Selling on Amazon is a dream come true for many starters. And with time, the amazon business begins to pick up, and before you realize it, there are many workloads to deal with daily. What seemed like a blessing may become a pile of tasks that ties you to a desk day and night.
Luckily you can counter this issue by hiring an amazon virtual assistant to handle your project professionally. This article will explore when and how to hire a virtual assistant and select one that fits your business.
What Does An Amazon Virtual Assistant Do?
Amazon virtual assistants have the skills and expertise to perform multiple tasks. This helps them to improve efficiency and save time while you concentrate on the core responsibility of operating your Amazon business. You can outsource mundane and repetitive tasks to competent Amazon virtual assistants.
Read: 400 Best Virtual Assistant Tools to Help you Easily Work From Home
What duties can you delegate to a VA?
As your business grows, you may need to outsource some tasks to manage your time and productivity effectively. Before hiring, identify time-consuming tasks that can be delegated to an adept virtual assistant.
Below are some responsibilities you can delegate to a virtual assistant.
- Content writing duties
- Customer service responsibilities
- Administrative tasks
- Digital marketing tasks
- Social media manager
- Researcher
- Fulfillment agent
- Graphic designer
- Web developer
- Email marketing
- Translation
- Inventory management
- Performing competitor analysis
- Product sourcing
Content Writing Duties
Well-articulated and unique content for your blog, listing, training, or ebook may be the trademark of a unique brand. You need someone proficient in writing original copy that matches your brand for these tasks. Some content writing tasks include:
1. Write content for Amazon product listing
A virtual assistant with basic SEO knowledge and keyword research can help write listings to improve search rankings. The VA can also help to increase visitor count and conversion rates, and drive more traffic to your store, thus improving product visibility and sales.
Amazon virtual assistants should write outstanding bullet points during the listing creation process. This helps visitors to read and identify what they want easily.
2. Product development
If you intend to develop an online course, write an ebook, or need content for your blog or website, a virtual assistant with experience in content writing and proofreading, and editing skills will offer invaluable insights and help create beneficial, error-free content.
3. Copywriter
A skilled copywriter can help with content for email, landing pages, and advertising content to help market products for your business. An accomplished content writer should creatively compose the best phrases, use magnetic subject lines and capture your audience’s attention.
Customer Service Responsibilities
Any business owner can attest that having an efficient customer service department is critical to the success of any business. A virtual assistant specializing in customer service and administrative tasks will help manage customer concerns and expectations. Some tasks you could assign your VA to include:
1. Creating message templates
A Virtual assistant can develop response messages to answer frequently asked questions from your customers. Furnish the VA with responses to create templates that they can copy and paste to send customers quick responses to commonly asked questions.
2. Customer engagement
A virtual assistant conversant with your products comes in handy in answering questions as soon as they arrive via chat support. When customers ask questions, they expect immediate responses. Promptly addressing customer concerns creates a positive and professional image for your brand. Hiring a VA is beneficial as they will enthusiastically offer services and accurately respond to questions from your customers.
3. Handling criticism
An unaddressed negative review can badly hurt your product’s image, especially if it goes viral. Having someone at hand to respond to customers’ complaints and frustrations quickly will mitigate any negative opinion they have toward your business.
When you show concern and promptly act on a problem, that action will appease the customer, however angry they may be. While tracking reviews is critical, it is a tedious activity, and therefore it may be wiser to delegate the task to a VA.
Sometimes it is better to delete negative feedback on product listings as they may negatively affect productivity.
4. Leverage positive reviews
A VA can comment on positive reviews by thanking customers and suggesting other products the customer may want to try. The VA could identify subtle ways of driving traffic by including a link to another product or listings.
Another task a VA can help with is consistently displaying positive customer feedback on your product listing and promptly responding to each of them.
Administrative Responsibilities
Hiring an administrative virtual assistant to do the monotonous admin tasks for you can help you focus your time and energy on more demanding tasks within your business.
Your amazon virtual assistant can perform inventory management where office expenses are recorded and reconciled, customer payments are processed, financial reports are compiled, invoices are created, and clients are billed.
Digital Marketing Tasks
A sponsored ads optimizer understands sponsored ads, keyword research, and SEO and may assist you with tasks in line with:
1. Analytics
Every time you run a campaign, Amazon will compile data and information on the status of your campaign. If you aren’t conversant with this data, you may need a VA to help you interpret and determine the next course of action.
A seasoned VA with experience in amazon marketing services will analyze reports, offer appropriate keywords, scrutinize impressions, click-through rate, cost-per-click, advertising expenses, and compile data. A virtual assistant should be keen to provide accurate information in their analytics and pay attention to the latest trends, especially what users are looking for.
2. Setting up campaigns
If you lack experience in setting up campaigns, the whole process can overwhelm you. For a satisfactory outcome, consider engaging a VA to help you do it professionally.
3. SEO expert
Hire an Amazon SEO expert to improve visibility for your blog, website, product listing, content optimization, social media posts, and brand to help in marketing and improve conversion. Hiring an amazon virtual assistant knowledgeable in link building is key if you want to drive traffic.
The Amazon expert should focus on product page layout, the product title, and the description. Also, they should know how to place primary keywords, secondary keywords, and keyword optimization for easier product research on the customer’s end.
Social Media Manager
A social media manager must handle your business’s entire online presence, not just Amazon. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn pages need consistent monitoring and updating.
You need always to be available to handle engaging customer concerns. A social media manager will ensure your page is active by posting helpful content, adding new friends, and creating awareness of new products.
Researcher
A VA can conduct product research, buy at wholesale prices and sell them on the Amazon marketplace. Market research can help you understand competitors, define product performance and keep a close watch on your listings. This helps detect a drop in sales and the most appropriate time to lower prices. You may update your listings to improve sales with a VA’s guidance.
For a better listing optimization, it may be helpful to hire a VA who can physically access products to examine their quality before approving and listing them.
Your Amazon VA should also be able to identify your potential customers and their needs and perform profound competitor analysis to understand what your competitors are doing and how that’s affecting their profits. You can further use this information to optimize your Amazon product listings and create more profitable campaigns.
Fulfilment Agent
Dropshipping, third-party fulfillment, self-fulfillment, and fulfillment by Amazon FBA are order fulfillment methods that are offered by Amazon. However, they tend to be more expensive and time-consuming than hiring an amazon virtual assistant.
A fulfillment agent is a VA tasked with inventory management, i.e., monitoring and sending products to Amazon and ensuring stocks don’t run out in your inventory.
Additionally, a fulfillment agent will download barcodes for each unit, and download shipping labels with important details, including return addresses, Amazon FBA address, shipment information, and product quantity.
Graphic Designer
Along the way, you may require the services of a graphic designer to design your company logo. It will help if you hire someone skilled in photography as well. The expert VA should advise on a color scheme, design, and type of image that should be flexible and re-sizeable.
Having someone to list high-quality and professional images in line with Amazon guidelines will greatly benefit your business.
Web Developer
Hiring a VA skilled in web designing and web development is better than hiring two different people. While a web designer works on the website’s appearance, a web developer is tasked with the website’s functioning.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a marketing research service that most businesses have embraced to boost sales. Hiring a creative amazon virtual assistant to help you create engaging email marketing messages and send newsletter campaigns to your clients might be what you need to take your business to the next level.
This form of marketing can help your customers be updated on new products, discounts, and other new services.
Translation
A translator virtual assistant comes in handy when you want to expand your business by targeting the international market. Your Amazon virtual assistant can combine translating skills and designing skills or liaise with translators and designers to create outstanding products, content, and digital assets that cater to the needs of your target market.
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Tips To Help You in The Hiring Process
1. Why are you hiring?
Before looking for a VA, you may need to identify your reasons for hiring. Is it because you lack experience in a specific area, need to free your time, or have too much work? Knowing your reasons for hiring will help you choose a virtual assistant with the specific skill set to meet your need.
2. Where Can you Find an Amazon Virtual Assistant?
There are many places you can hire an amazon virtual assistant today. You can search from Job boards, bidding sites, freelance platforms, virtual assistant agencies, recruiting agencies, and hiring directly on social media platforms. Also, you can hire through referrals from family, friends, or other amazon sellers like you.
3. Which services do you need from a VA?
Outlining your needs and the tasks you want to outsource will minimize your time holding interviews. Proper planning will make it easier for you to sieve inappropriate candidates and shortlist successful applicants. It will help if you detail the tasks you intend to delegate. That will help you develop a budget, determine how long the project will take, and which tools you will need.
4. What are the benefits of hiring an amazon VA?
- Time-saving. Delegating monotonous tasks to virtual assistants lets you focus on important activities to help your business thrive.
- Reduced investment costs since virtual assistants don’t require an office.
- Reduced operational expenses since virtual assistants are mostly paid on a gig-basis.
- How much time you invest determines your amazon business success. So, it’s advisable to bring on board an amazon va who understands the scope of your business.
How To Manage Your VA
Training
If you have a defined way of working, your VA will need training. Depending on the intricacies of the task, a video tutorial or list of instructions will be sufficient orientation to help your VA start on the right footing.
Communication
Before and after hiring, ensure every task is well understood to avoid clashing and misinterpretations. Rules and regulations should clearly state the working hours, payment dates, money transfer methods, and deadlines. Determining differences in time zone is also vital in setting achievable working hours agreeable to both parties.
Having open communication will help both the employer and virtual assistants to manage expectations and understand each other for a better working experience.
Time Tracking
Working with a remote staff requires you to integrate time tracking tools to ensure your VA does the tasks you are paying them to do. There are numerous softwares in the market which allow you to take frequent screenshots to effectively manage your team.
Tools such as:
- Hive
- Paymo
- TimeCamp
- Toggl
These are seller central tools every amazon business owner should never ignore.
How To Hire and Train an Amazon Virtual Assistant for Your Amazon Business
The hiring technique is something almost every amazon seller dreads. It is worse if you have had a bad experience hiring a virtual assistant who failed you. To avoid such scenarios from repeating, you need to have an amazon trial test process designed to try their level of expertise.
The first step is to identify platforms to place a job post. If the only sites you know are Monster, CareerBuilder, simplyhired, and others, you are selling short. Go for platforms where you can display your job post and get exactly what you’re looking for.
Amazon Mechanical Turk, Upwork, Fiverr, People per Hour, and Clickworker are among the top freelance marketplaces created to accommodate those looking to hire amazon virtual assistants and those offering amazon virtual services.
These sites are easy to get a qualified amazon VA. Therefore, no need to spend your cash running ad campaigns on the same.
Once you have your desired candidate, ensure that you set key performance indicators which will be the basis of evaluation for your amazon VA. These indicators include:
- Tasks to be undertaken. Clearly define your virtual assistant’s scope of work
- Goals to be achieved within a certain duration.
- Expected working hours per day/week.
- Tools to be used for communication and the communication rules.
- Their payment method and rates.
You can also give your amazon VA a test run to determine whether they truly have the expertise and are up to the task.
FAQs
What can an Amazon virtual assistant do for you?
Market research and analysis, order fulfillment (product sourcing, order processing, shipping orders). Also, Amazon product listing creation and optimization and customer service tasks, among other duties.
Why should you hire an amazon virtual assistant?
Hiring an amazon va will help you save time from doing non-core tasks and money. Working for yourself is a lot of work, but amazon seller virtual assistant will save you lots of hassle and help spend time where necessary.
Where can you find Amazon virtual assistants?
Mostly on freelance marketplaces and social media.
What should a virtual assistant have?
Virtual assistants need a good internet connection and working devices in good working condition to help meet the job demands.
Final thoughts
Managing and growing a business presents many challenges. As the business expands, you will need assistance managing your business processes. Though it may appear daunting, outsourcing to VAs can improve efficiency, productivity, and profit margins.
Hiring Amazon virtual assistants can be the beginning of a successful amazon fba business. Don’t be like many sellers who prefer to run their amazon businesses alone. Doing so will cost you more and waste your precious time on the same tasks daily.
Any amazon seller should hire an equipped amazon virtual assistant team.
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