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Whether or not you’ll benefit from an assistant is not a question of the industry – it’s a matter of how overburdened you are. You need an assistant if you can’t handle all your daily tasks within a day. A virtual assistant is the simplest form of assistance in the digital world. It’s accessible, available, and cost-effective.
While this is not industry-dependent, some industries benefit most from virtual assistants. With that in mind, here are the top five such fields and a list of tasks a virtual assistant can perform in each.
1. Real estate
The primary task of any virtual assistant is to manage your schedule, handle your appointments, and send you various reminders. This requires quite a bit of finesse, especially because, in the real estate industry, most of these appointments have follow-ups.
According to a veteran Rocket Station virtual assistant, property research is one of the tasks that an aid will perform in the real estate industry. Searching through property listings doesn’t take years in the real estate industry. It’s an administrative task that can be automated or delegated to a VA.
Depending on the area, you may deal with a multi-lingual market. While hiring a full-time translator or relying on a translating tool may be an alternative, looking for an assistant with target language knowledge is far more efficient.
Lastly, you need someone to handle the paperwork. Real estate markets are mostly boilerplate, but you still need someone with the power to overlook these processes. With the help of an assistant, this will be much simpler to handle. Remember that hiring a virtual assistant is scalable, even if you can handle it independently.
2. IT
Wages in the IT industry are incredibly high, mostly because people with knowledge of code and development are rare, and their skills are difficult to obtain. This means it’s a waste to put a coder to handle administrative tasks while paying them a full programmer’s wage. So, you can hire a virtual assistant to handle these administrative tasks instead.
First of all, VAs can be trained to provide excellent technical support. They can handle most issues directly and make a judgment when they need assistance from higher up. If the issue is too complex to handle independently, they can communicate it with one of the technicians. So, what’s the point of the VA in technical support if you still need an IT person? Well, they serve as a sort of filter. They’ll decide what goes to the technicians and what can be handled immediately.
Documentation and data entry are two fields in which a VA can do just as good of a job as anyone else. You can switch these menial tasks to them and let your IT guys focus on the coding. This also means you’ll do more coding with fewer people on the task.
3. Marketing
Even with simple training, VAs can take an active part in email marketing and all sorts of email marketing. The number of emails they send, the accuracy, and even the open rate can be incredible when automated. Since this is one of the marketing techniques with the highest ROI, it’s irresponsible to miss out on this amazing opportunity.
Social media management takes so much time. You can automate your scheduling and outsource writing social media posts, but it still takes someone to coordinate it. Remember that they can also research social media and search for branded mentions online. This way, they can monitor the general sentiment quite effectively.
VAs can also partake in digital advertising support. For instance, they can be in charge of the PPC campaign, monitor ad performance, and more. They are also supposed to help coordinate between the departments and monitor the timetable. In digital marketing, schedules, and calendars are everything; VAs can send better reminders than notifications ever could (by adding a human touch).
4. Law firm
Filing court documents is already done (mostly) online; however, these documents are usually too delicate for the process to be automated. Therefore, you need a virtual assistant to handle this via a hands-on approach. They can also prepare client intake forms, maintain client databases, and keep things neat and organized.
On some occasions, VAs may be in charge of communicating with clients and providing immediate support. The client should have a direct line to their lawyer, but if it’s a minor administrative inquiry, it’s simpler and more efficient if handled via a VA.
VAs can also oversee some of the most important accounting tasks. For instance, they can be in charge of billing and invoicing, keeping financial records, and more. Sure, they cannot replace a virtual bookkeeper or an online accountant, but they can do just as good of a job regarding some minor transactional tasks.
5. Finance
Finance is handled by trained (and, in some cases, licensed) professionals. Even in the era where bookkeepers and accountants mostly handle their jobs online, you still need VAs for various administrative tasks.
Not all financial data needs to be input by a bookkeeper. Sometimes, hiring a VA for the job is more cost-effective. This is especially the case in improvised accounting departments. Even a small firm can afford to hire one bookkeeper and several virtual assistants and put them on the task. An online bookkeeper, a virtual accountant, and a VA are even better team compositions.
A VA can perform tasks regarding expense tracking and budgeting. You just need someone to supervise it via cloud-based budgeting platforms and personal apps. Why not hire and assign a VA?
Lastly, invoices, financial statements, and even some tax-related forms can be prepared by virtual assistants. Sure, this is a job for an accountant, but sometimes a VA is enough.
Wrap up
A virtual assistant handles a menial task so a specialist can focus on their core activity. This means that hiring a virtual assistant creates a potential for better-optimized delegation and far greater efficiency in the workplace. Be sure to hire an assistant who has completed their virtual assistant certification from a school such as the Virtual Assistant Institute. Today, virtual assistants are accessible and affordable, which robs you of any sensible argument against this great idea.
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