In today’s era of digital marketing, the possibilities of business expansion are endless. And yet, despite the excellent quality of products and services 40-50% of startups fail.
There are several reasons that can be attributed to their failure such as a bad website design, no customer retention, sloppy online marketing, high demand for products but low maintenance of inventory, mismanaged logistics, etc. Any or all of such failed startup marketing activities can be converted into a successful venture, if you as a startup entrepreneur understand the effectiveness of virtual assistance services, much like understanding the feasibility of a non-physical shop.
So, let’s first understand what actually is virtual assistance and who is a virtual assistant?
Virtual Assistance Services Defined
With the online tasks getting more diverse, complex and increasingly competitive in this digital era, there is a growing need for ‘virtual assistance services’ and what one could call as services that are performed remotely and outside of any client’s physical location.
Who is a Virtual Assistant or Virtual Office Assistant?
A virtual assistant is one who is an independent contractor and can provide wide ranging services such as website editing, social media marketing, email management and marketing, customer service, e-commerce data management or any other secretarial tasks that can be performed remotely. Further, it isn’t necessary that a virtual assistant has to be an individual, it could be a company operating as one.
Now that you understand what kind of jobs can be taken up by a virtual assistant, here’s how you can best utilize a virtual assistant to supercharge your startup.
Ways in Which you can Supercharge Your Startup with Virtual Assistance Services
1. Study and Manage Your Budget
Since the top reason to hire a virtual assistant has always been cost-savings, it is important to check your finances. One of the first things you can do to lift your fledgling business is track down your budget. Click To Tweet
And if by any means you find yourself to be under budget, you must lend out jobs to a virtual assistant for a price that would be negligible in comparison to keeping a full-time employee.
In this way, your budget can be managed quite well because you will be paying less for the same job that otherwise would cost you more. Your physical and operational costs (such as electricity, air conditioning or internet) medical and insurance costs, and travel expenses if any — all come down to a minimum.
Reports already ran awry that as much as 40 percent reduction in business expenses can be achieved by using the services of a virtual assistant. Click To Tweet Your risks are minimal because when you outsource work to a contractor, the chances of success are also better.
2. Outsource Areas of Work Where No Special Training Needs to be Provided
The next best thing after analyzing your budget is to see how you can scale-up your business without increasing your costs. Click To Tweet
You would want to check in which areas you have volume of work to be accomplished and where no special training needs to be provided.
As an example, you would find many product based firms losing out on their brand value on account of poor logistics and lack of inventory control. Then, there are firms who face problems while managing bulk emails received from clients — publishing firms are an excellent example.
In any of the above or similar situations, when your workload is at its peak, you would want to hire more people. But hiring is not always an optimum solution. And, you will also not like to impede the progress of your firm. It is then warranted that you assign the majority of work to virtual assistants where no special training is required to be given and when those assistants can easily manage your work with minimal amount of supervision.
You also have the choice of getting your work done faster because those assistants will accept work as per the schedules set by you. In cases where you do not get your job done, you also have the flexibility to replace your virtual assistant.
3. Outsource Work If It Falls Out of Your Domain Expertise
This step can usually be undertaken if you want to keep your expenditure at a minimum and yet want to reap the best results out of startup marketing. While there’s little wonder that in this age of increasing competition, the need to explore multiple styles of marketing is warranted, you often find all of such marketing activities taking their toll on you. In such a case, it’s important that you organize your business. Unfortunately, not many startup entrepreneurs possess this skill, hence, they fail.
Organizing your business would mean delegating any such tasks to a virtual assistant in which you aren’t an expert. For example, you could be an excellent web developer but not a good content creator or graphic designer. You are a tech savvy person but not necessarily a creative guy. In such a situation, it’s always wise to find a good quality content creator or a graphic designer in a virtual assistant.
So, while the non-essential tasks would mean handling email calls, email marketing and management, email filtering, calendar management, appointment setting, making outbound or inbound sales calls, preparation of payroll, bookkeeping, bookmarking, and social media management, the more crucial tasks would mean website development and design, content writing, blogging, search engine optimization, language translation, medical transcription, marketing research, data security and such other brainstorming tasks.
In Conclusion
While the aforementioned ways are some of the ways in which you can get your startup business rolling, you must never forget that a virtual assistant can be hired for both essential and non-essential tasks.
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