The first 10 roles agencies hand off, in the order that pays

A strategist billing $150 an hour who spends 10 hours a week on reporting and ad builds is doing $1,500 of work every week that someone else could do.

That’s the whole case for delegation, in one line. The hard part is figuring out which work goes first.

The 3-question test

Before you hire for a role, run the tasks through three questions.

1. Is it repeatable? It happens every week or every month.
2. Can it be shown? You could record yourself doing it on a screen share.
3. Does it eat 5 or more senior hours a week?

Three yeses means it should come off your plate this quarter.

The 10 roles, roughly in the order agencies fill them

1. Project Manager or Account Coordinator. Usually the first hire. If you’re the one chasing deadlines and writing client updates, this is your seat.Tools: ClickUp, Asana, Monday.com, Slack
2. Media Buyer for Google and Meta. Campaign builds, pacing checks, naming conventions, first-pass performance notes.Tools: Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, GA4, Google Tag Manager
3. Paid Social Specialist. For agencies running ads on more than one social platform. Ad uploads, testing, pixel checks.Tools: Meta, TikTok Ads, LinkedIn Campaign Manager
4. SEO Specialist. Technical audits, keyword research, on-page fixes and reporting.Tools: Semrush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, Google Search Console
5. Reporting and Data Specialist. If your senior people lose a day every month building client reports by hand, this pays for itself fast.Tools: Looker Studio, Supermetrics
6. Graphic Designer. Ad creative, social graphics, and resizing for every placement.Tools: Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, Canva
7. Video Editor. Short-form edits, captions, ad variations.Tools: Premiere Pro, CapCut, Descript
8. Social Media Manager. Content calendars, scheduling, community management.Tools: Meta Business Suite, Later, Vista Social
9. Copywriter or Content Writer. Blogs, emails and ad copy from your briefs.Tools: Google Docs, Surfer, Grammarly
10. GoHighLevel and Automation Specialist. For agencies that sell GoHighLevel or automation work and have one person bottlenecking every build.Tools: GoHighLevel, Zapier, Make

A quick detour on the word “assistant”

I’ll admit the word “VA” bugs me a little. It makes people think of someone booking flights and sorting your inbox. Every role on that list is a specialist with years in the craft. When an agency owner says “I tried a VA and it didn’t work,” I usually find out they hired a generalist and expected a media buyer.

What not to hand off first

Client strategy. Pricing and proposals. Your most sensitive client relationship. And anything you haven’t figured out how to do well yourself yet.

That last one trips people up. If a process is broken, handing it to someone new won’t fix it. Hand off what’s working, not what’s broken.