Category: Partner Marketing

A virtual marketing agency gives you the skills of a marketing agency without the agency overheads. Instead of a team in one office on a monthly retainer, you work with experienced marketing specialists who work remotely, and you pay for the work you need, when you need it.

I founded Get Ahead in 2010, at my kitchen table in Surrey, after a career buying for retailers including Sainsbury’s and Superdrug. In 2016 we launched what we called our virtual marketing agency. It was a small pivot at the time, but an important one: the “VA” in our name stopped meaning only virtual assistant and started to mean virtual agency.

When we started, we described ourselves as virtual assistants, and that quickly felt limiting. Our team was offering far more than the label suggested, and clients were asking for more, especially marketing. We had specialists, not generalists, and “virtual assistant” was often heard as someone for the more basic, less technical jobs. Freelance VAs were also starting to appear everywhere, and I wanted us to stand out as an alternative. “Agency” described what we did much better. And, I’ll admit, it sounded a little more bougie.

Ten years on, the idea has grown up, and so have we. In this post I’ll explain what a virtual marketing agency is, how it compares with the alternatives, and how to tell whether it suits your business.

What is a virtual marketing agency?

A virtual marketing agency is a team of marketing specialists who work remotely and flexibly for their clients, usually without the fixed retainers and account management fees of a traditional agency. You get access to a range of skills, from strategy and content to social media, design, email, PR, websites and SEO, and use as much or as little as you need.

“Virtual” describes how the work is delivered, not its quality. The specialists are typically experienced people who have worked in-house or in agencies and now choose to work independently. Many run small businesses of their own, so they understand the pressures their clients face.

How is a virtual marketing agency different from a traditional agency or a freelancer?

Most growing businesses weigh up three options. Here is how they compare.

“In fintech, things move quickly, and our marketing team couldn’t always cover everything, whether that was having the time or the specialist skills we needed. Being able to bring in flexible expertise as and when we needed it was really valuable. For a growing business, a virtual model gives you access to the right people at the right moment, with the flexibility to adapt as priorities change,” says Lisa Middleton, our Regional Director for Wessex, who spent 20 years in B2B marketing.

A virtual agency sits between the two. You get the breadth and cover of an agency with the flexibility and lower overheads of a freelancer. The trade-off is that there is no team under one roof, and large-scale media buying is still usually a job for a specialist agency.

What can a virtual marketing agency do for your business?

The range is wide. A good virtual marketing agency can usually help with:

• Marketing strategy and planning
• Campaigns and product launches
• Social media management
• Content and copywriting
• Graphic design, photography and video
• Email marketing and newsletters
• Websites, SEO and pay-per-click advertising
• PR and press coverage
• Partner marketing, including MDF and co-op funded campaigns for businesses selling through technology vendors

The bigger advantage is joining these up. A campaign usually needs several skills at once: a plan, the words, the design, the landing page and the follow-up. A virtual agency can bring those together, so you are not briefing three separate suppliers and stitching the results together yourself.

“With a specialist food brand, we were able to draw on expertise from the Get Ahead network as the business needed it, bringing in additional specialists in PR, market research and design at the right stages. Having that support available took the pressure off the business owner, giving them more time to focus on running the business,” says Lisa.

How has the virtual agency model changed in ten years?

When we launched our virtual marketing agency in 2016, the team was seven people: three marketing specialists with backgrounds at companies like Ford and Microsoft, two social media experts, a blogger and a designer. Ten years on, Kate, Caroline and Angela are still with us. Of the other four, three moved into employed roles with clients they met while working with us, and one changed career completely. All of them left on good terms, and that is part of the model too: what’s right for you changes through life, and flexible work should make room for that. We work with people at different stages of their careers, many of them women returning after having children, and the flexibility gives them room to grow in confidence.

Back then, the objection I heard most was “oh, you’re just admin.” People assumed a virtual assistant meant inbox and diary management, when we were supporting clients far more broadly. I still hear it occasionally, “you’re the VA business”, and our clients’ work is the best answer. Today, three things look very different.

Breadth. Get Ahead now has more than 90 specialists, whom we call Virtual Experts. Marketing and creative sit alongside business administration, finance, HR, website development and lifestyle management. That matters because marketing rarely stands alone: a product launch needs copy and design, but also the admin, the website changes and sometimes the HR to support it.

Depth. Each area is covered by specialists rather than generalists. A social media manager, a copywriter, an SEO specialist and a partner marketing expert are different people with different skills, and you get the one the job needs.

Regional Directors. In 2017 I took Get Ahead into franchising and introduced Regional Directors. I was resistant at first. But an independent review of the business showed that we had grown mostly in the south, because that was where I was networking and being seen, and face-to-face matters. The way to grow was to have someone local in each region. I didn’t want to employ people, because our model has always been pay for what you use, and a franchise fitted that. The business had never been built around my name, which made the move easier. And I had proved the model could work within school hours, so it could give other women the same opportunity it had given me.

Today our Regional Directors are local business owners covering eight regions, from Yorkshire to Dorset, while I look after the rest of the country. The one I’m proudest of is Leeds. It is the furthest from us, and I’ve only been up a handful of times, but Fiona took what we gave her, made it her own and built a sustainable business without me being there. Your Regional Director is the person you speak to. They take the time to understand your business, hand-pick the right specialists and stay accountable for how it goes. It is a managed introduction, not a marketplace where you browse profiles and hope for the best.

Remote working has also gone from unusual to normal. When the pandemic hit, I was asked onto local radio to talk about how businesses could work remotely, because we had already been doing it for years. Clients no longer ask whether virtual support can work. They ask who is doing the work and whether it is in safe hands. Our Virtual Experts are UK-trained, work under UK contracts and data protection law, and typically use a Get Ahead email address, so your customers see a consistent face.

When is a virtual marketing agency the right choice?

It tends to fit when:

• You need more than one marketing skill, but not a full-time team
• Your workload goes up and down, with launches, seasonal peaks or events
• You have lost your marketing lead, or never had one, and want expert help while you decide what you need
• You want to test a channel or campaign before committing a bigger budget

It is less suited when you need someone physically in your office every day, or when you are planning national advertising with a large media budget. In that case a specialist media agency is the better route, and a virtual team can still support everything around it.

How much does a virtual marketing agency cost?

You pay for the hours or projects you use rather than a monthly retainer, so the cost follows the work. At Get Ahead there are no minimum hours and no long-term tie-ins. Your Regional Director will scope the work with you and agree the cost before anything starts.

If you are weighing this against hiring, compare it with the full cost of an employee, not just the salary: employer National Insurance, pension, holiday, recruitment, equipment and the time it takes to manage someone. For many growing businesses, flexible expert support costs less than a single marketing hire and covers far more skills.

How do you choose a virtual marketing agency?

Ask these questions before you commit:

• Who will actually do the work, and what experience do they have?
• Where are they based, and where will my data be held?
• What happens if they are ill or on holiday?
• Who do I speak to if something isn’t working?
• Can the support grow beyond marketing if I need it to?
• Can I speak to a current client?

Good answers to all six are a strong sign that you are dealing with an agency, not just a list of freelancers.

Ten years on

In 2016 we needed a name for the idea, so we called it a virtual marketing agency. Today it is simply how many growing businesses get their marketing done: experienced people, joined up, paid for as you use them, with someone local who knows your business looking after it.

If you still think virtual means second best, I’d say we have proved otherwise. The support we give is as good as, and often better than, having someone sitting in your office. Technology makes it easy to communicate, and our specialists are skilled at getting under the skin of a business quickly without being in the building.

If that sounds like what you need, talk to your local Regional Director or call us on 0330 223 7580. You can also use our Contact form, here. Most clients are up and running within a few days of their first conversation.

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