Virtual marketing assistant
Virtual marketing assistant, junior hire, or an AI coworker?
You won the client, so now you price the help. Patricia is an AI marketing assistant that works in your agency's Slack: she drafts the content, runs the weekly client reports, and keeps social and email moving. Every post or email she drafts waits for your yes, and by default so does every change and every spend. Take the next client without the next hire. This page compares every way to get that work off your team, honestly.
The job
What a virtual marketing assistant does
A virtual marketing assistant is a remote assistant, human or AI, that takes recurring marketing execution off your team: scheduling social posts, drafting content, running email campaigns, keeping the CRM current, and reporting on results. At an agency, all of that is client work, and it repeats per account.
Whoever you hire, the workload looks the same. It is the work that has to happen every week for every client whether or not anyone has time for it, and it is the reason agency owners go looking for help in the first place.
Social for the client accounts
Email campaigns for clients
Content drafting
Client reporting
CRM upkeep
Ad-ops coordination
The decision
Your options in 2026
Until recently, taking on more client work meant one thing: another person, found through a job board or a VA agency. Now there is a second option, and the honest comparison is that each wins at different work.
A human VA wins at
- Judgement-heavy creative strategy: positioning, a client brand voice built from scratch, the call on which campaign idea deserves the budget
- Phone calls and live conversations: the client on the phone, vendors, partners, anything that needs a real voice on the line
- Physical-world tasks: event logistics, mailing merch, coordinating a shoot, anything that needs hands
- The first messy version of a process: a human can untangle an undocumented client workflow and redesign it as they go
- Relationships: a VA who has worked on an account for a year carries context and trust no tool replaces
An AI coworker wins at
- Starts the week you connect your accounts: no job posting, interviews, or two-week training runway
- Works in parallel across every client: ten client reports before Monday standup is a normal ask, not a crunch
- Pulls numbers straight from the connected ad and analytics accounts instead of copy-pasting between tabs, so reports come from live data
- Costs like software, not headcount, so taking the next client does not mean taking on the next salary
- Never resigns, so the account knowledge does not walk out the door with the person
- Every action is logged, and every draft waits for a named yes before it reaches a client
These are different tools for different jobs, and plenty of agencies end up with both: a human for the judgement calls and the client relationship, an AI coworker for the volume across every account. The sections below show where the line sits.
Cost
What a virtual marketing assistant costs
Human help is priced in hours or in salary; Patricia is one price for the whole agency, metered to real work. Here is the honest market picture.
| Option | Typical cost | What that buys |
|---|---|---|
| Freelance human VA | $10 to $26 per hour | Offshore rates start around $10; experienced US-based assistants run $20 to $26. Most engagements are 10 to 20 hours a week, so plan on roughly $400 to $2,000 a month. |
| Managed VA service | Around $1,988 per month | A dedicated part-time assistant plus the agency's recruiting, training, and management layer. You pay for the hours whether the week was busy or quiet. |
| In-house junior or marketing assistant | $45,000 to $60,000 per year | A full-time US hire on your payroll, before benefits, payroll taxes, and the months it takes to recruit and ramp. This is the hire most agencies make when they win the next client. |
| Patricia | $45 per month | One workspace price for the whole agency with every seat included and 20,000 credits a month, metered to real work. Separately, 50,000 free credits come with the onboarding call, no card. |
Human rates are market ranges from published VA agency and job-board figures, checked July 2026; your quote will vary with location and experience. The point is the shape, not the cent: one of these lines grows every time you win a client, and one does not. The full Patricia model, including what a typical task costs and how credits work, is on the pricing page.
The work
What Patricia executes
Not a chat window that gives you advice about marketing. She does the client work inside your tools, every week, and each of these links to a full walkthrough of how.
The full list, from meeting recaps to invoice chasing, lives on the use cases page. On-brand image generation and creative resizing are live today. One honest note: video generation is coming but not live yet, so she will not claim it, and neither will we.
Control
No draft reaches a client without your yes
Handing client work to anyone, human or AI, comes with the same worry: what goes out the door with your agency's name on it. Here is how Patricia answers it.
Approvals on every draft
An audit log you can actually check
A spend cap on by default
Your data and your clients' data are stored in the United States, in the US East (Virginia) region, and Patricia is SOC 2 Type II compliant. Each client gets its own channels and connections, with access scoped per person. The full picture of what she can see and do is on the security page.
The other honest half
When a human VA is still the right call
We would rather you hire the right kind of help than the wrong kind of us. If the work on your desk looks like this, hire a person.
Someone to own the strategy
Phone-heavy work
Tasks that need hands
A process nobody has figured out yet
Getting started
How to start
No job posting, no interviews, no onboarding month. Three steps, about 20 minutes of your time.
Book a demo
A short call where you bring one real client account and we show you what Patricia would take off the team. No deck, no pressure.
Connect the agency once
Your Slack plus the accounts you already manage: analytics, ad accounts, docs, the CRM. Patricia works across 1,000+ integrations, each client gets its own channels and connections, and access is scoped per person. Setup takes about 20 minutes, once.
Free credits come with the call
You start with 50,000 free credits, no card. Hand her a client report or a week of social drafts and judge the work, not the pitch.
FAQ
Virtual marketing assistant questions, answered straight.
What is a virtual marketing assistant?
A virtual marketing assistant is a remote assistant, human or AI, that handles recurring marketing execution. At an agency that means the work you run for clients: scheduling social posts, drafting content and email campaigns, keeping the CRM current, coordinating ad operations, and reporting on results. Human VAs work hourly or through managed agencies; an AI coworker like Patricia does much of the same execution as software inside your Slack, with a named yes before any draft reaches a client.
How much does a virtual marketing assistant cost?
Human virtual assistants typically cost $10 to $26 per hour depending on location and experience, and managed VA services charge around $1,988 a month for a dedicated part-time assistant. An in-house junior or marketing assistant in the US runs roughly $45,000 to $60,000 a year before benefits, which is the salary most agencies add when they win the next client. Patricia costs $45 a month for the whole agency workspace with every seat included and 20,000 credits a month. Separately, 50,000 free credits come with the onboarding call, no card.
What tasks can a virtual marketing assistant handle?
The recurring execution layer of client marketing: social scheduling, email campaigns and newsletters, blog and content drafting, campaign and analytics reporting, CRM updates and list hygiene, competitor monitoring, and ad-ops coordination like pacing checks and copy variants. By default, changes inside an ad account wait for your media buyer's yes, and strategy, positioning and final creative judgement stay with your team, whether the assistant is human or AI.
Can AI replace a marketing virtual assistant?
For execution, largely yes: reporting, drafting, scheduling, and data pulls are work an AI coworker now does faster and at lower cost than a human VA. For strategy, taste, client phone calls, and physical-world tasks, no. The honest framing is that AI replaces the hours, not the judgement. Plenty of agencies pair an AI coworker for the recurring volume across every client with a human for the calls only a person can make.
Can it manage social media and email campaigns?
Yes. Patricia drafts social posts in each client's brand voice, publishes the approved ones on LinkedIn, and hands you the rest ready to post. She drafts email campaigns and recurring updates from real activity in their accounts. Every post and email she drafts waits for a named yes from your team before it goes out.
Do I need full-time help or can I start smaller?
Start smaller. Most small agencies do not have 40 hours a week of one kind of execution; they have a recurring set of jobs per client. With a human VA that means a part-time hourly contract. With Patricia it means one plan metered to real work: $45 a month covers the whole agency workspace, and 50,000 free credits come with the onboarding call, with no card and no hiring process.
How is Patricia different from hiring through a VA agency?
A VA agency recruits, trains, and manages a person for you, and its monthly fee pays for that management layer. Patricia is software: she starts working the week you connect your accounts, works for everyone at the agency at once inside Slack, never resigns, and logs every action, with approvals on every draft before it reaches a client. The trade is honest in both directions: she will not take the client call or own your strategy, and a VA will not draft ten client reports overnight.
Looking wider than the marketing work? Patricia also works as an AI business assistant for the whole agency and as an AI executive assistant for the owner everything currently runs through.
Take the next client without the next hire.
Bring one real client account to a demo and judge the work, not the pitch. Your 50,000 free credits come with the onboarding call, no card.