines how much time you subscribe for. We match you with an ideal marketing assistant, best suited to your personality and organizational culture, and that’s it.
You can be off and running almost right away, and you can get started now.
