If you have an eCommerce business, you probably also use various other platforms, such as Amazon, to sell your products. And with third-party sales on Amazon growing at 52% a year, it’s an excellent place to be. Also, many traditional retailers are now forced to adopt and go digital. Still, if your side hustle can quickly turn into a fully fleshed business, taking up an undue amount of your time. You can’t avoid tasks seen as uncreative − such tasks are critical to growing your business. There is a solution to this quandary – hire a virtual assistant for Amazon.
For those unfamiliar with the term virtual assistant, this might sound like a strange concept. However, once you are in the know, you realize how valuable such assistance can be. This post will look at when and how to hire your perfect VA.
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What is an Amazon virtual assistant?
Simply put, a virtual assistant for Amazon executes tasks essential to conducting business on Amazon. Such an assistant can work remotely, either full-time or part-time. One benefit of hiring such a person is that they will complete the time-consuming tasks cost-effectively while supplementing skills you might not have.
What are the duties of an Amazon virtual assistant?
Some tasks your assistant can perform:
Administration tasks
A large part of operating an Amazon company is administrative. Your online assistant would be able to reduce much of this burden, such as processing orders, and managing ‘fulfilled by merchant’ orders, better known as FBM orders. If you are operating a ‘fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) business, there are still tasks such as tracking shipments, shipping labels for units, downloading barcodes, and checking that there are no missing units. All these tasks must be completed.
Customer service
A vital aspect of any business is good customer service. Even though Amazon operates 24/7, you still need to manage your customer service. Therefore, your Amazon VA can help you with the following
- Answering queries quickly, providing the correct information (e.g., shipping info, info about the products, etc.)
- Creating templates for responding to client
- Dealing with refunds and exchanges
- Monitoring reviews by responding to them, matching these with orders, and determining whether any reviews are fake.
Market research
Companies that research the needs of their clients, noting their competitors’ behavior remain strong. Their stability and strength are crucial to effective expansion. Your online aide can help by conducting this research for you. In addition, they can also check whether any of your own products are performing poorly and which are exceeding expectations. This will be useful for promotions. This is because you do not need to discount your best-performing products, only those performing below par.
This market research can also be helpful when it comes to sourcing new products for your business. However, the process of finding suitable products can be laborious. Outsourcing this task gives you time to focus on more important strategic work and networking rather than spending hours searching for new products to add to your inventory.
Content creation
Another vital part of marketing your products has the proper copy. If you lack the skills to put together a product description, this will negatively affect your sales. Don’t chance it – hire a content-writing expert to assist. More so, your assistant will have a good grasp of keyword research and will be skilled at introducing these words into the product description, making it sound natural. They can also help draft emails to entice the receiver to open them.
Photo editing
If you hire a virtual assistant with photo editing skills, they can help to enhance your product images, remove the background, etc., all to make your products look their best. In fact, studies have shown that customers recall 80% of what they have seen, compared with 20% of what they have read. Other studies have shown that 62% of millennials and Generation Z consumers are more visually inclined. This is because they would, therefore, instead search for images than for keywords. Therefore, no matter how excellent your products might be, captivating photos of your products are vital for success.
Run ads on Amazon
You can increase your sales, expand your organic search rankings, as well as build brand awareness through running effective sponsored product ads, sponsored brand ads, or a product-display ads campaign on Amazon. This is where your virtual assistant can help you, especially if this is not your most vital skill. An assistant sets up the pay-per-click campaign by using techniques such as negative keywords. This avoids spending on clicks irrelevant to your business, monitoring the analytics, and making changes where needed, to enhance the campaign’s effectiveness.
When do I need to hire an Amazon virtual assistant?
The best time for you to hire a virtual assistant is when your business is growing and you have a professional seller account, or you are using Amazon FBA.
You will want to reduce your operating costs. Outsourcing allows you to lower the salaries and operating costs, therefore helping you to save money that can better be spent on expanding your business. Because a virtual assistant works remotely, costs such as set-up costs for computers or office space, are eliminated.
In addition, if you lack certain business skills, hiring an online assistant is a fast and effective way of adding much-needed skills to your business.
If you are not 100% sure of your needs, make a list of all your tasks. Mark those that are not worth spending time on, that would be more cost-effectively completed by a staff member. Delegating your workload not only saves you time but also money. You can also be operating more efficiently by focusing on the more important tasks of your business, rather than spending time on manual and repetitive tasks.
Which tasks should I outsource?
Use the list that you have already compiled – this will help you to determine which tasks to outsource.
When you start to analyze this list, consider these three questions
- Firstly, which tasks are consuming most of my time?
- Secondly, which tasks are the most repetitive?
- Thirdly, which tasks can someone other than me be conducting more affordably and efficiently?
Once you decide on the tasks that outsourcing will assist you in accomplishing, you can onboard the most compatible assistant with the most pertinent skills. It may even benefit you to engage more than one virtual assistant, such as an Amazon virtual assistant as well as a content-writing virtual assistant.
How to tell whether your virtual assistant is a good fit
Before deciding whether your assistant is a good fit for your business, you need to allow sufficient time for your assistant to prove themselves. If, however, your VA is not coping, taking too long to complete tasks, or making too many mistakes, hiring someone else will be the next plan.
It is always best to hire via an agency − you can hand over to the agency the task of replacing the aide. This reduces your downtime, which is crucial to your business. If you opt to hire a freelancer, you have to spend time acquiring a replacement, who could also prove unsuitable. Restarting your hiring process is irritating and avoidable.
After you’ve been working with the same Amazon seller virtual assistant for some time (perhaps weeks, maybe just days — it depends on the workload), it’s a good idea to assess whether the VA is a good fit for your needs. Of course, you’ll need to give the virtual assistant enough time to learn the processes.
Your easiest option is always to hire through an agency. Simply request a change of virtual assistant to receive a new hire immediately. There is zero downtime. The agency will select someone qualified in the exact areas you need.
Closing remarks about how to hire a virtual assistant for Amazon
When you hire an Amazon virtual assistant, this is your attempt to take your business to the next level. At first, the concept of outsourcing might seem alien. You may not be totally convinced that this is the right solution for you. This calls for a one-on-one consultation with the agency, in which you can afford them a deeper understanding of your business and your needs. You may wish to put only a toe into the water at first, hiring an assistant to help you with your most urgent time-consuming tasks. However, as your company grows, you will reap the benefit of hiring skilled virtual assistants who help develop your business profitably. These assistants conduct marketing research, copywriting, and running Amazon ad campaigns.
Find your Amazon virtual assistant at Aristo Sourcing. Schedule a free consultation to discuss your requirements today.