Running a business can feel like a daunting task. There are so much business owners need to do – manage their inventory, keep track of invoices and bills, deal with customers, and even come up with ways to advertise and promote their products or service.
Considering the amount of work involved, it’s easy for entrepreneurs to feel overwhelmed. At this point, businesses of all shapes and sizes would want all the help they can get to make their lives easier. Hiring virtual assistants is one way to do this.
With the advent of technology, remote work has become a norm in today’s business industry. Businesses can find and hire remote employees to provide a variety of services needed by their company.
However, how can virtual assistants help exactly? In this article, let’s explore how hiring virtual assistants can help in growing and scaling your business.
What Is A Virtual Assistant?
Before we dive any deeper, let’s first define who and what virtual assistants are.
Virtual assistants, commonly referred to as VAs, are remote workers who offer a wide range of digital services for businesses online. They are typically individual contractors or freelancers hired to provide general or technical support services.
Virtual assistant jobs range from basic administrative tasks to more specialized responsibilities such as bookkeeping, graphic design, human resource management, digital marketing, and the like. The role of virtual assistants has expanded significantly over the past few years and has led to the growing demand for virtual assistants across different industries and niches.
Benefits of Hiring Virtual Assistants
VAs provide critical support services to businesses. However, what makes them any different from in-house employees? To convince you further, here are some of the advantages of hiring a virtual assistant for your business.
Global talent pool
One of the biggest struggles of hiring in-house employees is that your talent pool is limited to your geographical location. The more specific your needs are, the lower the chance you will find the exact person that you want.
On the flip side, remote work setups have opened the gates to everyone on the globe. Online businesses and operations have allowed anyone to work from anywhere. This opens the talent pool to a broader range of talented, skilled, and experienced individuals. Therefore, entrepreneurs have a bigger chance of finding their ideal employees.
However, it is still important to take into consideration factors such as cultural differences and language barriers. It is essential to find virtual assistants who can communicate well. That is why entrepreneurs typically hire VAs from countries where English is widely spoken, such as the Philippines and India.
Lower costs
Another benefit of hiring remote workers, such as virtual assistants, instead of getting in-house employees is that VAs offer more flexible ways of working and getting paid.
Often, virtual assistants are individual contractors. Considering this, business owners have the option to hire them full-time, part-time, or on a per-project basis. In addition to this, virtual assistants from countries such as the Philippines and India offer a more affordable rate. Generally, the average rate for VAs in this region is somewhere around $5 to $15/hour.
Aside from that, hiring remote employees saves business owners from other operational costs such as office rent, equipment, utilities, and the like.
Increase productivity and efficiency
Virtual assistants can contribute a lot to boosting productivity and efficiency. VAs can serve as online executive assistants and directly tend to the entrepreneur’s business needs. They can take on tasks such as schedule management, inbox management, and the like.
VAs can also work on more specialized jobs depending on their skills, background, and experience. Virtual assistants can perform graphic design, website management, and more.
How Virtual Assistants Help Businesses Grow
Virtual assistants are highly versatile employees who can provide their service and support in various aspects of your online business. Here are some of the ways they can help in growing your online business.
Handle time-consuming and repetitive tasks
Have you ever found yourself spending too much time working on something essential but not important? Some business owners struggle with delegating tasks and try to do everything by themselves. However, this may not be the most productive use of their valuable time.
Spending a significant part of the day working on a single task, such as updating your product inventories or organizing your database, can pull you away from more important responsibilities. It is possible that you wouldn’t have enough time and energy left in the day to think about strategies to grow and scale your business.
Hiring a virtual assistant and delegating time-consuming tasks can save you time and allow you to focus on your primary role as a business owner. Instead of working on mundane day-to-day tasks, you can spend more time building business relationships, finding clients, or developing new products to sell.
Provide round-the-clock customer support
The quality of customer support service plays a critical role in growing a business. This is because it is one of the business’s direct points of interaction with customers. Both potential and present customers can contact customer support for inquiries, help, and assistance.
Considering this, having virtual assistants readily available to tend to your customers’ needs can significantly boost the quality of the experience customers have when dealing with your business.
To do this, entrepreneurs can hire several virtual assistants who would clock in at different times of the day. The goal is to have someone online 24/7 to ensure that questions are answered and help is given in a timely manner.
Organize your business’s files and database
One of the most common responsibilities given to virtual assistants revolves around administrative tasks. This includes taking care of logistics, business files, client information, and the like. Data entry is another type of task often delegated to virtual assistants because this is extremely time-consuming for entrepreneurs.
With the help of virtual assistants, businesses can have a more organized and well-managed file system and database. This makes it easier for other employees to access whatever they need and also prevents losing track of important files, details, and information.
Manage your social media accounts
Having some sort of social media presence is nearly a must for all online and ecommerce businesses. However, not everyone is as well-versed and up-to-date with the latest social media trends. Aside from that, managing a social media account can be time-consuming.
Social media management is another popular job for virtual assistants. Under this circumstance, the virtual assistant would be solely responsible for every activity, interaction, and engagement the business would have on social media. It is also their objective to increase online visibility and boost audience engagement.
Brands and businesses that are active on popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, boost their visibility to millions of users. Doing this helps establish your brand as well as build quality relationships with potential customers.
Aside from that, these social media platforms can also be an avenue for the general public to learn more about the goods or services you have to offer. Social media marketing is a popular strategy used by most brands to target both specific and broad audiences.
Create engaging digital content
Content is an important part of any digital marketing strategy. From creating intriguing copy to writing informative blogs and entertaining videos. Content is an essential marketing tool used to engage and interact with different audiences. Considering this, online businesses can hire virtual assistants to create content for their marketing campaigns.
You can hire a virtual assistant who is capable of writing valuable and relevant blogs and articles to post on your ecommerce website. You can also have someone who has years of experience in graphic design and video production to come up with creative video content to post on platforms such as YouTube and TikTok.
Having a consistent stream of content on your ecommerce website or on social media can greatly help in boosting your online presence. Well-optimized content also helps in improving your search engine rankings, thus, driving traffic to your online store.
Bottomline
Virtual assistants can do a lot for online businesses. They can provide customer service, perform administrative tasks, create content, and so much more. However, more than hiring a VA, it is important for business owners to learn how to delegate tasks properly. Effective delegation is key to increasing productivity and efficiency as virtual assistants would be able to complete the task at hand as efficiently as possible.
Want to know more about hiring virtual assistants for an online business? Sidekicks is an on-demand virtual company, and we’re eager to help visionaries and entrepreneurs like you. Get a free ebook and learn more about how we can help you by signing up for our newsletter. We also offer a free 30-minute consultation if you prefer something more personal.
