Martyn Butler, founder · Updated 19 October 2026 · 6 minute read
What a marketing VA is
A marketing VA is an assistant who runs the regular, repeatable side of your marketing from your plan, your templates and your rules. They make sure things go out, get answered and get measured. They are not the person who decides what those things should be.
What they can do well
- Scheduling posts: loading the content you have approved into a scheduler, with the right images, links and times.
- Community replies: answering routine comments and messages from your saved replies, and passing anything awkward to you.
- Reporting: a short weekly or monthly summary of reach, clicks, enquiries and sales, pulled from each platform into one place.
- Email newsletters: building the email in your template, checking the links, sending it to the right list and keeping the list clean.
- Ad account housekeeping: checking ads are running, filing invoices, naming things sensibly and spotting anything that has been rejected.
- Simple graphics from templates: resizing, and swapping text and photos in designs you or a designer have already set up.
- Repurposing: turning a blog post into a few social posts, or a video into captions, for you to approve.
Where you still need a specialist
Some marketing work needs experience a generalist does not have, or a decision only you can make:
- Strategy: who you are selling to, what you say to them and where. That is yours, or a consultant's.
- Paid ads budgets and bidding: how much to spend, where, and when to stop. Real money is at stake, and it needs somebody who does it all the time.
- Brand: your name, your look and your voice. A VA can follow a brand guide well; writing one is a different job.
- Anything with legal weight: claims about results, prices, competitions, reviews and endorsements. Take advice.
- A public problem: a bad review doing the rounds, or a complaint on your page. Your VA spots it and tells you; you decide what to say.
Who does what
| Job | Marketing VA | You or a specialist |
|---|---|---|
| Content plan | Keeps the calendar and chases approvals | Decides the themes and messages |
| Social posts | Formats, schedules and publishes | Writes or approves the words |
| Comments and messages | Answers the routine from saved replies | Handles complaints and anything unusual |
| Newsletter | Builds, tests and sends | Chooses the story and signs it off |
| Paid ads | Housekeeping and reporting | Budgets, targeting and bidding |
| Graphics | Adapts your templates | Designs the templates and the brand |
| Reporting | Pulls the numbers together | Decides what they mean and what changes |
Social media: what to hand over first
Start with scheduling and replies. They repeat every day, they follow rules you can write down, and a mistake is easy to put right. Keep the words yours at first: write a month of posts in one sitting, or record voice notes, and let your VA turn them into scheduled posts.
Once that runs smoothly, add the monthly report, then repurposing. Leave anything that speaks for you in a new way, such as a reply to a public complaint, until you trust the procedure and the person.
Email newsletters and the consent rules
Marketing email to individuals in the UK falls under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations as well as UK GDPR. In short, the ICO's guidance says you need a person's specific consent before sending them marketing emails, unless they are an existing customer who bought something similar and was given a clear chance to opt out when you took their details, and in every message after. Every marketing email needs a way to unsubscribe, and you must act on it promptly.
Sole traders and partnerships count as individuals under these rules. The ICO says its guidance is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act, so check the current position, and take advice if you are unsure. Your VA can keep the list clean and process unsubscribes; responsibility for the rules stays with you.
Ad accounts: housekeeping, not strategy
Give your VA their own access to your ad accounts through each platform's user roles, never your personal login, and where the platform allows, choose a role that cannot change billing. Then access can be changed or removed in one step.
Agree in writing what they may do without asking. Pausing an ad that has been rejected might be fine; raising a budget never is. If you spend meaningful money on ads, have a specialist set up and review the campaigns, and let your VA do the checking and reporting in between.
How to brief a marketing VA
- Your brand guide, or at least your logo, colours, fonts and three posts you liked.
- Your voice: a few examples of how you write, and the words you never use.
- The content plan for the next month, even a rough one.
- Your templates in whichever design tool you use.
- The approval rule: what they can post straight away, and what waits for you.
- The numbers you want in the report, and when you want it.
Write it down once
Each of those becomes a short written procedure your VA can follow without you. Our guide to handing work to a VA shows how to write one, test it and keep it current as your marketing changes.
How to check the work
- Weeks one and two: approve everything before it goes out.
- Weeks three and four: approve anything new, and spot-check the routine.
- After that: a weekly report, and a proper look at the numbers once a month.
- Whenever something goes wrong: fix the procedure, not just the post.
Choosing the right person
Look for somebody who has worked in the tools you use, whether that is a scheduler, an email platform such as Klaviyo or Mailchimp, or a design tool such as Canva. Good written English matters more here than in most admin roles, because everything they touch is public.
Test before you commit. Give a shortlisted candidate a week of your real content and ask them to schedule it, draft replies to five real comments, and write a one-page report from last month's numbers. Pay them for the time. You will learn more from that than from any portfolio.
How many hours marketing needs
For most small businesses, the routine side of marketing is not a full-time job on its own. It usually sits inside a wider role alongside the inbox, customer service or the CRM. Work out the hours from what you actually post and send each week, not from what you would like to post, and add more once the routine is running.
What to expect, honestly
A good marketing VA makes your marketing consistent: posts go out when they should, messages get answered, and you can see what is working. That consistency is worth a lot to a small business. What a VA will not do on their own is change what your marketing says, and nobody can honestly promise you followers, leads or sales from an assistant alone.
Where we fit
Our VAs schedule and format the posts and newsletters you have written and approved, and we place VAs who work inside clients' ad accounts, each with their own access; the ideas, the voice and the budget stay yours. Marketing is usually one part of a wider role, and our pages for online businesses, coaches and consultants, and small businesses show where it sits alongside the rest. The free VA Action Plan tells you which jobs to hand over first and what it costs next to a UK hire.