60 Tasks You Can Outsource to a Virtual Assistant Team to Grow Your Business

Hiring a virtual assistant to spur on small business growth is steadily becoming the most popular, and arguably the most effective method that entrepreneurs use to scale their business. Owing to the success of many other startups who credited their companies’ exponential growth to virtual assistant services, more and more business owners are becoming eager to explore the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant or two.

However, while many entrepreneurs are now aware that there are many ways a virtual assistant can help their business, figuring out which tasks to outsource to them and which ones to keep doing themselves or assign to local employees can be tricky. You can’t just assign any task to them. After all, how can a virtual assistant help your business grow if the tasks you’re outsourcing to them don’t really fit their skills, require local knowledge, or can’t really be done by a remote worker?

Aside from the issue of knowing which tasks to outsource, many people also make the rookie mistake of thinking that a single virtual assistant (VA) is enough to do all of the tasks they have to outsource. This means that in order to really maximize your investment and really grow your business across multiple parts of your company, you need a solid team of virtual assistants to help you out.

3 Basic Types of Virtual Assistants

There are dozens upon dozens of virtual assistants out there with different skill sets and levels of professional experience. However, most of them fall under any of these 3 main categories:

• Administrative Virtual Assistant

An Administrative VA is useful for handling the many simple, routine tasks in running a business. This involves a wide range of tasks including appointment setting, calendar management, data entry, and so on and so forth. Think of them as virtual secretaries or receptionists. They can work in areas like customer support, data entry and research, operations, and business improvement.

• eCommerce Virtual Assistant

With so many online stores cropping up nowadays, the need for eCommerce-focused VAs has also grown massively. An eCommerce VA can do some of the things that an Admin VA does as well such as customer service or market research, but eCommerce VAs have a more specialized knowledge of how online selling and digital marketplaces work. They have experience working with different online selling platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Shopify, and most of them have either practical eCommerce experience or have received eCommerce training.

• Specialist Virtual Assistant

Specialist Virtual Assistants have a lot more variety when it comes to skill sets and specializations compared to Admin or eCommerce VAs. A Specialist VA can be an expert in just one skill such as Software Development, or they can have knowledge of two or more skills. A good example of a multi-skilled specialist VA are Digital Marketing VAs who typically have knowledge of more than one branch of digital marketing which includes SEO, content writing, social media marketing, and so on.

Knowing Which VA to Hire

When you’re just starting out with outsourcing, you probably want to stick to hiring just one VA at first. This means that you need to know which VA to prioritize. The best way to figure this out is to examine the pain points in your business. Which aspect is stunting your business growth? What aspect of business do you urgently need help with?

If you find that you don’t have time to think about ways to grow your business because you’re too caught up with reading and answering emails, arranging your schedule, or making calls, then an Admin VA should be your first hire.

If your online store is suffering because you can’t manage your inventory properly or because you don’t have time to answer customer questions and deal with returns or refunds efficiently, an eCommerce VA is your best bet.

If your finances are in danger because you’re having difficulties with bookkeeping, payroll, or taxation, you need a Specialist VA who specializes in accounting. Meanwhile, if you’re lacking customers or if your brand needs more exposure, you might want to look into hiring a Digital Marketing VA.

60 Tasks You Can Outsource to a Virtual Assistant Team

Knowing what types of tasks you can outsource to the virtual assistant team you’re planning to build can also help you figure out which types of VAs to hire.

Here are 60 tasks that you can potentially outsource to a virtual assistant team grouped according to which of the 3 basic types of virtual assistants the tasks are most relevant to.

Admin VA

What can an Admin VA do for you? Here’s a rundown of some tasks you can outsource to an Admin VA:

General Administrative Tasks

These types of tasks are menial, repetitive tasks that can usually be done by entry-level virtual assistants. Many companies start their VA team by hiring a general admin VA simply because it allows them to delegate the simplest tasks and see how well a virtual assistant fits into their company. They then progress to designating more and more specialized tasks to skilled VAs and growing their virtual staff.

1. Appointment Setting
2. Travel Planning and Scheduling
3. Taking and Managing Reservations
4. Data Entry
5. Transcription
6. Executive Assistance
7. Email, Call, and Message Filtering
8. Spam Management

Sales Tasks

Admin VAs can also do some basic sales tasks especially lead generation and cold calling. Many of these sales tasks are simple to do and come with scripts, templates, or instructions for your VA to follow.

1. Lead Generation
2. Lead Nurturing
3. Cold Calling

Operations Related Tasks

Anything that is needed for operations fall under here, so tasks can vary a lot. These are just a few of the operations-related tasks that an admin VA can do for you. 

1. Email Support
2. Phone Support
3. Presentation Development
4. Database Management
5. Process Documentation

Research Tasks

You can also count on admin VAs to do some basic research. If it’s only a matter of compiling information and trimming down the fat so that you’re presented with a condensed report, you can rely on an admin VA to do it. This helps reduce the time you need to spend on analyzing information.

1. Market, Product or Service Research
2. Competitor Research
3. Data Gathering and Analysis
4. Data Visualization and Reporting

eCommerce VA

How can an eCommerce VA help you manage your online store better? By letting them do the following tasks:

 

Customer Service Tasks

Providing exceptional customer service is an integral part of running a business. You can hire an eCommerce VA to do several tasks that will help you win more customers or retain existing ones.

1. Seller Feedback Management
2. Returns and Refunds Processing
3. Responding to Customer Queries and Comments
4. Product Review Monitoring

Sales and Marketing Tasks

If you want your online store to grow, you need to invest in sales and marketing. Whether you want to focus on digital or traditional marketing, an eCommerce VA can help you create campaigns that will boost your sales and expand your brand’s reach. 

1. Influencer Outreach
2. Promotions Management
3. Discount Research
4. Sales Marketing

Research Tasks

In order to keep your business ahead of the competition, you need to do some research. You can count on a VA to do some research for you as well.

1. Product Research
2. Market Research
3. Photo Research

Store Management Tasks

Store management makes up a huge portion of the eCommerce process, so it’s only normal to need help with managing your online store. An eCommerce VA is trained to do several store management tasks such as:

1. Online Store Management
2. Seller Metrics Monitoring
3. Product Procurement
4. Listing Management
5. Order Fulfillment
6. Inventory Management

Content Creation Tasks

If you want your products to be discovered or your customers to want to buy your products, you need high-quality product descriptions and compelling product images. You can hire a VA to help you with these as well.

1. Product Listing Optimization
2. Product Image Editing
3. Content Uploading

Specialist VA

What types of Specialist VAs should you get onto your virtual staff? Here are some tasks that a Specialist VA can do for you:

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is an especially saturated industry in the virtual assistant world. You can find many highly skilled digital marketers who can help you do anything from content marketing to SEO management. It’s highly advisable to hire separate VAs for each particular aspect of digital marketing so that you can make the most of their skills and specialized knowledge.

Here’s a quick guide on how to build a digital marketing team that runs like a well-oiled machine.

1. SEO Planning and Management
2. Keyword Research and Optimization
3. Content Marketing
4. Social Media Management
5. Paid Advertising and Pay-per-Click Ads
6. Email Marketing

Website and Software Development

Having a really good website is practically a must for any business today. If you can’t splurge on a web development company or a local, in-house developer, you can hire a software or web developer VA to help you out.

1. App or Software Development
2. Website Development
3. Online Store Development

Information Technology

You can hire an IT expert VA to help you reduce the number of technical issues or speed up the resolution time for anything your business encounters.

1. Technology Administration
2. IT Support

Accounting and Finance

Although accounting and finance aren’t as popular as other specialist VA niches, you can still find a VA who specializes in these fields.

1. Bookkeeping
2. Payroll and Accounting

Content Creation

Content creators are also very popular in the virtual assistant world. Since any business needs good content to go on their website, blog, social media pages, marketing collateral, business emails, and so on and so forth, it’s pretty important to hire a content specialist VA to complete your virtual assistant team.

1. Content Writing
2. Copywriting
3. Video Creation and Editing
4. Graphic Design
5. Web Design
6. Logo Design
7. Photo Editing

Once you have decided which VAs to hire and what tasks to outsource to them, the next step is to actually start finding some really good VA candidates. A reliable virtual staffing agency can really help you with this.

Ready to hire a VA? We’d love to help you out! Simply fill out this form to schedule a free, no-obligation consultation call with us, and we’ll take it from there.