Virtual Assistance Services

Tips for Successful E-mail Marketing

If the title of this blog fascinated you, you must be an e-mail marketer. As you start your e-mail marketing you must reconcile the varied experiences invoked by e-mails – your inbox brimming with numerous mails every morning, finding useful information from an unexpected yet valuable mail, getting bombarded by spam e-mails, your delight at the reception of a long awaited mail and the like. In simple words, your e-mails are an intimate part of your daily life. E-mails are a mode of daily communication for over billions across the world Over 144 billion e-mails are sent daily all over the internet. In an era of versatile communication channels, e-mail remains one of the choicest channels of marketing communication all the time. There are a number of reasons behind this lasting popularity of e-mails. A few of them are: E-mails have a large reach. E-mails reach the recipients at their individual level. E-mails allow you a speedy communication at a lesser price. No wonder, E-mail is an expedient tool for marketers. E-mail marketing, if supported by an effective strategy, might drive the fortune of your business. Here, we sort out some useful tips to make your e-mail marketing all the more effective: Segment your e-mail recipients: As you start your e-mail marketing journey, you must segment your recipients. Segmenting is a very systematic process, which may be based on different parameters like demographics, geographic or psychological. Once you segment your audience in a systematic manner you will be able to understand many other aspects like at what frequency you must send your e-mails to different segments, tone of writing a message for striking the interest of a segment and the like. This way you will be able to tailor customized e-mails for each segment and address the specific needs of each segment. This improves your e-mail open rate. Reach your recipients at their individual level: Taking a step forward on segmentation as discussed above, marketers may create mails to reach recipients at their individual level. In fact, customizing mails is an art reinforced by segmentation. E-mails are an excellent mode of one- to-one communication, so make the recipient feel special by addressing his/her specific needs. Segmenting helps you in understanding the specific behavior, emotions and lifestyle of your audience and thus write unique e-mails to each segment of your audience. Make your e-mails mobile friendly: Survey shows that 64% of American e-mail users delete their mails if they are not mobile friendly. So, making your e-mails mobile friendly is an obligation to avoid high bounce rate. Generate a pleasurable experience for your audience by sending them mobile friendly e-mails i.e. write crisp messages suiting mobile screens, include visuals, include call to action points etc. Mobile screens occupy audience attention for most of the time. Hence customizing e-mails for mobile phones will improve the open rate as the recipient will be able to check your e-mail immediately. Well Written Subject Lines: Subject lines are the first impression makers of your e-mail. A well written subject line intrigues your readers and motivates them to open and read the entire mail. A well- written subject usually reflects the essence of your mail in a short one-liner. Good subject lines are usually limited to 50 characters. It is not a hard bound limit but try to keep your subject line as short as possible. Incentivize e-mail subscription in social media: Incentivizing e-mail subscription will help to draw in new e-mail subscribers and increases the number of your prospects. It will also improve the open rate of your mails. Sharing sign-up forms, giving discounts on subscription, winning subscribers with sweepstakes are a few ways to use social media for adding subscribers. Develop and maintain an e-mail list: You must own and maintain an e-mail list which includes all the people who showed interest in your marketing initiatives and who are likely to open and read your mails. You must update the e-mail list from time to time with systematic analysis of email statistics, open rates, engagement rates, active subscribers, new prospects, new segments and the like. A systematic execution of e-mail marketing will enhance your customer loyalty and value. Keeping your fans updated about your brand will increase your brand value and recognition amongst your fans. It will also add new fans and improve the success rate of your business. The rewards of e-mail marketing are remarkable but it needs a string of regular activities to drive successful e- mail marketing. If you are already occupied with other marketing activities you might not have enough time for e-mail marketing. A cost effective option for busy marketers is to outsource e-mail marketing to virtual assistants. Errands like keeping and maintaining e-mail list, research and segmentation, sending regular mails are easily and efficiently handled by Virtual assistants.

Tips for Successful E-mail Marketing Read More »

If the title of this blog fascinated you, you must be an e-mail marketer. As you start your e-mail marketing you must reconcile the varied experiences invoked by e-mails – your inbox brimming with numerous mails every morning, finding useful information from an unexpected yet valuable mail, getting bombarded by spam e-mails, your delight at the reception of a long awaited mail and the like. In simple words, your e-mails are an intimate part of your daily life. E-mails are a mode of daily communication for over billions across the world Over 144 billion e-mails are sent daily all over the internet. In an era of versatile communication channels, e-mail remains one of the choicest channels of marketing communication all the time. There are a number of reasons behind this lasting popularity of e-mails. A few of them are: E-mails have a large reach. E-mails reach the recipients at their individual level. E-mails allow you a speedy communication at a lesser price. No wonder, E-mail is an expedient tool for marketers. E-mail marketing, if supported by an effective strategy, might drive the fortune of your business. Here, we sort out some useful tips to make your e-mail marketing all the more effective: Segment your e-mail recipients: As you start your e-mail marketing journey, you must segment your recipients. Segmenting is a very systematic process, which may be based on different parameters like demographics, geographic or psychological. Once you segment your audience in a systematic manner you will be able to understand many other aspects like at what frequency you must send your e-mails to different segments, tone of writing a message for striking the interest of a segment and the like. This way you will be able to tailor customized e-mails for each segment and address the specific needs of each segment. This improves your e-mail open rate. Reach your recipients at their individual level: Taking a step forward on segmentation as discussed above, marketers may create mails to reach recipients at their individual level. In fact, customizing mails is an art reinforced by segmentation. E-mails are an excellent mode of one- to-one communication, so make the recipient feel special by addressing his/her specific needs. Segmenting helps you in understanding the specific behavior, emotions and lifestyle of your audience and thus write unique e-mails to each segment of your audience. Make your e-mails mobile friendly: Survey shows that 64% of American e-mail users delete their mails if they are not mobile friendly. So, making your e-mails mobile friendly is an obligation to avoid high bounce rate. Generate a pleasurable experience for your audience by sending them mobile friendly e-mails i.e. write crisp messages suiting mobile screens, include visuals, include call to action points etc. Mobile screens occupy audience attention for most of the time. Hence customizing e-mails for mobile phones will improve the open rate as the recipient will be able to check your e-mail immediately. Well Written Subject Lines: Subject lines are the first impression makers of your e-mail. A well written subject line intrigues your readers and motivates them to open and read the entire mail. A well- written subject usually reflects the essence of your mail in a short one-liner. Good subject lines are usually limited to 50 characters. It is not a hard bound limit but try to keep your subject line as short as possible. Incentivize e-mail subscription in social media: Incentivizing e-mail subscription will help to draw in new e-mail subscribers and increases the number of your prospects. It will also improve the open rate of your mails. Sharing sign-up forms, giving discounts on subscription, winning subscribers with sweepstakes are a few ways to use social media for adding subscribers. Develop and maintain an e-mail list: You must own and maintain an e-mail list which includes all the people who showed interest in your marketing initiatives and who are likely to open and read your mails. You must update the e-mail list from time to time with systematic analysis of email statistics, open rates, engagement rates, active subscribers, new prospects, new segments and the like. A systematic execution of e-mail marketing will enhance your customer loyalty and value. Keeping your fans updated about your brand will increase your brand value and recognition amongst your fans. It will also add new fans and improve the success rate of your business. The rewards of e-mail marketing are remarkable but it needs a string of regular activities to drive successful e- mail marketing. If you are already occupied with other marketing activities you might not have enough time for e-mail marketing. A cost effective option for busy marketers is to outsource e-mail marketing to virtual assistants. Errands like keeping and maintaining e-mail list, research and segmentation, sending regular mails are easily and efficiently handled by Virtual assistants.

Clash Of The Social Media Giants – Twitter Or FB, What Works Better For your Business?

The results you reap from your social media marketing depend a lot on the social platform you select. The social media sites you choose must satisfy your objectives of marketing. An astute marketer relates his social media marketing to the fundamentals of his business like branding, the value offered to customers, the target segment served etc. Before setting your foot in social media you have to reflect upon these fundamentals. There are a few questions which you must reflect upon mandatorily as you embark on your social media marketing. What type of content is compatible for your business marketing? Is the platform selected compatible with your content type? Is your target audience active in the social platform you have selected? How deep are the insights of ROI available in the social platform you use?   These questions help you justify your selection of the social media platform for marketing. When you select a social media platform you must ensure that your marketing activities are harmonious to the platform features. For instance, your advertisements must appeal to the active audiences; your post timings must match the time when a majority of your target audiences on the platform are active. Facebook and Twitter have been two most sought after social media platforms by a majority of the marketers worldwide for more than a decade. Despite the emergence of many new social media platforms such as Instagram, tumbler, facebook and twitter have managed to retain their positions of leadership as the ‘go-to’ platforms for most marketers. If you have to choose between facebook and twitter for marketing your business, it is good to find out the differences and benefits of each of these platforms. Whichever serves your business purpose, make it the focus of your social media presence. Here we take a quick look at the two giants:   Facebook     Twitter   Facebook started as a social site to reconnect with your school friends. Eventually facebook has started linking its users to experts and celebs apart from old friends. Twitter is a more formal networking site where the users express their opinions in crisp 140 characters. It’s still an informal social site for sharing information, personal and otherwise and creating noteworthy engagement of users. Every 1 million followers in facebook make 700 interactions while the same number of followers in twitter make 300 interactions. Twitter is very useful for spreading the word. Twitter tweets can be retweeted and shared. So, if you have great content that is likely to be shared, Twitter is a good bet. Facebook has a magnum audience of over 1.5 billion and the average age range of this crowd is 25-45. Twitter has a smaller audience of about 4 million and mostly in the age group of below 40. 60% of facebook users are female and 40% are male. Twitter is very mobile friendly. The user engagement in facebook is longer than Twitter. If you boost your facebook posts then the engagement lifespan increases even more. This is because facebook users spend more time on the site. It is a good platform for sharing news, running contests and seeking quick response from companies. Facebook indulges creativity. It allows multi-media content in the form of videos, images and graphics which is easily attracts audience. No wonder users stay intensely engaged in facebook. Twitter gives you the option of buying Twitter cards, which helps you to gather e-mail IDs and generate leads. This, in turn, helps you to track your ROI from your Twitter campaign. Facebook allows marketers the flexibility to choose from various advertising formats that are visually appealing. Twitter is slowly bringing in flexibility to its 140 character limit. Nowadays, Twitter allows vine videos and images which have enhanced the soulfulness of tweets. Based on the above facts, it might be safe to say that if your business is all about fashion, food, travel, film making or the like where visual imagery is important, then Facebook is more preferable. On the other hand, if your business is into services, twitter is a better site for you. It will associate you with the right industry professionals as well as your target audience. If you are a start-up, you can use twitter to generate leads at a low cost. Deciding upon your social marketing site needs some real-time learning. As you start with your social media activities you should make use of both twitter and facebook sites and make a note of the returns yielded by the sites. Whichever site yields you higher engagement and visibility; make it the crux of your social strategies to earn rich returns on your efforts. GetFriday is your personal virtual assistant helping you offload your time-consuming & mundane tasks. You just don’t get an assistant, but get access to an entire team with specialized skills to handle the entire spectrum of your business needs. GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris. Sign up now!

Clash Of The Social Media Giants – Twitter Or FB, What Works Better For your Business? Read More »

The results you reap from your social media marketing depend a lot on the social platform you select. The social media sites you choose must satisfy your objectives of marketing. An astute marketer relates his social media marketing to the fundamentals of his business like branding, the value offered to customers, the target segment served etc. Before setting your foot in social media you have to reflect upon these fundamentals. There are a few questions which you must reflect upon mandatorily as you embark on your social media marketing. What type of content is compatible for your business marketing? Is the platform selected compatible with your content type? Is your target audience active in the social platform you have selected? How deep are the insights of ROI available in the social platform you use?   These questions help you justify your selection of the social media platform for marketing. When you select a social media platform you must ensure that your marketing activities are harmonious to the platform features. For instance, your advertisements must appeal to the active audiences; your post timings must match the time when a majority of your target audiences on the platform are active. Facebook and Twitter have been two most sought after social media platforms by a majority of the marketers worldwide for more than a decade. Despite the emergence of many new social media platforms such as Instagram, tumbler, facebook and twitter have managed to retain their positions of leadership as the ‘go-to’ platforms for most marketers. If you have to choose between facebook and twitter for marketing your business, it is good to find out the differences and benefits of each of these platforms. Whichever serves your business purpose, make it the focus of your social media presence. Here we take a quick look at the two giants:   Facebook     Twitter   Facebook started as a social site to reconnect with your school friends. Eventually facebook has started linking its users to experts and celebs apart from old friends. Twitter is a more formal networking site where the users express their opinions in crisp 140 characters. It’s still an informal social site for sharing information, personal and otherwise and creating noteworthy engagement of users. Every 1 million followers in facebook make 700 interactions while the same number of followers in twitter make 300 interactions. Twitter is very useful for spreading the word. Twitter tweets can be retweeted and shared. So, if you have great content that is likely to be shared, Twitter is a good bet. Facebook has a magnum audience of over 1.5 billion and the average age range of this crowd is 25-45. Twitter has a smaller audience of about 4 million and mostly in the age group of below 40. 60% of facebook users are female and 40% are male. Twitter is very mobile friendly. The user engagement in facebook is longer than Twitter. If you boost your facebook posts then the engagement lifespan increases even more. This is because facebook users spend more time on the site. It is a good platform for sharing news, running contests and seeking quick response from companies. Facebook indulges creativity. It allows multi-media content in the form of videos, images and graphics which is easily attracts audience. No wonder users stay intensely engaged in facebook. Twitter gives you the option of buying Twitter cards, which helps you to gather e-mail IDs and generate leads. This, in turn, helps you to track your ROI from your Twitter campaign. Facebook allows marketers the flexibility to choose from various advertising formats that are visually appealing. Twitter is slowly bringing in flexibility to its 140 character limit. Nowadays, Twitter allows vine videos and images which have enhanced the soulfulness of tweets. Based on the above facts, it might be safe to say that if your business is all about fashion, food, travel, film making or the like where visual imagery is important, then Facebook is more preferable. On the other hand, if your business is into services, twitter is a better site for you. It will associate you with the right industry professionals as well as your target audience. If you are a start-up, you can use twitter to generate leads at a low cost. Deciding upon your social marketing site needs some real-time learning. As you start with your social media activities you should make use of both twitter and facebook sites and make a note of the returns yielded by the sites. Whichever site yields you higher engagement and visibility; make it the crux of your social strategies to earn rich returns on your efforts. GetFriday is your personal virtual assistant helping you offload your time-consuming & mundane tasks. You just don’t get an assistant, but get access to an entire team with specialized skills to handle the entire spectrum of your business needs. GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris. Sign up now!

Are You An Entrepreneur? Build Your Virtual Team and Watch Your Business Grow

If you are an entrepreneur, you love to pave your own path and make a huge fortune out of it. You often play the game of risk because you can turn risks into opportunities. All these risks and struggles in the journey of entrepreneurship – have to be ousted to become the cynosure of the market. The, path to the ultimate glory and success has its own challenges. You have big dreams but a thin pocket. Your business needs diverse skills and rich inputs. And, managing administrative work around the business adds to the ever growing challenges. Even when you manage the work and budget, you are not able to find that right pool of talent for your business in your geographic market. So, what should you do? How to overcome these challenges thrown in your path by the market? The best way to deal with these problems for long term is to categorize interrelated challenges and then find solutions which can be effectively applied to mitigate each challenge. For every budding entrepreneur and small business owner, almost all the challenges can be categorized into 3 categories – budget constraints, quality issues of your products and services, and fierce competition in the market. Once you sort out the primary challenges, you must realize that there are smart ways to break free from these confinements of entrepreneurship. Many smart solutions have evolved with the help of IT such that growing businesses can work within a little office space with minimum resources. Teams work in decentralised structures from geographically detached places. This is where the most frequented term ‘Virtual Teams’ comes into play. Virtual Teams are composed of talent from different parts of the world and works by co-ordinating through IT resources. Virtual teams have the advantage of using minimum resources to bring in the required flexibility to the organization in terms of budget and resource utilization. Some of the best benefits of building Virtual teams are: You make a lean organisation: Your virtual team is made up of most productive resources. You are not spending to buy office space, you are not breaking your head to recruit and pay salaries to your full time employees, yet you are availing the most professional inputs to your business. You are not incurring maintenance cost of extra resources without compromising on productivity of your limited resources. You enrich your organisation culture: You are not narrowed by your geographic and demographic cultural commonalities. Your virtually assorted team will give you wide-ranging inputs and ideas which might not have stroked you without your virtual team. Moreover with Virtual Teams you are making a flexible organisation culture, in which your team members can give you ideas freely without being suppressed by your authority. You are not confined by talent limitations of geography and demography: You can pick resources from any part of the world. So you can pick the best choice for your business if you can do a proper research to pick your resources before building a virtual team. So if you don’t find talent in your geographic area to fit into your business, it’s not a matter of worry at all! Building Virtual Teams has manifold benefits for your business but it again brings along its own challenges. There are challenges in managing the virtual teams i.e. team communication, project management, meeting scheduling, and blending of the virtual teams with the organisation culture. The following tips will help you to manage your Virtual Team gracefully. Use tools for seamless team communication: You can manage your projects and have transparent updates on them by integrating tools like Trello. A combination of different tools will give you better results. Schedule your meetings mutually: You virtual team members are geographically scattered and hence don’t share the same time zone. Find a mutually agreeable time before scheduling the meetings. Once you are conscientious enough to follow the above tips, all you need is to watch your virtual team driving your business to success!

Are You An Entrepreneur? Build Your Virtual Team and Watch Your Business Grow Read More »

If you are an entrepreneur, you love to pave your own path and make a huge fortune out of it. You often play the game of risk because you can turn risks into opportunities. All these risks and struggles in the journey of entrepreneurship – have to be ousted to become the cynosure of the market. The, path to the ultimate glory and success has its own challenges. You have big dreams but a thin pocket. Your business needs diverse skills and rich inputs. And, managing administrative work around the business adds to the ever growing challenges. Even when you manage the work and budget, you are not able to find that right pool of talent for your business in your geographic market. So, what should you do? How to overcome these challenges thrown in your path by the market? The best way to deal with these problems for long term is to categorize interrelated challenges and then find solutions which can be effectively applied to mitigate each challenge. For every budding entrepreneur and small business owner, almost all the challenges can be categorized into 3 categories – budget constraints, quality issues of your products and services, and fierce competition in the market. Once you sort out the primary challenges, you must realize that there are smart ways to break free from these confinements of entrepreneurship. Many smart solutions have evolved with the help of IT such that growing businesses can work within a little office space with minimum resources. Teams work in decentralised structures from geographically detached places. This is where the most frequented term ‘Virtual Teams’ comes into play. Virtual Teams are composed of talent from different parts of the world and works by co-ordinating through IT resources. Virtual teams have the advantage of using minimum resources to bring in the required flexibility to the organization in terms of budget and resource utilization. Some of the best benefits of building Virtual teams are: You make a lean organisation: Your virtual team is made up of most productive resources. You are not spending to buy office space, you are not breaking your head to recruit and pay salaries to your full time employees, yet you are availing the most professional inputs to your business. You are not incurring maintenance cost of extra resources without compromising on productivity of your limited resources. You enrich your organisation culture: You are not narrowed by your geographic and demographic cultural commonalities. Your virtually assorted team will give you wide-ranging inputs and ideas which might not have stroked you without your virtual team. Moreover with Virtual Teams you are making a flexible organisation culture, in which your team members can give you ideas freely without being suppressed by your authority. You are not confined by talent limitations of geography and demography: You can pick resources from any part of the world. So you can pick the best choice for your business if you can do a proper research to pick your resources before building a virtual team. So if you don’t find talent in your geographic area to fit into your business, it’s not a matter of worry at all! Building Virtual Teams has manifold benefits for your business but it again brings along its own challenges. There are challenges in managing the virtual teams i.e. team communication, project management, meeting scheduling, and blending of the virtual teams with the organisation culture. The following tips will help you to manage your Virtual Team gracefully. Use tools for seamless team communication: You can manage your projects and have transparent updates on them by integrating tools like Trello. A combination of different tools will give you better results. Schedule your meetings mutually: You virtual team members are geographically scattered and hence don’t share the same time zone. Find a mutually agreeable time before scheduling the meetings. Once you are conscientious enough to follow the above tips, all you need is to watch your virtual team driving your business to success!

Top tips to build your online business brand with your Virtual Assistant

When you build your online brand, you create your business signature in terms of your company name, the product or service you offer, your brand logo, the jingle, the tagline etc. Your online brand bolsters your business identity and thus your business becomes more worthwhile in the market. The otherwise naive crowd then starts to visit your website, clicks through your pages, likes and reacts to your social media promotions, and start engaging with your content present online. Gradually your brand buzz turns on. This is how doing right the online branding earns you wonder. However, online branding in itself is a challenging process. Before going to build your business brand, you need to realize the essence of your brand and the risks associated with it. Your online brand speaks for your business. So, before building it, get into the crux of your business, understand it, and determine what impression you want to create for your business. Since your online brand is going to create your business impression in the market, you must ascertain that your brand is strongly likable. The brand elements like logo, name, jingle and tagline should be relevant to your business and attractive enough to make your customers and prospects feel happy whenever they approach your brand. Your brand is going to build the trust amongst your clients; your brand is a promise of the value offered to your clients. In long run it determines whether your clients will like to avail services from you. So, the strength of your online brand determines your revenues and profits. Your brand helps you to stand out of the competition. It convinces your prospects that your service/product is the best out of all the options they can choose from. Though building a strong brand fetches you brownies, it’s not an easy process. You, as a small business owner or an entrepreneur are tied in the limit of resources, whether it is money, people or time. In addition, you are overwhelmed with too many responsibilities to handle. You need to manage somehow everything on your own. Hiring full time experts to help you with branding is too expensive. Despite of all these limitations you need expert inputs to fetch expected returns on your marketing investments. So the best solution is to hire an expert virtual assistant and involve him or her in the brand building process. There are Virtual Assistant service providers that have the knack of marketing and drive your marketing efforts with rich inputs. They will help you to reap the expected returns on your marketing investments. Before hiring a Virtual Assistant to help you in your marketing efforts, you should have some nifty tips to avail the best results of hiring a Virtual assistant. Here are some tips to avail the best out of Virtual Assistance for your brand building. Let your Virtual Assistant be a part of your business: Your Virtual Assistant is your remote assistant, who will serve you without his/ her physical presence in your organization. Your brand is the reflection of your business, its culture and objectives. So your Virtual Assistant should be familiar to these very important elements. Make him a part your business, instead of treating him like a third party agency or part-time worker. Let your Virtual assistant have the full knowledge about your business. Let him have a deep insight about your objective, the purpose of your brand, the culture of the organization. Content Creation: Your brand is closely related to the value offered by you with your products and services. It creates an identity of your business to increase the reputation in the market. Content chosen by you for your brand communication is going to create that identity for your brand. People like to invest in less risky products and services. Your brand identity is going to offset the risks for your prospects. Avail your Virtual Assistant’s help in creating communication message and content for your brand. Content helps you in growing fans for your business and shapes the identity of your brand. Hiring a content expert team in the form of Virtual Assistants is very critical step towards your brand building exercise. Educate the customers through your blogs and other online content: You have to prove the differentiated value your business offers to your customers. Your prospect have lots of other known brands to choose from; to win amongst all, you need to prove that your brand is better and stronger than the rest. Get your Virtual Assistant to create blogs and other informational content for your target audience, where you highlight your unique value proposition. Make your brand relatable: Build social value for your customers. Get the help of your Virtual Assistant to do a proper study of your target segment and understand their self image and social identity that they seek. You may hire a Virtual Assistant with market research skills and build your brand persona to diligently match the social need of your customers. Make an active presence in social media: An active presence in social media requires a lot of time and persistence. A Virtual Assistant offers you the best help in this field. Giving prompt responses to consumer queries, creating engaging content, posts and activities to increase the involvement of your consumers, and increasing the frequency of posts in social media will strengthen the identity of your brand and improve your Social Media Engagement. It’s time to come out of your worries of ‘Brand Building’. Build your online business brand through Internet marketing experts of GetFriday and Relax!

Top tips to build your online business brand with your Virtual Assistant Read More »

When you build your online brand, you create your business signature in terms of your company name, the product or service you offer, your brand logo, the jingle, the tagline etc. Your online brand bolsters your business identity and thus your business becomes more worthwhile in the market. The otherwise naive crowd then starts to visit your website, clicks through your pages, likes and reacts to your social media promotions, and start engaging with your content present online. Gradually your brand buzz turns on. This is how doing right the online branding earns you wonder. However, online branding in itself is a challenging process. Before going to build your business brand, you need to realize the essence of your brand and the risks associated with it. Your online brand speaks for your business. So, before building it, get into the crux of your business, understand it, and determine what impression you want to create for your business. Since your online brand is going to create your business impression in the market, you must ascertain that your brand is strongly likable. The brand elements like logo, name, jingle and tagline should be relevant to your business and attractive enough to make your customers and prospects feel happy whenever they approach your brand. Your brand is going to build the trust amongst your clients; your brand is a promise of the value offered to your clients. In long run it determines whether your clients will like to avail services from you. So, the strength of your online brand determines your revenues and profits. Your brand helps you to stand out of the competition. It convinces your prospects that your service/product is the best out of all the options they can choose from. Though building a strong brand fetches you brownies, it’s not an easy process. You, as a small business owner or an entrepreneur are tied in the limit of resources, whether it is money, people or time. In addition, you are overwhelmed with too many responsibilities to handle. You need to manage somehow everything on your own. Hiring full time experts to help you with branding is too expensive. Despite of all these limitations you need expert inputs to fetch expected returns on your marketing investments. So the best solution is to hire an expert virtual assistant and involve him or her in the brand building process. There are Virtual Assistant service providers that have the knack of marketing and drive your marketing efforts with rich inputs. They will help you to reap the expected returns on your marketing investments. Before hiring a Virtual Assistant to help you in your marketing efforts, you should have some nifty tips to avail the best results of hiring a Virtual assistant. Here are some tips to avail the best out of Virtual Assistance for your brand building. Let your Virtual Assistant be a part of your business: Your Virtual Assistant is your remote assistant, who will serve you without his/ her physical presence in your organization. Your brand is the reflection of your business, its culture and objectives. So your Virtual Assistant should be familiar to these very important elements. Make him a part your business, instead of treating him like a third party agency or part-time worker. Let your Virtual assistant have the full knowledge about your business. Let him have a deep insight about your objective, the purpose of your brand, the culture of the organization. Content Creation: Your brand is closely related to the value offered by you with your products and services. It creates an identity of your business to increase the reputation in the market. Content chosen by you for your brand communication is going to create that identity for your brand. People like to invest in less risky products and services. Your brand identity is going to offset the risks for your prospects. Avail your Virtual Assistant’s help in creating communication message and content for your brand. Content helps you in growing fans for your business and shapes the identity of your brand. Hiring a content expert team in the form of Virtual Assistants is very critical step towards your brand building exercise. Educate the customers through your blogs and other online content: You have to prove the differentiated value your business offers to your customers. Your prospect have lots of other known brands to choose from; to win amongst all, you need to prove that your brand is better and stronger than the rest. Get your Virtual Assistant to create blogs and other informational content for your target audience, where you highlight your unique value proposition. Make your brand relatable: Build social value for your customers. Get the help of your Virtual Assistant to do a proper study of your target segment and understand their self image and social identity that they seek. You may hire a Virtual Assistant with market research skills and build your brand persona to diligently match the social need of your customers. Make an active presence in social media: An active presence in social media requires a lot of time and persistence. A Virtual Assistant offers you the best help in this field. Giving prompt responses to consumer queries, creating engaging content, posts and activities to increase the involvement of your consumers, and increasing the frequency of posts in social media will strengthen the identity of your brand and improve your Social Media Engagement. It’s time to come out of your worries of ‘Brand Building’. Build your online business brand through Internet marketing experts of GetFriday and Relax!

Taking a Vacation? Try these tips to make a tiptop trip!

Don’t you beam with happiness while narrating the tales of your exotic trips to your friends? You may be a globetrotter who doesn’t want to leave any corner of the world unseen or you may be a busy sales person who drives business outside from office or out of the city you live in. Be it for leisure or work, trips, no matter how small or big, are an inevitable part our lives. By now you would have gotten accustomed to the pros and cons of travelling and your trip diaries are a rich reservoir of your memories. It’s a fact that vacationing, though glamorous on the outside, can be quite tricky. Before reaping the sweet pleasures of a trip, you need to run a long list of dull errands like doing online research for flights, booking cheap flight tickets, reserving rooms in a hotel of your choice and within your budget, arranging commutation in the destination and the like. If you are a busy professional, these odd jobs can be stressful. For instance, you need to meet your clients in Tokyo tomorrow and you have simply not found the time to make the necessary travel arrangements. Making travel arrangements can take a huge chunk of your precious time if you want to get the best of your travel itinerary By focusing on these errands, you may forget to focus on other activities that are important i.e. working on that important presentation, making the necessary arrangements to have your inboxes filtered and checked, getting all the pre-travel shopping done for your spouse and kids or making sure that all your work has been duly handed over to a back-up employee. In simple words, making the arrangements for a trip should not soil the excitement of actually going on the trip and getting to the destination. Here’s what you can do to get all your pre-trip planning sorted. 1. Define and understand the purpose of your trip: Every trip has a strong purpose behind it. If you are a business-owner and you are travelling for business, make sure you are prepped and focused on nailing that important business pitch with your clients and business partners. Focus on the core tasks i.e. making a convincing presentation, charting out new business ideas, etc. If you are planning a family trip, focus on selecting the perfect family-friendly destinations and channel your energies towards doing some research for sightseeing, leisure, shopping, travel etc. 2. Make A List Of What You Want To Do During Your Trip: Once you have understood the purpose of your trip, take the next step and list out the activities you would like to do to make the trip a memorable one. For example if you seek adventure list out the activities that you will love to partake in. Start preparing for the trip accordingly. Get your suitcases packed with the clothes or gear that you will require for a leisure or business trip. Gather as much information as you can about the local adventure sports, the best guides, places to eat, shop and much more! The same applies for a business trip too. You need to jot down what you want to get done during the trip and plan accordingly. 3. Make The Arrangements: Now that you have decided what you want to do on the trip, where you want to go and the purpose behind it, get down to actually booking your travel and sorting out the itinerary. Out of all the steps, arranging for flight/train tickets, accommodation and booking tours will take the longest time. 4. Or.. HIRE A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT TO DO IT FOR YOU! If you don’t have the time and expertise to do this, you have a choice to take help from an expert who can get all of it done for you in half the time. A Virtual Assistant, perhaps? There are Virtual Assistant service providers like GetFriday who can help you offload mundane travel arrangement tasks such as these and give you more time to focus on all the other aspects that actually matter. Why break your head planning for the trip, when you should be enjoying it? Remember, going on a trip doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make all the arrangements on your own. As mentioned above, stick to focusing on the purpose of your trip and what you need to do when you get there. . Don’t take the stress of planning or preparing arrangements for a trip.There are Virtual Assistant experts to serve you at every step of your trip, be it booking tickets or picking a romantic restaurant for a candle light dinner during your honeymoon. With reliable Virtual Assistants, you should outsource all trip planning and arrangement tasks. Free up your time, focus just on business in the meanwhile, or just get into the holiday mode before boarding that flight. What use is it if you are going to burden yourself with all the pre-trip hassle? Outsource, sit back and enjoy a fruitful trip!

Taking a Vacation? Try these tips to make a tiptop trip! Read More »

Don’t you beam with happiness while narrating the tales of your exotic trips to your friends? You may be a globetrotter who doesn’t want to leave any corner of the world unseen or you may be a busy sales person who drives business outside from office or out of the city you live in. Be it for leisure or work, trips, no matter how small or big, are an inevitable part our lives. By now you would have gotten accustomed to the pros and cons of travelling and your trip diaries are a rich reservoir of your memories. It’s a fact that vacationing, though glamorous on the outside, can be quite tricky. Before reaping the sweet pleasures of a trip, you need to run a long list of dull errands like doing online research for flights, booking cheap flight tickets, reserving rooms in a hotel of your choice and within your budget, arranging commutation in the destination and the like. If you are a busy professional, these odd jobs can be stressful. For instance, you need to meet your clients in Tokyo tomorrow and you have simply not found the time to make the necessary travel arrangements. Making travel arrangements can take a huge chunk of your precious time if you want to get the best of your travel itinerary By focusing on these errands, you may forget to focus on other activities that are important i.e. working on that important presentation, making the necessary arrangements to have your inboxes filtered and checked, getting all the pre-travel shopping done for your spouse and kids or making sure that all your work has been duly handed over to a back-up employee. In simple words, making the arrangements for a trip should not soil the excitement of actually going on the trip and getting to the destination. Here’s what you can do to get all your pre-trip planning sorted. 1. Define and understand the purpose of your trip: Every trip has a strong purpose behind it. If you are a business-owner and you are travelling for business, make sure you are prepped and focused on nailing that important business pitch with your clients and business partners. Focus on the core tasks i.e. making a convincing presentation, charting out new business ideas, etc. If you are planning a family trip, focus on selecting the perfect family-friendly destinations and channel your energies towards doing some research for sightseeing, leisure, shopping, travel etc. 2. Make A List Of What You Want To Do During Your Trip: Once you have understood the purpose of your trip, take the next step and list out the activities you would like to do to make the trip a memorable one. For example if you seek adventure list out the activities that you will love to partake in. Start preparing for the trip accordingly. Get your suitcases packed with the clothes or gear that you will require for a leisure or business trip. Gather as much information as you can about the local adventure sports, the best guides, places to eat, shop and much more! The same applies for a business trip too. You need to jot down what you want to get done during the trip and plan accordingly. 3. Make The Arrangements: Now that you have decided what you want to do on the trip, where you want to go and the purpose behind it, get down to actually booking your travel and sorting out the itinerary. Out of all the steps, arranging for flight/train tickets, accommodation and booking tours will take the longest time. 4. Or.. HIRE A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT TO DO IT FOR YOU! If you don’t have the time and expertise to do this, you have a choice to take help from an expert who can get all of it done for you in half the time. A Virtual Assistant, perhaps? There are Virtual Assistant service providers like GetFriday who can help you offload mundane travel arrangement tasks such as these and give you more time to focus on all the other aspects that actually matter. Why break your head planning for the trip, when you should be enjoying it? Remember, going on a trip doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make all the arrangements on your own. As mentioned above, stick to focusing on the purpose of your trip and what you need to do when you get there. . Don’t take the stress of planning or preparing arrangements for a trip.There are Virtual Assistant experts to serve you at every step of your trip, be it booking tickets or picking a romantic restaurant for a candle light dinner during your honeymoon. With reliable Virtual Assistants, you should outsource all trip planning and arrangement tasks. Free up your time, focus just on business in the meanwhile, or just get into the holiday mode before boarding that flight. What use is it if you are going to burden yourself with all the pre-trip hassle? Outsource, sit back and enjoy a fruitful trip!

Four Fool-Proof Ways To Overcome Writer’s Block With a Virtual Assistant

Writer’s block is something every writer struggles with at some point in their lives. Since the lifeblood of every writer’s success lies in their ability to churn out quick quality content, a writer’s block could throw you off balance, especially if you have strict deadlines to meet. The feeling of not being ‘good enough’ to write is all too familiar. But most of the time, a writer’s block is not really a ‘block’ at all. It’s just endless self-criticism and a noiseless outburst of the ‘stress’ you experience when you have to produce work that will not be viewed by your readers as flaming pieces of garbage. If people pen their thoughts down without worrying too much about perfecting the sentences, the flow of writing improves and gives the writers a rough skeleton to work with for later. Contrary to popular belief, a writer’s block usually occurs during the initial phases of writing and is common among professional writers, novelists, academicians, researchers and the like. Many a time, people put their lives on hold until they can find the inspiration to write. Some of the activities that people indulge in for inspiration include going through ‘how-to’ blog posts on overcoming writer’s blocks (shooting myself in the foot?), taking long walks outside, completing household chores, reading poetic novels or hoping to find some inspiration by watching the plants in their backyards grow. Though these may provide stimulus for some, it does not necessarily work all the time. What You Should Ideally Be Doing? Writers have to invest countless hours of research and pore over a number of resources before they actually get down to writing the first few drafts. With hours of prep work, professional writers almost always struggle for time. All this creates an even bigger problem if the writer is prone to experiencing writer’s blocks every now and then. The trick to overcoming a writer’s block is to work around the problem smartly. Though a request for help with writing at this point may be perceived as a critical weakness, it is in fact one of the smartest things a writer can do for his/her writing, without taking away the glory they deserve. Hiring a Virtual Assistant can give you enough room to work around your creativity and will give you the space to write at leisure without letting the brass tacks or prep work get in the way. Though indirectly, this could help with overcoming writer’s block because you will have fewer things to worry about and will be able to concentrate better on the composition of your thoughts. Leave the research, keyword searches, vocabulary sheets and lots more to your VA. You’ll find that no matter what you compose, be it an online blog or a book, outsourcing a few aspects of preparatory writing work to a personal virtual assistant can definitely ease the pressures of a writer’s block. Get your VA to: Do The Research Work Whether you are working on a research paper or writing a blog series, you will be required to do some amount of research if you want your final, written piece to look credible. Engaging your audience is crucial and presenting data or checking out the facts behind people, locations, characters and subjects can help you do just that. For example, in the following two sentences, you’ll notice a difference in how the information is presented. The research and detail that goes into the second sentence will make you understand why the second sentence will be considered more reliable in the eyes of a reader. Example 1 “Mike stole an orange bag from the Selfridges store and ran out as quickly as he could.” Example 2 “Mike stole an expensive, orange, suede satchel from the Selfridges store and ran out as quickly as he could.” A reader would most definitely be drawn to the second line, because it is a lot more descriptive and also gives the illusion that the bag is stolen from the store actually exists at Selfridges. The devil is in the details and carrying out proper research before any kind of writing, will only make your writing piece honest. If you are starting out as a writer, you may not know where to look for information. Even if you do, you may find that ‘research’ can get exasperating and take up a lot of your time. That’s where a Virtual Assistant steps into place. No matter what online research you require for writing your blog, book or paper, you can outsource ‘research work’ of various natures to your VA and focus more on composing your written work. Generate Blog Post Ideas & Page Optimization If you are struggling with finding suitable keyword-rich titles for your blog posts, give your Virtual Assistant a rough idea of what you are expecting in terms of the title for the post and what the blog will contain. Your VA will carry out all the keyword research required to target the right audience and also come with up ideas for your next blog posts. Apart from this, get your VA to keep your blog pages optimized and can carry out competitor research so that you can gauge where you stand. All this data, presented in a comprehensive, easy-to-understand format by your VA, should be able to ease a part of the writer’s block and give you the freedom to write your piece in a relaxed manner. Drafting Blog Posts If you continue to have a problem with writing in a lucid manner or you are not finding the time to complete your blog for the week, have your specialist Virtual Assistant work on a draft for you. All you will have to do in the end is go through it, format the content and hit the ‘publish’ button. Your Virtual Assistants, being jacks of all trades, are also talented wordsmiths. You’ll be surprised with the lucrative ideas they give you and the quality work they can come up with! They can

Four Fool-Proof Ways To Overcome Writer’s Block With a Virtual Assistant Read More »

Writer’s block is something every writer struggles with at some point in their lives. Since the lifeblood of every writer’s success lies in their ability to churn out quick quality content, a writer’s block could throw you off balance, especially if you have strict deadlines to meet. The feeling of not being ‘good enough’ to write is all too familiar. But most of the time, a writer’s block is not really a ‘block’ at all. It’s just endless self-criticism and a noiseless outburst of the ‘stress’ you experience when you have to produce work that will not be viewed by your readers as flaming pieces of garbage. If people pen their thoughts down without worrying too much about perfecting the sentences, the flow of writing improves and gives the writers a rough skeleton to work with for later. Contrary to popular belief, a writer’s block usually occurs during the initial phases of writing and is common among professional writers, novelists, academicians, researchers and the like. Many a time, people put their lives on hold until they can find the inspiration to write. Some of the activities that people indulge in for inspiration include going through ‘how-to’ blog posts on overcoming writer’s blocks (shooting myself in the foot?), taking long walks outside, completing household chores, reading poetic novels or hoping to find some inspiration by watching the plants in their backyards grow. Though these may provide stimulus for some, it does not necessarily work all the time. What You Should Ideally Be Doing? Writers have to invest countless hours of research and pore over a number of resources before they actually get down to writing the first few drafts. With hours of prep work, professional writers almost always struggle for time. All this creates an even bigger problem if the writer is prone to experiencing writer’s blocks every now and then. The trick to overcoming a writer’s block is to work around the problem smartly. Though a request for help with writing at this point may be perceived as a critical weakness, it is in fact one of the smartest things a writer can do for his/her writing, without taking away the glory they deserve. Hiring a Virtual Assistant can give you enough room to work around your creativity and will give you the space to write at leisure without letting the brass tacks or prep work get in the way. Though indirectly, this could help with overcoming writer’s block because you will have fewer things to worry about and will be able to concentrate better on the composition of your thoughts. Leave the research, keyword searches, vocabulary sheets and lots more to your VA. You’ll find that no matter what you compose, be it an online blog or a book, outsourcing a few aspects of preparatory writing work to a personal virtual assistant can definitely ease the pressures of a writer’s block. Get your VA to: Do The Research Work Whether you are working on a research paper or writing a blog series, you will be required to do some amount of research if you want your final, written piece to look credible. Engaging your audience is crucial and presenting data or checking out the facts behind people, locations, characters and subjects can help you do just that. For example, in the following two sentences, you’ll notice a difference in how the information is presented. The research and detail that goes into the second sentence will make you understand why the second sentence will be considered more reliable in the eyes of a reader. Example 1 “Mike stole an orange bag from the Selfridges store and ran out as quickly as he could.” Example 2 “Mike stole an expensive, orange, suede satchel from the Selfridges store and ran out as quickly as he could.” A reader would most definitely be drawn to the second line, because it is a lot more descriptive and also gives the illusion that the bag is stolen from the store actually exists at Selfridges. The devil is in the details and carrying out proper research before any kind of writing, will only make your writing piece honest. If you are starting out as a writer, you may not know where to look for information. Even if you do, you may find that ‘research’ can get exasperating and take up a lot of your time. That’s where a Virtual Assistant steps into place. No matter what online research you require for writing your blog, book or paper, you can outsource ‘research work’ of various natures to your VA and focus more on composing your written work. Generate Blog Post Ideas & Page Optimization If you are struggling with finding suitable keyword-rich titles for your blog posts, give your Virtual Assistant a rough idea of what you are expecting in terms of the title for the post and what the blog will contain. Your VA will carry out all the keyword research required to target the right audience and also come with up ideas for your next blog posts. Apart from this, get your VA to keep your blog pages optimized and can carry out competitor research so that you can gauge where you stand. All this data, presented in a comprehensive, easy-to-understand format by your VA, should be able to ease a part of the writer’s block and give you the freedom to write your piece in a relaxed manner. Drafting Blog Posts If you continue to have a problem with writing in a lucid manner or you are not finding the time to complete your blog for the week, have your specialist Virtual Assistant work on a draft for you. All you will have to do in the end is go through it, format the content and hit the ‘publish’ button. Your Virtual Assistants, being jacks of all trades, are also talented wordsmiths. You’ll be surprised with the lucrative ideas they give you and the quality work they can come up with! They can

A Study of the Online Shoe Retailer Industry – Australia

Since 2005, GetFriday has been assisting many online footwear stores from Australia to manage their businesses. This got us curious about the state of affairs in the online shoes industry in Australia. We conducted primary research with some 50 online footwear stores from the Australian region to assess the competitive landscape and analyze the industry in general. The results of this survey could be of interest to shoe e-tailers and online retailers, in general. The Online Footwear Industry in Australia Overview: With revenue generation worth $416 million and an annual growth of 14%, the industry remains fragmented with players with low levels of market share according to a June 2015 market research report. The struggle for market share is reflected in discount wars to garner customers. Our primary research data shows that 73% of online shoe retailers offer discounts on products. Why the online shoe industry is tough: The online shoes industry is a tough environment to survive in. The entry barriers to set up an online shoe store are low and the numbers of online shoe stores are increasing. This affects the revenues of these stores, making them weak players in a large industry. Some market research data indicates, no single player holds more than 5% of the market share. For smaller online retailers, this could mean that more efforts need to be put into their marketing processes. 6 Tactics to Standout in the Online Shoes Industry: 1) Recognize What to Sell: About 30% of the stores sell only women’s shoes. On an average, these stores have collections of 300 products for customers to choose from. The stores selling both men and women’s shoes have an average collection of 550 products. Ankle boots, long boots, heels, flats, wedges, sandals, sneakers, pumps, peep toes, casuals are widely available and are the commonly listed products across online shoe stores for women. The men’s collection seems to be limited to athletic shoes, boots and work shoes – these being the most commonly available products. Add value to design, material, branding, customer service and relations to differentiate your product offerings and increase your sales. 2) Push inefficiencies out of the sales and admin: Our study shows that E-commerce stores generating 10 to 15 orders per day reach a threshold point that requires rethinking the sales and admin design of the store. The focus must shift towards increasing the efficiency of sales and admin, from a “manageable” state of mind. A good CRM and project management tool could help with the collection and generation of data and could also help manage your projects with clarity. One among the best practices is to outsource activities that could be done remotely. This allows you to focus on data and customer relations. Hiring a good Virtual Assistance company for these back-end admin tasks could be the best way to improve efficiency. 3) Leverage through Cross-Selling: Most retailers assume that customers know their needs and wait for the purchase decisions to stem from this knowledge. A McKinsey report “Rediscovering the art of selling” in 2010 showed, 40% of customers are open to persuasion when they walk into a brick and mortar store. E-commerce is driven by choices and the discretion it allows to its customers. One can safely assume that E-commerce customers are willing to be persuaded even more with the right offerings at the right time. Strategize about the products you wish to cross-sell and their placement on the website. A good starting point could be to analyze the sales data to understand the patterns. This will help you identify attitudinal preferences of customers. Our study shows, on an average stores cross-sell 31 products across multiple categories. For stores selling ladies footwear, the most popular accessory to be cross-sold are handbags (37% of stores sell handbags along with footwear). Other items that are being sold along with footwear are heel stoppers, heel grips, hosiery, compression foot sleeve, gel cushion, feet blister plasters, heel cushions, shoe care cream, shoe care sponge, shoehorn, socks, sunglasses and wallets. Cross-selling can be a good revenue stream for e-commerce online shoe stores. You should focus on the products mentioned above to increase your revenues. Again find your own niche and create that differentiator if you plan to stand out from the crowd. 4) Provide Discounts for higher Revenue: A customer’s purchase decision now significantly consists of opportunities to compare prices and reviews. This has dramatically altered the purchase decisions. An ever-growing list of online retailers have added to the competition and fragmented the market. In this scenario, it can be a difficult proposition to sell footwear, which must compete for space using design and appeal as the main differentiator. Our study indicates online footwear retailers in Australia provide discounts through all seasons to attract customers. Our survey conducted in July 2015 shows, 73% stores discounted their select footwear products. 6% of stores have discounts on their available footwear collection. It is clear that discounts are being used as a tool to generate sales. It could also be used as a tool to clear stocks on a continuous basis before the next season’s products arrive. 5) Create space for niche products: Our survey shows less than 2% of stores sell niche products such as orthotic shoes and wedding shoes among many others. We recommend you to make space for these kinds of niche complementary products for higher ROI and differentiation as a part of your red ocean strategy. 6) Do not forget Social Media: Almost every store we surveyed has a social media presence. Social media marketing is cost- effective and is therefore attractive to online retailers. The online shoe industry is no exception. We conducted a survey to assess the activities of online shoe stores on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and various blogs. We found that 17% of stores have presence on all these social media forums. This means, online shoe stores look to engage customers’ across multiple platforms and forums. 72% have presence on Twitter, 54% have presence on Pinterest,

A Study of the Online Shoe Retailer Industry – Australia Read More »

Since 2005, GetFriday has been assisting many online footwear stores from Australia to manage their businesses. This got us curious about the state of affairs in the online shoes industry in Australia. We conducted primary research with some 50 online footwear stores from the Australian region to assess the competitive landscape and analyze the industry in general. The results of this survey could be of interest to shoe e-tailers and online retailers, in general. The Online Footwear Industry in Australia Overview: With revenue generation worth $416 million and an annual growth of 14%, the industry remains fragmented with players with low levels of market share according to a June 2015 market research report. The struggle for market share is reflected in discount wars to garner customers. Our primary research data shows that 73% of online shoe retailers offer discounts on products. Why the online shoe industry is tough: The online shoes industry is a tough environment to survive in. The entry barriers to set up an online shoe store are low and the numbers of online shoe stores are increasing. This affects the revenues of these stores, making them weak players in a large industry. Some market research data indicates, no single player holds more than 5% of the market share. For smaller online retailers, this could mean that more efforts need to be put into their marketing processes. 6 Tactics to Standout in the Online Shoes Industry: 1) Recognize What to Sell: About 30% of the stores sell only women’s shoes. On an average, these stores have collections of 300 products for customers to choose from. The stores selling both men and women’s shoes have an average collection of 550 products. Ankle boots, long boots, heels, flats, wedges, sandals, sneakers, pumps, peep toes, casuals are widely available and are the commonly listed products across online shoe stores for women. The men’s collection seems to be limited to athletic shoes, boots and work shoes – these being the most commonly available products. Add value to design, material, branding, customer service and relations to differentiate your product offerings and increase your sales. 2) Push inefficiencies out of the sales and admin: Our study shows that E-commerce stores generating 10 to 15 orders per day reach a threshold point that requires rethinking the sales and admin design of the store. The focus must shift towards increasing the efficiency of sales and admin, from a “manageable” state of mind. A good CRM and project management tool could help with the collection and generation of data and could also help manage your projects with clarity. One among the best practices is to outsource activities that could be done remotely. This allows you to focus on data and customer relations. Hiring a good Virtual Assistance company for these back-end admin tasks could be the best way to improve efficiency. 3) Leverage through Cross-Selling: Most retailers assume that customers know their needs and wait for the purchase decisions to stem from this knowledge. A McKinsey report “Rediscovering the art of selling” in 2010 showed, 40% of customers are open to persuasion when they walk into a brick and mortar store. E-commerce is driven by choices and the discretion it allows to its customers. One can safely assume that E-commerce customers are willing to be persuaded even more with the right offerings at the right time. Strategize about the products you wish to cross-sell and their placement on the website. A good starting point could be to analyze the sales data to understand the patterns. This will help you identify attitudinal preferences of customers. Our study shows, on an average stores cross-sell 31 products across multiple categories. For stores selling ladies footwear, the most popular accessory to be cross-sold are handbags (37% of stores sell handbags along with footwear). Other items that are being sold along with footwear are heel stoppers, heel grips, hosiery, compression foot sleeve, gel cushion, feet blister plasters, heel cushions, shoe care cream, shoe care sponge, shoehorn, socks, sunglasses and wallets. Cross-selling can be a good revenue stream for e-commerce online shoe stores. You should focus on the products mentioned above to increase your revenues. Again find your own niche and create that differentiator if you plan to stand out from the crowd. 4) Provide Discounts for higher Revenue: A customer’s purchase decision now significantly consists of opportunities to compare prices and reviews. This has dramatically altered the purchase decisions. An ever-growing list of online retailers have added to the competition and fragmented the market. In this scenario, it can be a difficult proposition to sell footwear, which must compete for space using design and appeal as the main differentiator. Our study indicates online footwear retailers in Australia provide discounts through all seasons to attract customers. Our survey conducted in July 2015 shows, 73% stores discounted their select footwear products. 6% of stores have discounts on their available footwear collection. It is clear that discounts are being used as a tool to generate sales. It could also be used as a tool to clear stocks on a continuous basis before the next season’s products arrive. 5) Create space for niche products: Our survey shows less than 2% of stores sell niche products such as orthotic shoes and wedding shoes among many others. We recommend you to make space for these kinds of niche complementary products for higher ROI and differentiation as a part of your red ocean strategy. 6) Do not forget Social Media: Almost every store we surveyed has a social media presence. Social media marketing is cost- effective and is therefore attractive to online retailers. The online shoe industry is no exception. We conducted a survey to assess the activities of online shoe stores on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and various blogs. We found that 17% of stores have presence on all these social media forums. This means, online shoe stores look to engage customers’ across multiple platforms and forums. 72% have presence on Twitter, 54% have presence on Pinterest,

A Guide To Maximize Output With Your Virtual Assistant

Once you have decided to work with a virtual assistant, the next step is to talk to the virtual assistant or the organization that they work for, in order to find out what they have in store. With GetFriday’s decade long experience in virtual assistance services, we wish to deconstruct for you the successful formula behind hiring a fantastic and effective virtual assistant. A 2001 HBR study conducted with 70 virtual teams found that 82% fell short of their goals and 33% rated themselves as largely unsuccessful. And a 2005 Deloitte study of projects outsourced to virtual work groups found that 66% failed to satisfy clients’ requirements. This data goes to show that hiring virtual assistants is a serious business. It combines two complex functions of management – team work and communication. 3 Desirable Qualities Of A Virtual Assistant We decided to identify the most desirable qualities in a virtual assistant. Analysis of the data available with us shows communication, attention to details and ability to work independently top the list when it comes to outsourcing work to virtual assistants. Our view is that the key to a happy ‘outsourcing’ experience is to understand how to get the best out of your virtual assistant. 3 Expectations From Virtual Assistant That Need To Be Managed- 1. Virtual assistants must have great Communication skills The most mentioned and sought-after attribute while hiring a virtual assistant is communication. Virtual communication is often devoid of face to face interaction which provides information on emotional states or non-verbal cues. This, combined with lack of frequent communication, can risk your entire outsourcing success. The only way to avoid any pitfalls is to be extremely clear and disciplined about how you and your assistant will communicate. Establish standard norms for communication, modes of communication, frequency of communication etc. The details could include situations where just a simple email would do, and other circumstances when a phone call would be required. Encourage questions whenever messages are not clear. The performance of a virtual assistant / team can be expected to increase substantially whenever communication is clear. 2. Virtual assistants must pay careful attention to detail The second attribute that is considered desirable, is the ability to pay attention to detail. Most small business are concerned about the work that is being outsourced and are keen on preserving and building a reputation that hinges on providing great services / products. We have all heard of Apple products and the amount of detail that goes beyond its physical product. Small businesses want to emulate the same. And rightly so, they seek attention to detail from virtual assistants as a standard criterion. Establishing clear processes for work outsourced could resolve the problem of attention to detail. Clear processes bring clarity and logic to work, therefore ensure attention to detail is incorporated in the process rather than being dependent on human memory and skill. Feedback is another important aspect. When you provide precise feedback about your expectations and how their attention to detail will impact your work, either positively or negatively, people tend to take notice and inculcate it into their regimen. Broad based feedback that attention to detail is missing is not going to help your virtual assistant improve. On the contrary, objective feedback and an awareness of the impact of their work definitely brings in good results.. 3. Virtual assistants must have the Ability to work independently The third most sought-after attribute is the ability to work independently. We frequently hear small business owners complaining about their virtual assistants and how they do not think for themselves. As a first step towards achieving this, shift the responsibility of work from process to person. Standardize what good work must look like, with opportunities to take independent decisions. For a start, specify the elements of process that could be handled by independent thinking and then slowly elaborate to include other parts of the process. However, note that this will be time consuming and requires patience to eventually achieve ‘quality’. Also, when you are outsourcing work to your virtual assistant, define the areas where you do not want them to take independent decisions very clearly so that even if a decision happens to be not right, it doesn’t impact your business too badly. 4 Essentials To Get The Best Experience With Virtual Assistant 1. Clarify and track commitments The problem with working remotely as seen by business owners, is the difficulty to monitor engagement and productivity. The solution could be, to carefully spell the outcome expected from the tasks. Regular meetings with virtual assistants could be held to understand the status of tasks. Most virtual assistants are ‘generalists’. By this it means that they have ample knowledge on a wide range of domains and don’t specialize in just one field unless specified. Therefore, when you are offloading work, make sure you have jotted down exactly what you want and how you want it done, by breaking down the task instructions in a step-by-step fashion. Avoid vague instructions at all costs. Don’t expect the virtual assistant to infer what you ‘intended’ to say. Instead, make your work and your virtual assistant’s work easier by clearly specifying all the details down to the ‘T’ and even asking if the instructions are understood. If the task is a technical one or the virtual assistant is handling it for the first time, you could even add tutorial videos, sample documents and screenshots of how it can be handled or done. Going all out to explain in detail what you want will only guarantee 100% results. 2. Positive Teams are more productive In most cases it is forgotten that though virtual assistants work remotely for your business, they still require a sense of team spirit. Well defined objectives, deliverables and tracking commitments helps the virtual assistants/teams remain focused. The additional element of engagement in your business goals is fostered when a positive environment of shared accountability and responsibility is imbibed. A happy and a comfortable working relationship

A Guide To Maximize Output With Your Virtual Assistant Read More »

Once you have decided to work with a virtual assistant, the next step is to talk to the virtual assistant or the organization that they work for, in order to find out what they have in store. With GetFriday’s decade long experience in virtual assistance services, we wish to deconstruct for you the successful formula behind hiring a fantastic and effective virtual assistant. A 2001 HBR study conducted with 70 virtual teams found that 82% fell short of their goals and 33% rated themselves as largely unsuccessful. And a 2005 Deloitte study of projects outsourced to virtual work groups found that 66% failed to satisfy clients’ requirements. This data goes to show that hiring virtual assistants is a serious business. It combines two complex functions of management – team work and communication. 3 Desirable Qualities Of A Virtual Assistant We decided to identify the most desirable qualities in a virtual assistant. Analysis of the data available with us shows communication, attention to details and ability to work independently top the list when it comes to outsourcing work to virtual assistants. Our view is that the key to a happy ‘outsourcing’ experience is to understand how to get the best out of your virtual assistant. 3 Expectations From Virtual Assistant That Need To Be Managed- 1. Virtual assistants must have great Communication skills The most mentioned and sought-after attribute while hiring a virtual assistant is communication. Virtual communication is often devoid of face to face interaction which provides information on emotional states or non-verbal cues. This, combined with lack of frequent communication, can risk your entire outsourcing success. The only way to avoid any pitfalls is to be extremely clear and disciplined about how you and your assistant will communicate. Establish standard norms for communication, modes of communication, frequency of communication etc. The details could include situations where just a simple email would do, and other circumstances when a phone call would be required. Encourage questions whenever messages are not clear. The performance of a virtual assistant / team can be expected to increase substantially whenever communication is clear. 2. Virtual assistants must pay careful attention to detail The second attribute that is considered desirable, is the ability to pay attention to detail. Most small business are concerned about the work that is being outsourced and are keen on preserving and building a reputation that hinges on providing great services / products. We have all heard of Apple products and the amount of detail that goes beyond its physical product. Small businesses want to emulate the same. And rightly so, they seek attention to detail from virtual assistants as a standard criterion. Establishing clear processes for work outsourced could resolve the problem of attention to detail. Clear processes bring clarity and logic to work, therefore ensure attention to detail is incorporated in the process rather than being dependent on human memory and skill. Feedback is another important aspect. When you provide precise feedback about your expectations and how their attention to detail will impact your work, either positively or negatively, people tend to take notice and inculcate it into their regimen. Broad based feedback that attention to detail is missing is not going to help your virtual assistant improve. On the contrary, objective feedback and an awareness of the impact of their work definitely brings in good results.. 3. Virtual assistants must have the Ability to work independently The third most sought-after attribute is the ability to work independently. We frequently hear small business owners complaining about their virtual assistants and how they do not think for themselves. As a first step towards achieving this, shift the responsibility of work from process to person. Standardize what good work must look like, with opportunities to take independent decisions. For a start, specify the elements of process that could be handled by independent thinking and then slowly elaborate to include other parts of the process. However, note that this will be time consuming and requires patience to eventually achieve ‘quality’. Also, when you are outsourcing work to your virtual assistant, define the areas where you do not want them to take independent decisions very clearly so that even if a decision happens to be not right, it doesn’t impact your business too badly. 4 Essentials To Get The Best Experience With Virtual Assistant 1. Clarify and track commitments The problem with working remotely as seen by business owners, is the difficulty to monitor engagement and productivity. The solution could be, to carefully spell the outcome expected from the tasks. Regular meetings with virtual assistants could be held to understand the status of tasks. Most virtual assistants are ‘generalists’. By this it means that they have ample knowledge on a wide range of domains and don’t specialize in just one field unless specified. Therefore, when you are offloading work, make sure you have jotted down exactly what you want and how you want it done, by breaking down the task instructions in a step-by-step fashion. Avoid vague instructions at all costs. Don’t expect the virtual assistant to infer what you ‘intended’ to say. Instead, make your work and your virtual assistant’s work easier by clearly specifying all the details down to the ‘T’ and even asking if the instructions are understood. If the task is a technical one or the virtual assistant is handling it for the first time, you could even add tutorial videos, sample documents and screenshots of how it can be handled or done. Going all out to explain in detail what you want will only guarantee 100% results. 2. Positive Teams are more productive In most cases it is forgotten that though virtual assistants work remotely for your business, they still require a sense of team spirit. Well defined objectives, deliverables and tracking commitments helps the virtual assistants/teams remain focused. The additional element of engagement in your business goals is fostered when a positive environment of shared accountability and responsibility is imbibed. A happy and a comfortable working relationship

Oh! The 100 things to do before I die

Here is a guest post from our client Mats Goldberg, an aspiring writer and philanthropist. He lives in Sweden and his goal is to become an accomplished author someday. While going through his blog, I found an interesting video post featuring “The Buried Life – 100 things to do before you die” a reality documentary series which aired on MTV several years ago. Inspires people to get on with doing the things they really want to do and so my pick for the title of this blogpost itself. I posted the video at the end of this blog post. And we (GetFriday) would be happy, if we can help you do that in our own small ways. Here we go with Mats, thanks for spreading the word. Sunder P CEO ———— I was surprised when they contacted me from GetFriday.com (as mentioned in Timothy Ferriss book “4 Hour Work Week”) to ask me to write a guest blogpost for their blog. I have only used virtual assistants since the beginning of 2012, so mind me; the surprise and appreciation I felt when asked to write this post. After some thinking I realized I have quite a good hang of this thing called outsourcing. Sure in the beginning I wasn’t too clear with what I wanted to accomplish or what tasks I would hand over to an assistant. I was in fact rather stupefied with bad directions and wishes. Of course that sometimes happen still today, but I have learned to better structure my ideas and wishes. Whenever I mention that I do outsourcing to India people always ask what I let my assistant do. To clarify this I usually refer our relationship as me being the owner of the company, my assistant being the CEO that delegates all the tasks I want to have done to more suitable people. In short a machinery built to work as smooth and as fast as possible with every single task, since time is my major concern. I don’t just see the one assistant I see a whole team! “So what tasks do you hand them?” is the second question and to be frank my answer is simple: “Anything!” I started out by sending a scanned document with about 3700 contacts that I needed to turn into an Excel document. After two hours I got a report saying they finished 900 of these contacts. In eight hours the job was done. had I done it myself it would have taken at least 40 hours without including all the interruptions at work. “Wow!” if that could be done, what else could I hand over? I started to make my own list of things that could be done and then assessed what I wanted to be done first. The bullet points that has come on print is the following: Send physical birthday cards to near and dear people. Buy Christmas gifts online and have them sent to me. Create logos for my business ideas. Research legal issues in operating and starting online gambling companies in Aldernay, Gibraltar, Singapore and Malta. Contact and get confirmation of the right to print the high definition material of creative resumes of almost 200 people for an upcoming book that I write. Research online lotteries and calculate odds of winning them. After the above mentioned research create a website based on the information found offering my own salary up for winnings. Together with my virtual assistant build an e-commerce store from the base of Tim Ferriss book. Create iPhone apps for a new way to barter. Structure my addresses and contacts. Proofread my blog. Help me plan and execute adventurous trips. Help in marketing and SEO campaigns. Make background research on several private issues. …and so forth! The list can be made infinitely long and the areas just as wide. In working with my virtual assistant (VA) Diyva, I have set a goal for us both to gain knowledge in new areas in life. I thirst for knowledge but don’t want the hassle it gives by making me have to spend all my free time doing things others can do better and faster. I don’t need to manage everything with hiring personnel and seeing to that they do their job. My goal is to free my time from necessary work to things that I’m more passionate about. GetFriday helps me with that! In short; if you want a full and free life, make sure to understand your capabilities and hand over the tasks that you know others can do better and focus on what makes you passionate. In that way you become interesting and an inspiration to others to do the same with their life. Become a person of influence and help change the world for the better in the way that suits your heart the most. Read more about what you could outsource to a virtual assistant at: http://www.matsgoldberg.com/42-things-you-could-outsource-to-a-virtual-assistant/. If you want to follow what I do, just click on through to www.MatsGoldberg.com or follow me on Facebook (www.facebook.com/matsgoldberg) or Twitter (@MatsGoldberg).

Oh! The 100 things to do before I die Read More »

Here is a guest post from our client Mats Goldberg, an aspiring writer and philanthropist. He lives in Sweden and his goal is to become an accomplished author someday. While going through his blog, I found an interesting video post featuring “The Buried Life – 100 things to do before you die” a reality documentary series which aired on MTV several years ago. Inspires people to get on with doing the things they really want to do and so my pick for the title of this blogpost itself. I posted the video at the end of this blog post. And we (GetFriday) would be happy, if we can help you do that in our own small ways. Here we go with Mats, thanks for spreading the word. Sunder P CEO ———— I was surprised when they contacted me from GetFriday.com (as mentioned in Timothy Ferriss book “4 Hour Work Week”) to ask me to write a guest blogpost for their blog. I have only used virtual assistants since the beginning of 2012, so mind me; the surprise and appreciation I felt when asked to write this post. After some thinking I realized I have quite a good hang of this thing called outsourcing. Sure in the beginning I wasn’t too clear with what I wanted to accomplish or what tasks I would hand over to an assistant. I was in fact rather stupefied with bad directions and wishes. Of course that sometimes happen still today, but I have learned to better structure my ideas and wishes. Whenever I mention that I do outsourcing to India people always ask what I let my assistant do. To clarify this I usually refer our relationship as me being the owner of the company, my assistant being the CEO that delegates all the tasks I want to have done to more suitable people. In short a machinery built to work as smooth and as fast as possible with every single task, since time is my major concern. I don’t just see the one assistant I see a whole team! “So what tasks do you hand them?” is the second question and to be frank my answer is simple: “Anything!” I started out by sending a scanned document with about 3700 contacts that I needed to turn into an Excel document. After two hours I got a report saying they finished 900 of these contacts. In eight hours the job was done. had I done it myself it would have taken at least 40 hours without including all the interruptions at work. “Wow!” if that could be done, what else could I hand over? I started to make my own list of things that could be done and then assessed what I wanted to be done first. The bullet points that has come on print is the following: Send physical birthday cards to near and dear people. Buy Christmas gifts online and have them sent to me. Create logos for my business ideas. Research legal issues in operating and starting online gambling companies in Aldernay, Gibraltar, Singapore and Malta. Contact and get confirmation of the right to print the high definition material of creative resumes of almost 200 people for an upcoming book that I write. Research online lotteries and calculate odds of winning them. After the above mentioned research create a website based on the information found offering my own salary up for winnings. Together with my virtual assistant build an e-commerce store from the base of Tim Ferriss book. Create iPhone apps for a new way to barter. Structure my addresses and contacts. Proofread my blog. Help me plan and execute adventurous trips. Help in marketing and SEO campaigns. Make background research on several private issues. …and so forth! The list can be made infinitely long and the areas just as wide. In working with my virtual assistant (VA) Diyva, I have set a goal for us both to gain knowledge in new areas in life. I thirst for knowledge but don’t want the hassle it gives by making me have to spend all my free time doing things others can do better and faster. I don’t need to manage everything with hiring personnel and seeing to that they do their job. My goal is to free my time from necessary work to things that I’m more passionate about. GetFriday helps me with that! In short; if you want a full and free life, make sure to understand your capabilities and hand over the tasks that you know others can do better and focus on what makes you passionate. In that way you become interesting and an inspiration to others to do the same with their life. Become a person of influence and help change the world for the better in the way that suits your heart the most. Read more about what you could outsource to a virtual assistant at: http://www.matsgoldberg.com/42-things-you-could-outsource-to-a-virtual-assistant/. If you want to follow what I do, just click on through to www.MatsGoldberg.com or follow me on Facebook (www.facebook.com/matsgoldberg) or Twitter (@MatsGoldberg).

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