Today, things like search engine optimization, social media positioning, Google ads, and Facebook Ads are quickly replacing more traditional methods of marketing. It is because more people are spending time (and consequently, money) online than ever before. However, small business owners struggle to grow their businesses in the digital marketplace, even if they know a bit about digital marketing. That is where a digital marketing assistant comes in.
Today, we primarily engage in business transactions online. It is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, businesses can leverage unlimited digital potential, and companies are constantly innovating to fit new digital standards. On the other hand, for entrepreneurs to market their businesses effectively, they must have a strong digital presence. Otherwise, they risk being beaten out by competitors who are doing it better.
Online and in-person marketing is vastly different
However, having a strong digital presence requires the efforts of a team. Let’s face it, only one person, with 8 working hours in a day, cannot do everything it takes to optimize digital marketing efforts. Small business owners are splitting their time between business management, financial management, planning and strategy, customer service and more.
Setting up social media posts, search optimized blog posts, preliminary research, email marketing, and digital ads are all important. What’s more, people need to continuously improve on these things and learn to do them things better. The tradeoff is that one aspect or the other of the business is going to suffer.
Business owners must avoid going blindly into the digital marketplace. If they do, they risk burning out, which would negatively impact the business. What business owners need is a dedicated digital marketing assistant, like our team of experts at Wing.
Do you feel like it might be time to hire someone to help with your digital marketing? Read on to determine if investing in a digital marketing assistant is right for you.
Here’s why digital marketing is a must today
The digital space is an ever-expanding marketplace. With around 99,000 google searches per day, 5.9 million searches per minute, 356 million searches per hour, and 8.5 billion searches per day, it’s clear that people are actively in need of products to purchase, services to hire, and businesses to buy from. All of which they are searching for online.
Why? Because it is easy. Certainly easier than physically going store to store or asking person to person for recommendations. It’s essential that your appearance in this virtual marketplace is as loud and as convincing as possible. Doing this grabs the attention of a generation that prioritizes convenience and solutions at their fingertips.
What’s a digital marketing assistant?
So what is a digital marketing assistant? And what can they do for you? In the most simple way possible, this is an expert in all things digital marketing. Someone who has a track record and experience in digital marketing knows what they are doing. They can ensure that your digital marketing efforts are effective.
A digital marketing assistant lightens your load. He or she also ensures that you stay focused on the things that matter most to you about your business. Digital marketing can drive serious growth for your business. However, you may not have the time or skill to complete the tasks necessary—however, a specialized assistant does.
You started your business to achieve a specific goal – providing your valuable product or service to your target market. You likely have zero interest in understanding search engine optimization or social media strategy. It’s also likely that you don’t know much about getting the best out of Facebook Ads, generating leads, or creating content.
This is where a digital marketing assistant thrives. They help with all of the above, enabling you to focus on the aspects of your business that you are passionate about. An assistant ensures that you get enough coverage for the business to scale.
7 signs you need a digital marketing assistant
Not all businesses will need the assistance of a dedicated digital marketing expert. However, some badly need one. What’s worse is that they might not be aware they do. Is your business one of those? There are some tell-tale signs to look out for before deciding where you belong.
You don’t know how to drive leads to book a call or demo
More important than knowing what to sell, is knowing who to sell to. Driving leads and booking calls or demos are two distinct but related skills. A marketer should be able to access leads and identify who to sell services to. People constantly hone and perfect their lead generation technique; it is not a result of innate knowledge.
Whether you’re using leads from ads to track the demographics most suited to your business product or finding the best strategy to nurture those leads, you are better off trusting an expert with this aspect of your business. Unless you are an expert yourself, it’s better if you left this to someone who knows their stuff.
You spend so much time writing copy or making graphics
How much time becomes too much time for tasks like creating attractive copy for posts or designing eye-catching graphics?
When you were just starting out, you may have been comfortable spending several hours just to complete a social media post with both these things, but eventually, you would have reached a point where spending anything more than an hour to create quality copy or graphics would appear to be a waste of time.
For both instances, the amount of time that is perceived as “too much” to spend on copywriting or making graphics might be relatively different. Ultimately, though, the effects on your business are the same.
This time wasted would be better spent on other aspects of your business. It would make more sense to have a digital marketing assistant. You need someone whose know-how will cut down the delivery time for these tasks. It will also ensure you have ample time to work on other aspects of your business that need your undivided attention.
You can’t get to all the comments on your social pages
As a consumer who deals with online businesses, you are probably aware that different businesses reply at different rates online. For example, you’ve likely experienced leaving a comment or DM making an urgent inquiry and getting no response for hours or even days.
Assuming you got a response at all, you still most likely walked away from that experience believing that those business owners were nonchalant, lazy, possibly rude, and certainly not in need of your patronage. Thus, you are unlikely to ever deal with, much more recommend them.
However, as a business owner, you might come to find that businesses that were tardy with online engagement were none of the things you imagined. Instead, they simply lacked the time to properly engage customer comments and requests the way that they ideally should.
As an insider to your own business, you might be willing to understand your own time restraints and overburdening issues. However, prospective clients may not be as forgiving. They most likely will look at your business page in the same manner you’d have looked at it, were you a potential client.
So, if you ever find yourself taking longer than you would be comfortable with to get to comments and inquiries on your social media pages, then you should seriously consider hiring someone who will be responsible for doing this.
You aren’t devoting enough time to strategy
There is a lot of planning and conceptualizing that goes into starting and scaling a small business. You may not have enough time to do all of that planning yourself; few owners do. And if you prefer to be hands-on with planning, you may not have enough time to execute all the parts of your plan.
If you spend more time executing social media strategy or chasing leads than you do planning the next step of your business strategy, then it is time to seriously consider hiring a digital marketing assistant. They could either aid you in marketing strategy or take some other tasks off your hands. Doing this frees up your time and lets you map out a strategy aligned with current trends.
Getting stuck in execution mode stagnates your business. It keeps you away from updating yourself on industry standards, improving key metrics of the business, and planning the business’ next step or next opportunity to scale the business.
You post once every few months on social media
A funny thing about humans is their propensity to forget. Today, it is easy to lose your attention in the deluge of consumable material available online. Imagine if your favorite football team played a match only once every other month. If they did, it is very unlikely that they would be able to gain as much traction. You would in all likelihood find another team to support or indeed another sport to follow altogether.
Instead, the biggest football teams in the world play virtually every week. They also create content around that experience and other related experiences that they share consistently several times a day, to keep themselves in front of the audiences because they know how fickle people can be.
Now, you may not have the digital marketing budget of the NFL, but you still lessons to be learned here. The more you get in people’s faces with your business, the more likely you are to remain at the back of their minds when they make patronage decisions.
If you find that you are only able to make a few posts every other month on social media, then you are fighting a losing battle that includes missing out on social media trends that can exponentially grow your business.
You have a mailing list but you don’t send anything to it
It’s one thing to have resources and it is another to actually put them to the best possible use. Of what purpose are leads, email sign-ups, and robust directories if they just lie fallow with no engagement?
A mailing list is a key resource for online businesses. However, many business owners fail to maximize its potential. If you cannot leverage your list because you lack time, skills, or both, you risk your business stagnating or being forgotten despite having access to a key resource.
If you do have a mailing list, then you should be regular with updates from your business, as well as other carefully curated content that will drive patronage. The easiest way to cross this off your to-do list this without reducing the time you spend on other aspects of the business is to have a digital marketing assistant who needs minimal guidance to be responsible for handling content for email campaigns.
You’re looking up what a digital marketing assistant does
There could be no more telling sign than actually searching for what the role consists of.
Whether you are searching to see if you can manage to add all of it to your workload, or you are searching to know the requirements for someone you intend to hire, once you find the need to enter searches for what a digital marketing assistant does, you are already most likely in need of one.
You might have even found this resource as a result of these searches! If, by chance, you still aren’t convinced that you need one despite reading everything up to this point, consider this the final straw.
Whatever reason led you this far, is enough reason to go beyond consideration and into an active search for a digital marketing assistant.
Get a dedicated digital marketing assistant from Wing
Hiring a dedicated digital marketing assistant is as easy as one click with Wing. Our managed, trained VAs are experts in all areas of digital marketing, so they might even teach you a thing or two! Best of all, you can get a Wing digital marketing assistant for as little as $799 per month. So, why not hire one today and enjoy all the wonders it can do for your business.
Kandice is a content writer & strategist with over 5 years of experience in digital marketing. She specializes in SEO-optimized content for the SaaS and tech industry. She’s a digital nomad, currently based in Mexico, and is passionate about helping other business owners and freelancers increase their productivity when working remotely. When she’s not behind her computer you’ll find her at the beach snorkeling, playing volleyball, doing yoga, or cooking up a delicious vegan meal.
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