Virtual Assistant Demand in 2023: An In-Depth Study

Are Virtual Assistants actually needed? Statistics like the fact that there will be 257 million more internet users in July 2021 than in July 2020 show that there will be a greater need for virtual assistants. People are doing more and more of their business online because the government makes it hard to go outside, and people are afraid of getting COVID-19 when they leave their homes. A lot of people use the internet to do their daily business, but even more, use social media. From July 2020 to July 2021, the number of social media users grew by about 520 million. The fact that there are more potential customers online is good news, especially if you want to market your business online.

So, do people really need a lot of Virtual Assistants in 2023? Definitely! If you don’t want your business to fall behind in this Digital Age? Having a VA helps a lot.As an entrepreneur, your time is your most valuable asset. You are the smartest person in your company and the boss. Your main job is to run your business, improve your business model, and come up with business plans that will help your business grow.

And as your business grows, it will take up more and more of your time. You now have to make invoices so that your employees can get paid faster. You also have to reconcile your expenses and plan the next team trip. But the most time-consuming task is managing emails.

Since the average person sends and receives 124 work emails every day, or 620 emails every week, we spend an average of 1.1 minutes on each email. As a business owner, the number of emails in your inbox could be 100% higher than the numbers above.

At this point, your time and energy are split between administrative tasks and management tasks. Since your time is the most valuable thing you have, it will be smart to hire a Virtual Assistant (VA). 

What is a VA?

A VA usually works from home and relies heavily on the internet to access important planning documents, such as shared files or calendar schedules, from afar. A VA also usually has the latest cloud tools, such as Software as a Service (SaaS) tools and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms. Different administrative tasks can be done quickly and well with these kinds of tools, which can be used online and in real time.

Now think about how much time, effort, and money you could save if you could give all of your administrative and clerical tasks to a professional VA. And if you hire from a reputable cloud-staffing agency, they may also be able to suggest VAs who can help you plan travel, make appointments, enter data, and do other personal tasks.

Why it’s a Good Idea to Hire a VA

Here are some ways you can give your tasks to other people so you can start to work on improving and optimizing your processes to help your business grow.

Keeping track of time and doing administrative work

Most of our clients hire a general virtual assistant (VA) to save time. This can be done in two ways: directly and indirectly.

1. This is a trade-off of one hour for one hour of saved time. For example, instead of you spending five hours a month on a task, a VA will do that task for you every month. This gives you five extra hours to do other important tasks.
2.  Indirect time savings: This method saves you time by letting you focus on higher-level tasks or tasks that are important for growing your business. Since your VA is taking on more administrative tasks, you can now focus most of your time and energy on running your business, making your business model better, and coming up with business strategies.

Taking care of money

A VA can keep track of your books and close them at the end of each month. This makes sure that your business is in line with government and tax rules.

VAs who specialize in bookkeeping can do things like bill clients, do basic bank reconciliation, file invoices from your inbox, do credit checks, manage basic payroll, and more.

To keep your profit and loss statements from being full of mistakes, all you have to do is give your VA the right tax process and training.

Jobs to do with staff or teams

Managing an office staff or team takes a lot of time and costs money for your business. This is a problem that every business, no matter what kind, size, market, or industry, has to deal with.

With the help of a VA, you can delegate some low- to mid-level management tasks so you have more time to focus on high-level ones.

You can give a VA the following management tasks:

• Following up on team deliverables
• Conducting team work-in-progress (WIP) meetings
• Creating and managing task templates
• Organising staff outings
• Updating role descriptions
• Organising staff training and upskilling
• Tracking team Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Quality-checking output and performance
• Managing and updating process manuals
• Seeking feedback on management performance

Client Relationship Management Tasks

With the help of CRM tools, you can keep good relationships with your customers. With these tools, it’s easier to build better relationships with your customers, which makes doing business with them easier.

So, if you want your CRM tasks to go as planned, you need to find a reliable VA with the right skills and knowledge of CRM tools.

CRM tasks are something that VAs from the Philippines are very good at. Since the Philippines is one of the best countries for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), its virtual assistants have a lot of experience with the best CRM platforms, such as ZenDesk, Zoho, and Hubspot.

Social Media & Digital Marketing Tasks

Everyone and everything is now more connected than ever because of the digital age. With all of these technological advances, like smartphones, computers, and other gadgets, clients and customers can now access the whole world.

Due to this constant change in how information is accessed and shared, digital marketing through social media is the best way to keep your marketing campaigns up-to-date and competitive.

Eventually, both short-term and long-term marketing campaigns will benefit from you giving your digital marketing tasks to a virtual assistant (VA). Some of the main things a VA does are:

• Content marketing support
• Social media support
• Search marketing support
• Email marketing support
• Marketing funnels
• Updating your site’s landing page
• Updating website content
• Monitoring google ads or Facebook campaigns
• Interactive video scriptwriting and creation
• Competitor tracking and research

Sales Support Tasks

Not everything about sales is about making money. It’s more about giving everyone the best shopping experience and making sure that every transaction is fun, easy, and memorable.

If you do this right, customers will trust you and become repeat customers or even brand ambassadors.

A sales representative or sales support can make all the difference. A well-trained sales support person can take care of your emails, live chat questions, and phone calls. You could even give your virtual assistant templates to use when posting on your social media accounts.

Tasks that help with human capital

As your business grows, so does your responsibility to your employees. Having a virtual assistant (VA) help with HR tasks makes sure that you meet all legal requirements, such as those for pay and benefits.

Human Resource Information System (HRIS) platforms like Bamboo HR make it easier than ever to keep and update employee records. All of these simple employment record tasks can be done by a VA in just two to five hours per month.

A VA can also handle the following HR tasks:

• Placing job ads on online recruitment boards
• Screening CV’s from applicants
• Keeping abreast with employment law changes
• Conducting initial interviews
• Updating employment agreements
• Preparing and organising performance reviews
• Making announcements on your behalf
• Tracking and calculating hours

Personal Tasks

Because VAs can do a lot of different things and are flexible at work, they are a great choice to do your personal tasks.

Here in VAFLIX, all of our VAs undergo the required screening before and during our recruitment process. We know how important trust is, so we only hire VAs who are trustworthy.

Here are some ways a dependable VA can manage some areas of your personal life:

• Planning holiday trips
• Managing personal social media channels
• Researching and purchasing gifts
• Paying bills
• Managing investment properties
• Managing Airbnb bookings
• Researching online training and upskilling programs
• Remotely monitoring your home

By outsourcing your daily back-office tasks, you’ll save money, avoid stress, and spend your time and energy on things you enjoy the most in this new decade and beyond.