Boost Productivity by 40%: Why You Need a Virtual Assistant Now

Virtual Assistant (VA) is no longer a trend but a strategic move for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and huge corporations. If you have been handling everything yourself, you know what it is like to be overwhelmed with growth-focused duties coupled with administrative work. Enter the virtual assistant: a person who can do the things that you should not be wasting your precious time on. This can help you regain control over your time and contribute towards the growth of your business.

This blog is meant to provide you with all the information you require as to how to hire a virtual assistant. In this article, we’ll explore how it works, what you should be looking for, and why VAs are not only affordable but indispensable for growth.

Why Hire a Virtual Assistant?

1. Cost Savings

The number one reason why many businesses hire virtual assistants is because it is cheap to do so. Companies employing virtual assistants report significant cost savings, and it is believed that businesses can reduce their expenses by up to 78% as compared to the cost of in-house assistants. Think about it: No rent or office space for employees, no office furniture and equipment for them to work with, and lastly, no provision for employee welfare and remunerations. It is usually charged by the hour or by the project completed, which makes it quite cost-effective.

For instance, instead of employing a permanent office assistant who would require a wage, health insurance, and other expenses, you can hire a virtual assistant for a significantly lower price. This flexibility helps firms, especially small firms, to remain as lean as possible while at the same time getting the required support.

2. Flexibility and Scalability

A great VA doesn’t necessarily have to be employed full-time or within your time zone in order to be efficient. You can hire virtual assistants on a contractual basis, meaning that you can hire more when your business is booming and hire less when things are slow. This is particularly useful if your work is seasonal or fluctuates with client demand or if you are salaried but also work on freelance projects.

3. Increased Productivity

Did you know that remote workers, including virtual assistants, are 35% to 40% more productive than those working from an office? VAs are usually able to work better, complete their tasks more effectively, and deliver the work more quickly because they work from their own environment.

In addition, 68% of companies stated that hiring virtual assistants helps increase efficiency of the teams. Outsourcing tasks like scheduling, customer service, and social media management saves time in working on core activities that define growth.

What Can a Virtual Assistant Do?

Virtual assistants are incredibly versatile and able to support a wide range of tasks depending on their experience and expertise. The key advantage of hiring a virtual assistant is that they can take on both routine and specialized work, freeing you up to focus on higher-value activities that directly impact your business growth. Here’s a deeper look into the common categories of tasks that can be delegated when you hire virtual assistants:

1. Administrative Support

Routine jobs are relatively more tedious yet critical in ensuring the proper running of organizational procedures. The following are some of the tasks that a Filipino virtual assistant can perform:

• Email Management: Managing the emails you receive and only attending to the most critical emails in your inbox. They can also manage the incoming and outgoing emails so that no critical message is missed.
• Calendar Scheduling: Scheduling of meetings, appointments, and other events such that you do not book for two events at the same time and time management. Some VAs also have the ability to notify you of any pending due dates.
• Bookkeeping: The daily tracking of financials, expenditures, and revenues. They cannot replace an accountant, but they can assist in performing simple financial functions and filing your documents.
• Customer Support: Dealing with questions, complaints, and making sure that people are happy with the services that your company provided.
• Data Entry and Organization: Data entry and data management on spreadsheets or CRMs so that you don’t have to spend countless hours on it.

These tasks might look petty when taken separately, but summed up together, they consume a significant part of your time. A virtual assistant can do all these crucial tasks and free up your time.

2. Creative Services

Most virtual assistants are creative and can help in content creation for your brand and/or company, such as:

• Graphic Design: From designing logos and social media posts to promotional material and even visuals for websites.
• Video Editing: Creating high-quality videos for social networks, YouTube channel, or your website. This can range from simple adjustments such as cutting and adding captions or more complicated operations such as color correction and animation.
• Content Creation: From writing blog posts, newsletter content, eBooks, to assisting with content calendars. It also means a VA can help with brainstorming, making sure you have the right content to share.
• Copywriting: Writing engaging website content, sales letters, product descriptions, and email copy that would appeal to your target market.

Outsourcing such creative tasks to a virtual assistant from the Philippines not only saves time but also allows you to take advantage of the VA’s expertise to make your brand stand out and improve content quality.

3. Sales Support

A virtual assistant can be a huge asset when it comes to sales and lead generation. They can take care of tasks such as:

• Lead Generation: Researching potential clients, compiling contact lists, and managing outreach efforts to fill your sales pipeline.
• Cold Outreach: Sending cold emails or LinkedIn messages to prospective clients, following up on leads, and maintaining consistent communication.
• Email Marketing: Managing email campaigns, creating newsletters, and setting up drip sequences that nurture your leads and drive conversions.
• CRM Management: Keep your customer relationship management system (like HubSpot, Salesforce, or Zoho) updated with the latest client interactions, follow-up tasks, and new leads.

4. Marketing Tasks

Marketing is a necessity for any business, but it is also very time-consuming. The following are some of the typical marketing activities that can be assigned to virtual assistants:

• Social Media Management: Creating content for various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, where we plan and schedule content to post. It also allows them to track the comments and even interact with your followers, which strengthens your bond with them.
• Blog Posting and Management: A Filipino virtual assistant can handle the technical work of writing and posting blogs, optimizing them for SEO, and editing previous posts. They can also be in charge of guest blogging or handling content sharing and partnerships with other sites.
• SEO Optimization: Applying on-page SEO strategies such as keyword stuffing, meta tag optimization, and constructing internal and external linking to enhance search engine visibility.
• Running Ad Campaigns: Task such as managing Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or Instagram Ads, deciding the budget, tracking the performance, and optimizing them for the highest ROI.

Whether you need more engagement on social media accounts or are trying to improve your website rankings, hire virtual assistants to handle your marketing and watch your business grow.

5. Tech and IT Support

Most virtual assistants are up-to-date with technology and can help manage your accounts. Here are a few examples:

• Website Maintenance: Maintenance such as upgrading plugins, restructuring content, correcting errors, or incorporating new elements to the webpage.
• Software Troubleshooting: Helping with concerns that may occur on some website builders such as Shopify, WordPress, or your email marketing application. They can assist in checking all operations and repairing any technical issues that may arise before they affect your business.
• Tech Support for Clients: If your business entails the selling of technology products or services that directly deal with customers, hire a virtual assistant to help in handling their concerns.
• E-commerce Support: Performing tasks related to product listings and orders and responding to customers’ messages and other interactions on marketplaces such as Amazon, Etsy, and Shopify.

With a proficient Philippines virtual assistant working on your side, you do not have to waste your time with such small technicalities.

6. Personal Assistance

Some virtual assistants are also capable of handling personal chores, which would enable you to effectively manage work and family:

• Travel Arrangements: The purchase of tickets for business and leisure travel, including flights and accommodations.
• Event Planning: Helping to coordinate online meetings, presentations, or live conferences.
• Personal Task Management: From appointments and email to personal shopping lists, all can be easily managed with the help of assistants.

Hire Filipino virtual assistants to take over these personal tasks and help you strike a balance between work and personal life, preventing professional burnout.

The Steps to Hiring the Perfect Virtual Assistant

1. Understand Your Needs

First of all, look at your day and identify what needs to be done before you hire a virtual assistant. What are some things that you have been wasting a lot of your time on? Which actions sap your energy and are not aligned with the opportunities that lead to revenue generation?

It is forecasted that by 2028, 50% of the US workforce could potentially be virtual professionals. With that in mind, I would recommend that you begin by timing yourself for a week. Document all your actions – from responding to the emails to participating in the meetings. By the end of the week, you will likely discover activities that do not require your personal input. These are some of the duties that should be delegated to a virtual assistant.

2. Decide on the Type of Virtual Assistant

There are multiple types of VAs, from the ones who can do a bit of everything to those who specialize in particular tasks such as social media marketing or accounting. Think about whether it is beneficial to hire virtual assistants who can do many different things or whether it would be more valuable to have someone with a specific focus on a certain subject matter.

Types of Virtual Assistants

• General VA: Contributes to the regular paperwork.
• Tech VA: Covers website updates and enhancements, email marketing platforms, and application control.
• Marketing VA: Specializes in social media marketing, blogging, search engine optimization, and advertising.
• Executive VA: Assists in executive management by doing administrative tasks such as booking appointments, travel arrangements, and emails.

3. Create a Detailed Job Description

It can be seen that a well-written JD is one of the factors to consider when you hire a virtual assistant. State your message concisely and clearly, as the following things should be outlined:

• Particular activities as to which you require assistance.
• The preferred working hours or time zone of the VA.
• They should be familiar with any tools or software (for instance, Slack, Trello, or Google Suite).

For example: “Seeking immediate, temporary help with the following tasks: answering and forwarding emails, scheduling appointments with clients, and entering the data into the HubSpot CRM during 09:00-12:00 EST.”

4. Know Where to Look

The first step to getting a good VA is understanding where to look for them in the first instance. Let us list some of the platforms and resources that can assist you in finding a qualified virtual assistant for a short-term project or a permanent team member:

• VA Agencies like EO Staff: If you want to hire virtual assistants from the Philippines without getting much involved in the process, then using the services of a VA agency is the best thing to do. EO Staff from the Philippines is one of the best VA agencies that you can work with. They focus on connecting their clients with freelance virtual assistants with the right skills and backgrounds. The benefit of working with an agency like EO Staff is that they take the responsibility of sourcing, training, and hiring the VA to avoid the risk of getting the wrong person for the job.
• Upwork and Fiverr: Freelance marketplaces let you search for freelancers, check ratings, and choose the ones that are best suited for the job. Both services share the same benefits of flexibility and offer a large pool of available skills.
• Online Jobs Portal: This portal is best suited if you’re interested in hiring virtual assistants from the Philippines only. A Filipino virtual assistant is considered to be of high quality, and you can find professionals through online job sites that offer reasonable prices.
• Virtual Staff Finder: This service saves you some time to do your hiring of VAs since it shortlists some of them for you. It is a good option if you want more selective options from which you want to make a purchase.
• Your Network: Word of mouth is something that should not be underestimated. Your fellow business owners or fellow entrepreneurs in your social circle may be aware of someone who would be perfect for the position you are seeking to fill. It is always advisable to ask around since it may lead to recommendations from other professionals.

5. Interview Thoroughly

Next, interview your final candidates one-on-one, either virtually or via a video call. This will enable you to assess the communication skills, professionalism, and compatibility of the candidates. When interviewing the subject, enquire about:

• Knowledge about particular instruments that you apply.
• How they accept feedback and revisions.
• Accessibility and time zone compatibility.

Technical skills are important, but a VA needs to be able to talk on the phone and/or via email to 

your clients or handle certain projects.

What you need is a person who can understand directions, follow up with more questions if necessary, and give feedback as deemed appropriate.

6. Start with a Trial Period

Are you hiring someone for long-term employment? It is recommended to begin with a trial period or, at least, a trial project. This way, you can get a chance to observe how they perform tasks without the pressure of long-term employment. It also helps to understand how these applications fit into your work and how efficiently they handle their work.

7. Set Clear Expectations

With remote work, there is always a chance of miscommunication. Schedule daily/weekly meetings, incorporate specific tools to complete projects, and make it clear to your VA about the due dates and objectives of each assignment. Software applications such as Trello, Asana, or Monday.Com are great for assigning jobs, monitoring progress, and making sure nothing gets overlooked.

8. Offer Competitive Pay

The cost of virtual assistants can also depend on their place of work and the level of seniority that they hold. Hire virtual assistants based in the U.S. often charge more than those located in other countries. However, they are likely to have the advantage of working in the same time zone as you. In general, hiring virtual assistants from other nations, particularly the Philippines, can provide impressive services at a cheaper price point. This holds true whether you are in one country or the other; paying employees well makes them feel wanted and thus keeps the best talent with you.

The Impact of Hiring a Virtual Assistant

If you have read up to this point, then you should understand that hiring a virtual assistant is not simply an act of outsourcing work; it is a business decision with far-reaching consequences. However, organizations that apply virtual assistant technologies are likely to encounter:

• Increased revenue: This is because tasks that are time-consuming and need concentration can be outsourced, freeing up more hours for business expansion.
• Higher productivity: As stated above, virtual assistants can work more efficiently than employees working at the office due to the absence of distractions.
• Improved work-life balance: Delegating mundane tasks frees up your time to invest in the areas of your business – and life – that matter most.

The statistics show that 59% of virtual assistants work full-time, and with the trend toward increased use of flexible work arrangements, this figure will only grow in the future. This implies an increase in the appreciation of virtual assistants by companies.

Final Thoughts: Is Hiring a Virtual Assistant Right for You?

Time is one of the most valuable resources in today’s business world, and a virtual assistant can be a real lifesaver. This is particularly important if your business is just starting and is still trying to find its footing or if you are an entrepreneur with many balls to juggle in your hands. Hire a virtual assistant to be a lifesaver.

• Know exactly what tasks require outsourcing.
• Choose the type of VA that will be most helpful to you.
• Ensure that your job opening description and the requirements of the position are well articulated.
• You can find the perfect candidate through using freelance websites such as Upwork, Fiverr or just asking your connections for recommendations.

It is always advisable to begin with a trial period to confirm whether the particular assistant meets the user’s requirements. Aim to provide fair wages for employees along with proper communication to avoid high turnover rates.

Outsourcing a Filipino virtual assistant is not just about getting back more time – it’s also about growing your business and increasing its revenue. Are you ready to hire a virtual assistant and start your business with the support you need?