How to Hire a Virtual Assistant for Internet Marketing with Barbara Turley

We all know that digital marketing is a multi-faceted machine, and learning all the parts that make that machine run smoothly and efficiently can take years of training, practice, and experience in this field. On top of knowing everything we’re required to do—along with the way that digital marketing is constantly changing and evolving—we need to make sure that we maintain a certain level of consistency in the work we put out, making sure that we’re appearing constantly to our audience and our clients. How do we manage to balance both with the limited time we have as business owners?

That’s where Barbara Turley comes in. The CEO of The Virtual Hub—a team of experts specialized in digital marketing focused on virtual assistants based in the Philippines—Barbara shares with us her best tips and tricks on how to stay consistent with the media you produce, as well as what VAs (or “virtual assistants”) can help you with when you’re trying to balancing a bunch of things on your plate at once. Let’s get started!

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:

All about what Barbara and The Virtual Hub do. According to Barbara, they help business owners to tackle all of the massive to-do lists that are involved in getting traffic and leads online, or in running and scaling your business. They supply well trained and well managed virtual assistants—or VAs—from their location in the Philippines, and Barbara says that having someone offshore being able to help your business does wonders for success in the long run.
Barbara tells us when you should pick up a strategist or a consultant to help out with your marketing strategy. A lot of business owners get confused about where that line is, and when you should bring someone else into the picture. VAs will just deal with virtual assistance, not the strategy. If you’re a business owner, you need to have a digital strategist, or you need to become your own. These are necessities if you want to be successful with a VA in the digital marketing space.
Barbara then tells us what this strategist will do for your team, identifying that there’s a lot to think about when you’re trying to get more traffic and leads. Your strategist is going to map out what that plan looks like for you, and talk to you about your end goals and what you need in order to make things run smoothly and successfully. Once the strategist has given you a (sometimes lengthy) task list to complete, a VA will then come in to implement the task list in order to keep things moving so you can get the results you want from the strategy!
Barbara tells us what to expect when engaging with The Virtual Hub, stating that the first step is helping clients map out what they need, and getting them set up before a VA is introduced into the mix so that they’re ready. Additionally, Barbara also states that—regardless of the amount of experience they claim to have—she puts her virtual assistants through their own digital marketing training program to make sure they’re up to date in everything that’s relevant. That way, when you’re engaging with a VA, you’re getting more than just the one assistant—you’re getting an assistant with an entire ecosystem behind them.
Barbara tells us about the strategy they run for traffic, stating that it’s organic based. They start with VAs that work on the marketing team doing keyword research on words they want to rank for, and come up with a topic based on what people are searching for online. From there, they try to answer those questions in their blog content, and once it’s written, it’s optimized for keywords to make sure that Google will like it. Additional VAs will then make it look Google friendly (formatted correctly, proper tags, and nice images).
From there, Barbara tells us about how they spread that content onto social media, with other virtual assistants taking the content and splicing it up into various chunks, and replicating those chunks into quotes, images, and other shareable content that you can produce in different formats on different platforms. It’s about taking one piece of content and making sure it’s leveraged and repurposed, and getting the most out of it.
Barbara tells us misconceptions that people might have when starting their own businesses, stating that most people think success will come to them if they have the right set-up. It’s great when it works, but you need a serious amount of focus, and you need to try things and accept when those things fail. Stop expecting marketing to work, because 99% of the time it’s going to fail. And that’s all right! Barbara says it also takes a minimum of 12 months of driving that strategy before you start seeing productivity and traffic online to start working. Consistency is the key!
Barbara leaves us with some advice based on a past experience of hers, where she tried to launch her own product and came up short. She reminds us that the most important people when it comes to product launches are people who are willing to pay you money for your service, and starting a beta program with those people will give you a better chance of knowing what the actual product launch will be like!

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Did Barbara not get to answer a burning question on your mind? No problem! You can reach out to her through her website and social media, though she states that LinkedIn is the best way to get in touch. A well educated and powerful woman, Barbara gives us some amazing tips and tricks on how to maintain success and consistency in a digital marketing world. Additionally! For Traffic and Leads listeners, Barbara has included several bits of free content linked above, starting with a guide on “The 5 Reasons People Fail with VAs”, as well as a free booking consults with The Virtual Hub and a free eCourse about The Scalable Business Formula. Make sure to check it out!