As you continue to scale the ladder of success, you’re probably noticing that your list of responsibilities, to-dos and should-dos are growing faster than you can clear them from your list. This realization is usually when solo executives start pruning – a prioritization of tasks to pinpoint the essential and separate the wheat from the chaff.
One of the most indispensable responsibilities is marketing. You can’t get around it: in today’s information age, even (or perhaps especially) a one-man business needs sales pages, a content platform, affiliate programs, email newsletters, promotions, social media management, and other systems in place to market and grow your business every day.
Automation software like Sumo and Hubspot make life so much easier, but what’s even better than automating the marketing for your business? Tasking a virtual assistant to automate it all of it for you!
The Key: Choose A Business-Grade Virtual Assistant
When it comes to the deployment of all your marketing tools, not just any virtual assistant will do. Enter the new breed of virtual assistant: the skilled business-quality VA with the experience to implement and manage even the more complex tasks on your list.
Business-grade virtual assistants have specialized knowledge and experience far beyond the basic email management and scheduling that your average virtual assistant company offers. For marketing automation, you need a virtual assistant who has a background in marketing and is familiar with marketing software, and why and how it works.
What a Business-Grade Virtual Assistant Can Do for Your Marketing
As a solopreneur, no one knows your business better than you do. Even after you hire a business-grade VA, you’ll continue to manage your company’s marketing by scribing newsletters, penning blog posts, and strategizing newer, better ways to market for success.
Your assistant puts your strategy into action by managing implementation.
Here are just a few things marketing things your virtual assistant can do:
- Schedule Blog Posts: If content marketing is a key part of your playbook, gone are the days you have to upload posts, add photos, select categories and tags, identify target keywords, key in meta descriptions, and SEO-optimize your posts. Now, all you have to do is share your post title and text with your virtual assistant, and she does the rest. She can schedule your posts in advance so they are ready to publish on a given day.
- Schedule Email Newsletters: You write your newsletter text, your VA does the rest. She can log into your email list management software (AWeber, MailChimp, Infusionsoft etc.) to input text, add new call-to-action buttons, update your mailing list, and schedule your newsletter to send on the day of your choosing.
- Publish Sales Pages: If just thinking of your CMS gives you a headache, your VA is the solution. If you have new sales pages, landing pages, or other marketing collateral to publish on your site, your html speaking virtual assistant can wrangle your system to create a beautiful final product.
- Affiliate Management: If you offer affiliate products or run an affiliate program, your VA can manage communications, new signups, respond to questions, handle payouts etc.
- Automate AdWords: If you use Google AdWords to drive traffic, your VA can upload new ads you create, run reports on current campaigns, and work with AdWords scripts to keep your campaigns running smoothly.
- Manage eCommerce Software: If you use shopping cart or eCommerce software like InfusionSoft, 1ShoppingCart, or other similar solutions, your VA can handle the day-to-day on your behalf. You focus on strategy and content creation, and your business-quality virtual assistant will set up new products, create new coupon codes, process payments and refunds, run sales reports, handle forms, and more.
- Manage Software to Boost Your Website Visits: Have you heard of sumo.com? It’s an amazing little tool that can help you grow your company’s website traffic and email list. Your new skilled marketing virtual assistant can set it all up for you, monitor it, run reports, etc. to help you spot opportunities for growth and grow your prospects.
Effectively Delegate Your Marketing Automation
As always, the secret to working with a virtual assistant is learning to delegate effectively. Before you hand over any process, you’ll need to carve out some time to discuss your expectations, marketing standards and procedures with your virtual assistant.
Here are a few things to consider when delegating your automation to a VA:
- Discuss Current Standards: If you’re already utilizing several marketing systems, such as email list management or eCommerce software, describe in detail your current practices. If you have your procedures documented, great! But if not, one of the first things your virtual assistant can do to help you is to spend time downloading your brain and documenting so that you have your procedures and standards captured now and for the future.
- Establish Guidelines: Your virtual assistant can help you establish a guidelines manual. Not only does this give you peace of mind and help her do her job effectively, but you can share your guidelines with new team members down the road.
- Be Open to Questions: The best thing you can do for your business is to be open to questions. A good virtual assistant will not bother you with insignificant details, so let her know you’re happy to answer questions as she familiarizes herself with your processes – then she’ll have the foundation to carry your work forward and leverage your time.
December 2022 Update: Times have changed, and Virtual Assistants with this level of expertise are now typically called Remote Executive Assistants.
Topic: Remote Executive Assistant
