As an online entrepreneur, you only have so much time to work on your business. To save time, consider assigning certain tasks that can be done by an expert in that field; saving you time and money.
Below are a few tasks that you can be assigned to vendors to give you more time in building your business.
Operational Work
Inventory Management
When starting your business, your inventory may be manageable. However, when the orders start rolling in, consider using third-party logistics providers to meet your demands for delivery.
Book Keeping and Accounting
Tasks like bookkeeping and accounting are better off left to professionals. While you can do the work on your own using software, it can be complicated and frustrating if you don’t know to do. Therefore, consider assigning these tasks to vendors to ensure accuracy and save time.
Payroll
While payroll processing is not directly related to profits, it’s an important supporting function.
You can assign payroll management to vendors to cater for unforeseen circumstances that may arise, such as settlements and disputes.
Department Specific Tasks
Administrative Tasks
Stop wearing the admin hat and assign the work to a VA. Tasks like invoicing, scheduling calendars, and various secretarial duties do not contribute significantly to your bottom line and are prime candidates to be assigned such work.
Order Processing
If you are running an online store, the last thing you want is to be overwhelmed by customer orders. You can train a VA to process orders to speed up shipping.
Customer Support
Customer service can take a lot of your valuable time. Consider assigning the task to a call center that is experienced in providing the service to businesses like yours.
IT Support
Internet issues, backups and recovery, and other IT activities should be assigned to vendors. Many managed IT services providers offer custom services based on a client’s needs.
Website Related Tasks
Design and Development
A lot of valuable time can be lost through web development tasks like coming up with the right design and optimizing the elements and fixing bugs. Hire a freelancer to fix your website problems on a retainer basis or an ‘as-needed’ to save time.
Social Media Management
Engaging your audience on social media networks is crucial for building your brand and driving sales but takes valuable time. Luckily, social media management tasks can be easily assigned to vendors. Instead of hiring a social media professional (who requires training, benefits, sickness and vacation time, overhead costs, etc.) hiring a social media agency is generally much more cost effective.
Content Writing
Creating tons of content can take valuable time that you could be using to grow your business. If you have regular content requirements, take time to build a team of writers from sites like UpWork. Also, by assigning your content creation work to an agency, you can be sure that the content you receive will be written by professionals having several years of experience in content creation which will attract the interests of consumers and search engines alike.
Search Engine Optimization
Getting traffic to your website through SEO requires technical expertise. The tasks are mostly repetitive and can be boring to do. Assign the
Pay Per Click Marketing
When done right, PPC marketing can bring instant sales to your business. On the other hand, it can also be a source of losses if you don’t understand things like keyword targeting. Hire a professional digital marketing firm to handle your PPC marketing.
Graphic Creation
Your website images and graphics, business flyers, and other graphic design assets can be created by third parties. Everything from the design to printing can be assigned to a vendor to save time. Most people assume that they can manage graphic design tasks all by themselves. While it’s true that they can, the work done by most might not be quite up to the mark: in this situation, it’s advisable to leave this task to a professional, who can give a better result. Following this path, you can get more quality results, if you choose to outsource your artwork creations.
Email Marketing
Engaging your prospects or customers through email marketing is one of the effective ways of building your brand loyalty. Assign email marketing to a company that understands your audience and can speak in a language that resonates well with them.
Professional Services Related
Market Research
Before launching a product or service, carry out market research to know how your potential audience will respond to your offer. Market research companies have access to more data and can provide an unbiased view of what to expect of the target market.
Transcription and Translation
If you have audio recordings, meeting notes or podcasts to be transcribed, the job can be time-consuming. Assigning the work to a professional transcription services company will help you save time. Some companies can handle bulk transcription jobs and have fast turnaround times.
If you are venturing into a new market, you can get your content translated for the new audience by a professional translation company that has native language speakers of your target region.
Event Management
Event management is always a time-consuming affair and you might have to spend even more time, if you don’t have expertise in it. What you might have perceived as a manageable operation could well turn out to be a massive undertaking.
Speaking from the perspective of brand building, it’s very important to have the right people on board. Events like these should be memorable that leave the consumer more fulfilled than what they initially expected before coming in, with a changed or enhanced perception of the brand.
Conclusion
It is always important for entrepreneurs to find ways to streamline their business processes in order to focus on the bottom line. One way to do that is by assigning different processes, such as the ones stated above, to industry experts.
