You maaaay come to a point in running your small business when you start to think, “maybe I should hire a Virtual Assistant to help me get things done“.
You’ve got orders to pack, customers to reply to, products to make, a website that needs updating, social media to think about, emails to send, a blog you’ve been meaning to write for approximately six months and then you need to actually run your business itself and actually have a life (obvs)… are there really enough hours in the day for all of this?!
Keeping on top of everything you need to do; delivering your services/selling your products, doing all the small business marketing and actually, you know, having a life at the same time can feel like a lot. And all of that combined can be really overwhelming.
Maybe you’re already there, and that’s why you’re reading this. Or maybe your small biz is growing and you know that, sooner rather than later, you’re probs gonna need some help with running it.
This is where hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA) and outsourcing for your small business can make a huge difference. Sometimes having someone else working alongside you to take a few things off your to-do list can be exactly what you need to make you feel a hell of a lot less stressed and your working life sooo much easier.
So how do you know if this is you? Well, here are three signs that it might be time to hire a Virtual Assistant to help with your small business marketing.
1. You might hire a Virtual Assistant because you don’t have enough time
You know you should be sending emails. You know how beneficial it would be to post on your blog. You know you haven’t posted on Insta for a few weeks. You know that your website shouldn’t still be in summer mode in October, yet finding that extra 15 minutes to just sit down and add a bit of Christmas to it never seems to happen. It just feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day.
There will always be something left on your small business to-do list
I’m gonna be real, I think that’s just the way small business life works. There is always something that could be done. That will likely always be the case – and you’ll need to learn to be okay with leaving things undone or at least prioritising what’s genuinely important. What you don’t need to do is start working 8 days a week to fit everything in.
Your time is valuable, and spending it on the things that only you can do is a far better use of it, especially if your small business is growing.
But you can hire a virtual assistant to outsource some of the more important small business tasks so that they actually get done
And this is where a freelance VA, like me, can come in so you can outsource your small business marketing, for example.
Maybe you decide to outsource your blog writing so you still have a blog published each month, but you’ve saved yourself a whole day each month that’s better placed elsewhere (and yes, that can mean a day off if you want it to).
Maybe you decide to outsource your email marketing so that your email list still hears from your small biz each week/month/fortnight, but you don’t need to sit down and actually write the emails yourself. Or maybe you get a VA to regularly update your website or get those products listed and published, ready for customers to buy so that you can step away from your laptop and focus solely on actually making them.
You don’t have to outsource EVERYTHING, but handing over one or two things that you just haven’t been getting around to can make a huge difference when it comes to running your small business.
2. You might hire a Virtual Assistant because you need some expertise
Sometimes it’s not that you don’t have the time; it’s more that, actually, you just don’t know what the hell you’re doing.
We all know that as small business owners it’s your job to do everything, right? But hang on a min… I know you started your small business because you’re brilliant at making beautiful jewellery, designing incredible interiors, creating gorgeous ceramics, knitting beautiful things or doing whatever it is that you do.
You didn’t start it because you wanted to become an expert in all things SEO AND a copywriter AND an email marketer AND a social media strategist AND – well, I think I’ve made my point.
Of course, a lot of things you can learn to do yourself. You can DIY your website, you can send out an email every week and write up a blog post every month, you can use that post you saved on Insta 3 months ago to write better product descriptions for all your lovely products, but sometimes paying someone, like a freelance VA who already knows how to do something well, is a much better use of your time.
As an example, my husband and I spent a couple of nights away in Tenby recently (flippin’ lovely, FYI) and the drive was gonna take us somewhere between 2-3 hours. We needed to top up the oil in the car before we went, so we paid the extra £5 or whatever on top of the cost of the bottle of oil to get the guy in Halfords to do it as we didn’t want to risk fluffin’ up the car by doing it ourselves.
We might be able to write an engaging blog post and make excellent pastries, but cars do NOT fall within our area of expertise, and that is a-okay. Same goes for you. You don’t have to become an expert in everything; sometimes you can just find someone who is and get them to do the thing.
3. You might hire a Virtual Assistant because you just don’t want to do it
Yep, you read that right. ‘I bloody hate doing it’ is MORE than a good enough reason to find someone else to do it for you.
‘Cause you might love making your products, but that doesn’t mean you feel the same about writing the product descriptions to get them uploaded to your website. You might love chatting to customers but absolutely despise the thought of sending emails to sell to them. And I bet you’re passionate as fluff about your business and have an ongoing list of blog titles and ideas to expand on in your notes app, but would rather eat your body weight in M&S Extra Cream Custard Creams* than write all those thoughts up into a blog post.
*this may sound like a dream, but trust me, tummy-FULL-of-biscuits-you is a very sorry state of affairs. Ask me how I know…!
You don’t have to enjoy every single part of running your business.
In fact, I’d argue that one of the best things you can do as a small business owner is figure out what jobs drain the life out of you and instead pass ‘em over to someone who actually gets excited by them.
Cause that means you can stop putting off those tasks you reeeeeally hate, week after week after week. No more guilt, or energy wasted avoiding it, just the flippin’ relief of knowing that blog post, that email newsletter, that bit of admin you’ve been dodging for months is finally done – yay!
So, is it time to outsource your small business marketing to a freelance VA (like me?)
Maybe.
If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed with trying to do everything. And deciding to hire a Virtual Assistant and outsource your small business marketing is probs something you’ve already been thinking about – which is why you clicked to read all this in the first place.
So yeah, maybe it is time to hire a Virtual Assistant.
Maybe it’s time for you to take your time back, so you have more to give to the parts of your business you love the most, or for getting coffee and cake with your pals on a Friday afternoon. You do you.
I’ve been helping small business owners, like you, reduce their overwhelm and get sh*t done for years. If writing your blog, sending your emails or keeping on top of your marketing is something that keeps getting pushed down your to-do list. That’s what someone like me can help with
But before you hire a Virtual Assistant, there’s one final thing you need to know
You do need to know what you want to outsource. You don’t need to know ALL the specifics, the blog titles, etc just yet, but you need to have an idea of what your goal is. Whether that’s:
- I want one blog post published every month.
- I want to send an email out every fortnight.
- I’ve got five new products that need listing on my website.
- I want someone to manage my social media for me
Once you know what you want to achieve, you’re halfway there.
If you want to know exactly what I do as a VA, you can read more about how I work with small businesses just here, and if you have any questions at all, feel free to get in touch – I’m always happy to have a chat.
