What can a virtual assistant do for your small business?
Running a business takes a lot of work and can become overwhelming with everything you have to do to succeed. From administrative tasks to marketing and everything in between, it can feel like the end is never in sight. But with a virtual assistant, you can get some room to breathe.
Why Hire a Virtual Assistant?
Hiring a virtual assistant can help you get back on track and realign with your goals. By handing off some tasks to a virtual assistant, you can
Increase your productivity and focus on higher-value tasks
Save money by paying only for the hours or services you need
Easily scale your business, depending on your needs
So, what exactly can a virtual assistant do?
Administrative Support
Virtual assistants can help small businesses stay organized and efficient by handling a wide range of administrative tasks. Whether you need help managing the day-to-day duties, staying on top of your calendar, or organizing your databases, VAs can step in and take some weight off your shoulders.
VAs can help with a wide range of administrative support, including:
Email Management
One of the most time-consuming parts of your day as a business owner is managing your emails. From filtering out spam and junk mail to keeping everything organized, it can feel impossible to keep up.
That’s where a virtual assistant comes in. They can easily sort through your inbox, clear out unwanted emails, flag anything urgent, and report spam. Once they have the important messages filtered, they can organize everything into folders and labels so it’s easy for you to find them when you need them. Plus, they’re great at keeping your contacts list clean and up-to-date, so you don’t have to worry.
They can even respond to simple inquiries or questions, like frequently asked questions, promotional messages, or general concerns. If you have them do this, make sure to give them clear guidelines or create pre-approved templates they can easily send out so they can respond in a way that aligns with your brand’s voice personality.
Schedule Management
Having meetings and appointments that overlap doesn't leave you enough time to be punctual and prepared, so it’s important to ensure your calendar is organized appropriately. But when you already have so much on your plate, it can be easy to overlook and overbook.
A virtual assistant can help you manage your calendar and schedule meetings or appointments so you never have to worry. They’ll take into account any travel time, buffer zones, availability, and preferences to schedule things effectively. To make sure you’re prepared, they can also send you reminders and notes before it starts. If a meeting gets canceled or something comes up, they can reach out to all members and find a time to reschedule.
Keep in mind that virtual assistants often work remotely, so they may be in a different time zone than you. Make sure to discuss your scheduling needs and their availability before bringing them onto your team.
Travel Planning
If you do a lot of traveling for work, buying tickets and finding accommodations may become tedious and stressful. Hiring a virtual assistant to do this for you can open up your schedule and give you more time to focus on the goals of your trip.
VAs can handle many parts of your trip, including:
Monitoring flight prices
Arranging airport transfers
Finding a car rental
Booking a hotel
Making reservations
Finding networking events, activities, and local attractions
No matter where you’re headed, a VA can help make it a smooth journey.
Data Entry & Database Management
Data entry and database management are essential to ensuring your business runs smoothly and stays on track. The time it takes to complete this tedious and time-consuming task may be something you don’t have, though. So, why not hand it over to a virtual assistant?
They can collect, sort, and input data into the software of your choice, so you can easily find what you need when you need it. Whether it’s inputting client information into a spreadsheet or database, converting handwritten notes or documents into a digital format, cleaning up messy spreadsheets, or updating inventory lists and product data, VAs have got you covered.
Bookkeeping
While it’s ideal for businesses to have a specified bookkeeper on hand for complex tasks, a virtual assistant can help with some of the simpler ones. VAs can help maintain financial records, create and send invoices, and prepare financial summaries or reports to keep you organized and in order. Just be sure to hire a virtual assistant who has relevant experience in this area.
Customer & Client Relations
Strong relationships are essential to keeping clients excited to work with your business. To make that happen, there are many things a virtual assistant can do to create a positive customer experience and make sure no opportunity falls through the cracks.
Customer Support
As mentioned above, VAs can manage your email inbox, especially customer support emails. They can easily look into escalations, follow up with customers after their issues are resolved, monitor form submissions, and update CRM records with any new information.
Calls can also cause many disruptions throughout your day, so having someone to handle them for you can be a huge weight off your shoulders. VAs that are in similar time zones can help:
Respond to simple questions or concerns
Send complicated or high-priority calls to the proper employee
Screen for spam or sales calls
Block persistent numbers
It takes ongoing communication and consistency to ensure customers leave happy and heard, so why not let a virtual assistant help you give them the experience they deserve?
Client Relationship Management
Building trust and creating deep relationships with clients takes time, time you may not have. Virtual assistants can free up that time by keeping track of important dates and events (like birthdays or anniversaries) and sending something for you to show your business cares. By taking the time to add a personal touch, customers will remember you and be more likely to work with you again. Set a budget for your VA and let them know any specifics, then let them shine as they choose an appropriate gift, note, or message, and ensure it gets delivered in perfect time.
These gifts don’t have to be complicated or grand. They can just be something as simple as sending a check-in or follow-up email after a purchase or meeting. Whatever it is, you can be sure your virtual assistant will find the perfect thing.
Lead Generation & Outreach
Finding new clients is just as important as keeping your current ones happy, but it can take just as much if not more, time. Researching ideal audiences, building targeted contact lists, and sending outreach messages are very time-consuming when done right. With a virtual assistant, this becomes easy, though. Your VA can keep track of who is and isn’t interested, track replies and engagement, and provide status updates so you always know what's going on.
Content & Creative Services
Having content for your website, social media, and emails is critical to keeping clients engaged with your business. Content shows you are knowledgeable and trustworthy in your industry, but creating good content takes time. Virtual assistants can help with a variety of content and creative tasks to keep you at the front of your customers' minds.
Content Writing
Some virtual assistants can help with writing content for your business. Whether under their name or as a ghostwriter, they can write things like:
Blog posts
Email newsletters
Press releases
eBooks
Social captions
And more
General virtual assistants can handle small parts of the process, like researching, outlining, editing, proofreading, or publishing. However, if you want someone to handle the whole process for you, it’s important to find a virtual assistant who specializes in this to get the best results.
Graphic Design
While this task can be handled by virtual assistants, this is another area that is best handled by one with specific experience. Designing and creating flyers, brochures, digital one-pagers, social media graphics, and branded templates takes time and skill that only someone who has practiced it can accomplish. Basic virtual assistants may be able to help update branded templates, format simple images, or find you someone with more experience, though. When looking for a VA to help with graphic design, look for ones familiar with tools such as Canva, Adobe Express, or VistaCreate.
Video Editing
While video editing can be a complicated and detailed process, most virtual assistants will be able to handle simple editing tasks, such as:
Trimming clips
Adding captions, stock audio, or subtitles
Removing dead space
Uploading and scheduling finished videos to social media
Organizing video files and keeping version histories clean
If you need help with more advanced things, you may want to find a dedicated editor. But for simple tasks, like the ones listed above, most VAs should be able to help.
Marketing & Online Presence
There are many different areas of marketing you should utilize to get the best results for your business. From maintaining a consistent online presence to keeping up with trends and tools, it can quickly become overwhelming. Bringing in a virtual assistant to cover these tasks can help you stay focused on your bigger-picture goals.
Social Media Management
As mentioned above, VAs can help with uploading social media posts, but their support doesn’t have to stop there. They can respond to messages and comments, engage with followers, act as a moderator, and keep accounts up to date. If you do choose to use a virtual assistant to help with your social media management, make sure to give them clear guidelines from the start. Let them know your brand voice and tone, your target audience, and your content schedule so they can manage your accounts in a way that represents your brand.
If you want someone to take over the whole process, it may be best to hire a full-time social media marketer, however. Talk with the VAs you’re looking to hire and see how they feel about your wants to get a better idea.
Simple Website Maintenance
Managing a website on a no-code platform like WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, or Square is easier with the help of a virtual assistant. They can handle basic maintenance like monitoring for updates, running regular backups, and doing basic checks to ensure your website runs properly. They can also keep content throughout the site up to date, like your hours, team bios, or blog posts.
A VA can also act as a tester for your website, looking for broken links, missing images, long load times, and other technical issues that might have been missed.
If you run an e-commerce site, a virtual assistant may be able to help with product-related tasks, such as:
Uploading and updating product listings
Managing inventory databases
Processing orders and refunds
Responding to customer service inquiries
These small but important tasks help keep your online store running smoothly and create a smooth and enjoyable customer experience.
Business Research
One of the key tasks of creating a successful marketing campaign is business research. This is tedious and time-consuming and could be best handled by a virtual assistant. When developing a marketing campaign, it’s important to research,
Prospects before sales presentations
Competitor data like pricing, features, and reviews
Trending keywords and content topics
Industry news and stats
Research is also critical in other areas of your business, as well. Use a virtual assistant to look into differences in vendors and suppliers, announcements about products or services you use, and other tools that could benefit your company. Let them know what’s important to you and your business, and they’ll handle the rest.
Human Resource Tasks
While virtual assistants shouldn’t handle any major decision-making tasks in human resources, they can help with the smaller, day-to-day responsibilities. Have them handle creating job descriptions for new roles, scheduling interviews, managing onboarding paperwork, and organizing employee files. If you provide them with the right information and resources, they may even be able to answer some common questions from employees about scheduling, pay dates, or policies within your company.
Delegating these tasks can help streamline your processes, reduce strain, and keep things running smoothly. Just be sure the virtual assistant you hire is someone you can trust, especially if they will be handling sensitive or confidential information.
Work Smarter with a Virtual Assistant
While virtual assistants may not be suited to lead entire projects on their own, having their help at key stages of the process can be a huge help. Make sure to discuss expectations and responsibilities with potential VAs before you hire them and learn what their strengths and weaknesses are. With the right fit, a virtual assistant can become an invaluable part of your team.
