Graham McGregor: How to easily get a lot more marketing done

A marketing strategy that works well is what we call 'content marketing'.

If you've been in business for a while you soon realise that there are a lot of different marketing strategies that you can use in promoting your products and services to potential customers.

And many of these marketing strategies take time to use.

Here's a simple example:

A marketing strategy that works well is what we call 'content marketing'.

This is where you share helpful tips and ideas to potential clients.

Let's say you own an accounting practice and you write a short 2 page article called
'4 simple pricing strategies that many businesses can use to boost their profits in less than 30 days.'

You plan to share this article in your monthly e-zine that goes out to your clients.
And you would also like to share it with your LinkedIn contacts and maybe send a hard copy to 50 local centres of influence (like lawyers and business consultants) who could potentially give you regular accounting referrals.

It would be helpful to have your 2 page article professionally designed so it looks good when it goes out to readers. And this design will need to be changed slightly for your e-zine, your LinkedIn page and also the hard copy article you send out.

Now if you are not that good at graphic design (like me) then it will probably take you a lot of time to try and make this article look good for your e-zine, LinkedIn List and also the hard copy format.

If however you give this design job to someone who is very good at graphic design they can usually get the work done very quickly.

And this is where using what we call Virtual Assistants can be very useful.

A Virtual Assistant is someone you hire who works online.

And you can get them to do a wide range of things for you including many marketing activities that take time.

For instance:

I share a number of marketing tips in short online videos.

However I am not that skilled in producing online videos myself.

So all I do is record a short audio track and produce some very rough looking PowerPoint slides.

I give this information to a Virtual Assistant I use who is very skilled at producing online videos.

She makes the slides looks great, she matches the audio track to the slides and adds some background music. Then sends me the completed video ready to use.

The finished video looks good, sounds good and is far better than anything I could produce just by myself. Best of all it takes me very little of my own time to produce.

Here's another example:

I write a large number of added value newsletter for many of my clients to use in their marketing.

I use a virtual assistant to customise these newsletters for a number of my clients.
So my virtual assistant will take a newsletter and add photos, logos and contact information for my client to the newsletter.

He will then give me print and digital masters for each newsletter. So my clients can use their newsletter in both hard copy and also online format.

My virtual assistant is very good at graphic design and layout and makes my added value newsletters look great.

Best of all he can do this in a fraction of the time it would take me to do the same work. (And he does a much better job than I could ever do.)

There are two ways to use virtual assistants in your marketing.

1: You can use virtual assistants for individual marketing projects
Here you might hire a virtual assistant to do something like produce a short video, write an article, design a logo and many other things that could be useful in your marketing.

One way to do this is to use a business like Upwork

Here you list the marketing job you want done and a wide range of virtual assistants will bid on the job.

You can check feedback from previous clients and then select the person you want to do the job. The fee for the work is agreed in advance and this can be a set fee or an hourly amount. Once you are happy with the work done the agreed fee is paid.

2: You can hire virtual assistants to do regular marketing work for you.
A number of business people I know use virtual assistants for between 20 and 40 hours every week. With this option you want to screen potential virtual assistants and find a person who is a good match for what you want to have done each week.

So you might choose to hire a virtual assistant who will spend 20 hours of time every week doing a number of marketing activities for you.

If you want to find a great virtual assistant who is a good fit for what you want done then a business like Virtual Staff is worth checking out.

Virtual staff will do the screening and checking of virtual assistants for you and help a lot of businesses find ideal virtual assistants to use.

The main purpose of my column today is to suggest that you consider hiring one or more virtual assistants to do some marketing work for you.

It's a great way to get a lot more marketing done without taking up a lot of your valuable time.

'No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.' HE Luccock

Action Exercise:

If you would like more ideas on how a virtual assistant might help your business I recommend the free guide ' 101 Ways Your Virtual Assistant Will Change Your Business.'

Graham McGregor is a consultant specialising in memorable marketing. Download his 396-page Unfair Business Advantage ebook at no charge from theunfairbusinessadvantage.com.