When To Hire a Marketing Assistant for Your Real Estate Biz
We’ve shared lots of marketing advice on this blog. But there’s one suggestion we’ve yet to make: to hire a marketing assistant for your real estate business.
Not because it isn’t a good idea – who wouldn’t want some extra help? – but because it isn’t always feasible for every realtor to pay and manage a contractor.
But there is a time for everything, and that includes hiring a marketing assistant who can help take your real estate marketing game up a notch or two – or five.
If you’re not sure whether now is that time or not, read on and we’ll help you decide.
“Do I need more time, or more expertise?”
Consider whether you simply need to free up your time, or whether you want marketing expertise greater than your own to sharpen your strategy.
If you’re feeling confident about your skills and direction, but find yourself maxed out on time to actually blog, tweet and create videos, then hiring a marketing assistant, even on a part-time basis, could be a worthwhile investment.
If you have the time, but feel like your online marketing efforts aren’t panning out, then you might consider hiring help.
Or, you could look into investing in your own knowledge by enrolling in online or in-person courses and seminars on tricky-but-important topics like search engine optimization and content marketing.
“Can I afford the time and money required?”
A good marketing assistant can save you time in the long run, but you need to be prepared to invest some serious time upfront.
Hiring a marketing assistant means you’ll be committing to training, day-to-day management, and creative brainstorming. Think about whether you have the resources to be an effective manager at the current state of your business.
Then, of course, there’s the money.
How much you can expect to pay a marketing assistant will depend on whether you want someone on a full-time or part-time basis, the level of experience and education you want them to have, and the scope of work you want to assign.
According to Glassdoor, the Canadian national average salary for marketing assistants sits around $35,665. That’s based on full-time hours. A part-time commitment would require less of an expenditure, as would hiring a university student who is finishing up a degree or has recently graduated. And someone with great experience and education will likely be after a much higher salary than the national average.
Remember: as with most things in life, you get what you pay for.
“What do I need help with?”
You need to decide what it is exactly you want a marketing assistant to do for you before you launch your search.
Consider what areas you require the most assistance in, from either a time commitment or skill perspective, and how much hands-on involvement you want to have.
Having a list of responsibilities for your prospective marketing assistant will help you create a job posting and tailor your search.
Here are some areas that a marketing assistant could partially or completely look after for you:
- Social media: a marketing assistant could handle all of the writing and scheduling of content for your social media channels, plus respond to comments and questions from your followers – and prospective leads.
- Blogging: if writing isn’t your strong suit, you could hire a skilled content creator to craft posts for you, based on a calendar of topics that you decide together, and publish them to your website. This kind of assistance could double or even triple your output.
- Analytics reporting: an assistant comfortable with Google Analytics and other traffic reporting tools could be your data analysis wiz, responsible for collecting and monitoring the data from your website, social media channels, and email marketing efforts, and then making recommendations based on the findings.
“How will I know having a marketing assistant is worth it?”
That all depends on what you want from the experience.
If you want more time to focus on lead generation and a marketing assistant gives you that by looking after your website and social media, then that’s worth it.
If you want to triple the number of blog posts you’re creating for email marketing and SEO purposes, and a marketing assistant will do that for you, then that’s worth it.
In the long run, if you’re seeing the results you want after three to six months of working with an assistant, whatever those results may be, and it’s not creating a huge hole in your income, then it’s worth it.
Last Updated on August 12, 2022 by myRealPage