Ever wondered if your industry could benefit from hiring a virtual assistant? People rave about how valuable an EA/ VA can be for their business. But, is that true of every business?
Virtual Executive Assistants are an incredibly talented bunch! They have a wide range of skills.
Best known for their administrative prowess, that is certainly one of the main areas they can assist in any industry. However, there are also some industry specific jobs they can take on to help your business operate more efficiently.
Let’s explore those things in greater detail.
1: Accounting & Bookkeeping
As an Accountant or Bookkeeper, there are many important deadlines to meet throughout the year.
A virtual assistant can lighten the load by taking on time consuming tasks like inbox management, client communication and chasing documents, so that you can maximise your working hours and solely focus on the financial aspects.
Hiring a virtual assistant means that you can have a laser focus on the core aspects of your business that add value to your clients and bring in more revenue.
You can immerse yourself in your main services like tax returns, end of year accounts, monthly reporting, and/or daily reconciliations, while your dedicated EA/VA manages the day to day running of the business and handles all your admin tasks.
2: Coaches / Mentors
As a business, life, career or leadership coach and mentor, you can significantly benefit from having a talented VA/EA on your team. They can provide you with support in various aspects of your business so that you can focus on your clients and core coaching activities.
Along with the usual admin help, your VA/EA can assist with scheduling or moving client appointments, automating things like your reminder emails, filtering and responding to emails, maintaining your client database, handling the behind-the-scenes aspects of onboarding, seeking and organising client feedback, and handling the tech aspects of your online resources.
They can also ensure all your speaking events are planned, booked, promoted and invitations sent out, while also organising all the logistics that a live event creates.
3: Digital Marketing
As a digital marketing expert, you spend your time helping your clients with their own marketing. Whether it be strategy or implementation, often your own marketing can fall by the wayside while helping your clients excel.
An expert virtual assistant can help you maintain consistency in this department, ensuring your own marketing is always tended to.
They can also help with a bunch of those time-consuming analysis tasks like market research, tracking the success of client marketing campaigns, assisting with keyword research, generating strategy reports, data compilation, and managing the budget of client ad spends.
4: Content Creators
Just like digital marketers, the personal content of a content creator often gets pushed to the bottom of the list. But if you can create it, your EA/VA can action it.
They can do that by editing and publishing it, scheduling social media posts to get eyes on it, creating graphics to accompany it, and helping you to maintain a consistent marketing presence.
5: eCommerce Retailers
As an eCommerce retailer, there are plenty of ways that having a expert pair of hands can help you.
Along with customer support tasks, a EA/VA can also help with your order and inventory management. While you handle the practical side of the orders, your virtual support can help you maintain stock levels, assist in identifying slow-moving products, and ensure smooth customer experiences by handling queries about refunds, issues and communication.
They can also help to maintain and update your website or online marketplace profiles, along with optimising your product listings, loading new products and updating existing ones, plus removing discontinued items.
Need to meet with suppliers or get organised for an Expo to promote your products, then your EA/VA can handle that too. Booking in appointments, managing travel bookings, booking stands, organising the logistics and ensuring when you arrive onsite that all your equipment and products are there for you.
6: Construction and Trades
When you have a trade or a construction business, you spend a lot of time on the tools. Your VA can keep things ticking over on the administrative front so that your client communication, job bookings and invoicing continue to run smoothly while you are on site.
By delegating your admin and marketing tasks, you can focus on project management, site operation, and business growth.
Your VA can also assist with supplier and vendor relations by coordinating with suppliers for material orders, deliveries and inventory management, plus researching and maintaining contractor relationships.
Don't end your day with multiple missed calls, voice message and emails to work through, let your VA manage that for you in normal business hours, hence allowing you to rest and be prepared for the next day.
7: Health & Wellness
There is a huge focus on the importance of wellbeing in the workplace and in the personal space currently. So, health and wellness businesses are in huge demand!
You therefore can’t be busy spending your time on mundane business tasks when you could be out there making a difference instead.
A virtual executive assistant can take a huge number of tasks off your hands like maintaining a digital presence across your marketing channels, handling client bookings, assisting with the tech for live streaming or website maintenance, coordinating class schedules, and keeping all these admin jobs ticking over.
Need your booklets or handouts to be updated and refreshed? Then let your EA/VA action this for you. Need some to be printed for an event? Your EA/VA can do this too!
8: Human Resources
There are some expert HR virtual assistants out there if you are looking to expand your team, but there are also VA that can help improve efficiency, client management and overall business operations while you are with your clients offering your premium service.
A VA can help with everything from client onboarding and support to updating Standard Operating Procedures (for yourself or your clients).
Organisation is a VA’s happy place, so they can also go through your client records, create great document management systems, and keep your CRM (and any other databases) up to date.
9: Hospitality & Events
Hospitality and Events businesses need to move at a fast pace to meet the demands of their customers. A virtual assistant can help you maintain the pace by assisting with reservations and booking management, customer service and inquiries, guest services, local tourism bookings and info, event coordination, and all the usual admin and tech support.
Plus they can book all your staff, transport, hire equipment, liaise with 3rd party suppliers and create and distribute run sheets so everyone knows where and when they need to be onsite.
Think of them as your own personal events assistant, who is 100% efficient when working for you as they are on an hourly rate. This will assist your budgets and costs.
10: Insurance
Insurance advisors tend to have a huge number of clients. And those clients all have different needs and different renewal dates on their policies.
An EA/VA can help you keep good organisational systems so that no dates get missed and every client is well cared for. They can work in your own CRM system or across the multiple insurance policy programs to ensure that all communications are sent and notifications are met.
Need to meet with a new client or catch up with a current client on their renewal policy? Let's your EA/VA make all the arrangements, so you can just follow your calendar and know that everything else has been taken care of.
Need to run compliance or get documents signed, again let your EA/VA manage this through the use of amazing apps and tools all of this can be automated and managed by them.
11: Financial Advisors/Mortgage Brokers
Much like an insurance advisor, Mortgage Brokers and Financial Advisors also have a huge catalogue of clients to manage and a lot of regulated / compliant paperwork that is needed.
Getting an expert VA can help in the same organisational way. They can also assist with client communication, such as sending regular newsletters containing updates about the current market conditions or changes in interest rates.
12: Real Estate
Streamline your operations and free up your time for more selling by having a VA take on some key jobs in your business.
Building an engaged database is vital for any realtor, and your VA can help with lead generation and follow up of potential buyers and sellers.
They can also assist with your listing management, creating online property listings and info blasts, as well as ensuring your property descriptions are accurate and engaging.
Need to get flyers, marketing material or posters made up to promote yourself in the local market, then again use your VA to do this for you.
13: Automotive
Bring more clients into your auto shop with the help of a VA. By letting a VA assist with your marketing, you can maintain a constant presence in your local community, drawing more clients in.
Then, they’ll keep all the bookings and records of those new clients organised in an easy to operate software system so that you can remain efficient both on the tools and in client management.
14: Professional Services
Boost your productivity by handing over your time-consuming tasks to a virtual assistant. This leaves you with more billable hours to serve your clients. You may even be able to increase your client base or service offerings.
Because your EA/VA will be remotely on hand when you need them, you can delegate all kinds of jobs like marketing, CRM management, customer service, operational assistance and much more.
15: Small Business & Start-Up's
Small businesses and start-ups take a lot of resources to run and it can be hard to keep those wheels turning when you only have a small team or if it's just you in the business.
An EA/VA can help to lighten the load so that you can scale and grow your operations. They can help with everything from business development to marketing implementation. This allows you to dedicate your own resources to revenue-generating tasks, boosting your business success.
Also, expert EA/VA's have likely worked in multiple organisations and businesses, so use their expertise and skills to set up new processes, CRM systems, or knowledge to ensure you lay the right foundations for your business. Cut corners by getting an expert in your corner who knows what can work and what doesn't!
Time For Hiring A Virtual Assistant?
So as you can see Virtual Executive Assistants can help many different industry sectors and levels of business growth, and these were just our top 15! There are many more.
So, stop wondering about whether hiring a virtual assistant will benefit your business or not. Clearly it will, regardless of the industry you operate in!
If now is the time to do more with less time in your business, then now is also the time to hire an EA/VA! And if you are looking for a GOOD one, we can help.
Our VAs have a wide range of skills and industry-specific expertise. So, why not discuss with us about how we can help your business be more productive and efficient?
Book a time to chat with us now.
