Month: November 2020

Our West Yorkshire franchise has recently had a number of requests for support with landing pages and newsletter automation. Landing pages are great for increasing conversions, and newsletters are a great communication tool. Best of all, once your automation is set up, it’s easy for you, your team or your virtual assistant to run email marketing campaigns without having to start from scratch each time.

In this blog, we look more at landing pages and automated newsletters, and how virtual assistants can help you.

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This year, 27th November will be Black Friday, one of the biggest days for sales and shopping in the pre-Christmas calendar. For many businesses, this is one of the most important days of the year, and that may be especially true this year due to the economic slump caused by the global pandemic. 

But for service-based and B2B businesses, the question of whether to run a promotion for Black Friday is a tricky one. Can you run an effective campaign if you don’t sell physical products? What might a B2B business offer instead? If you’re pondering these questions right now, let us inspire you with a few ideas about how to run a Black Friday promotion for a B2B business. 

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Maintaining some kind of balance between work and life is hard enough when you’re going out to work, but when you’re working from home, the challenge is even greater. Fortunately, by identifying the problem and really addressing it, you can get your life back without your work suffering.

The team at Get Ahead VA have been working at home for years. Here are our top tips:

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It’s safe to say that, for most people, this year hasn’t exactly gone to plan – perhaps you started 2020 with big dreams of finally starting your own business, only to have to put those dreams aside in order to make it through the crisis. But the pandemic doesn’t have to stop your entrepreneurial aspirations forever. In fact, opening a franchise could get you back on track sooner than you think. 

There are all sorts of fantastic benefits to opening a franchise, but today we’re looking at four key advantages that could make this a great career move for you, even in all the upheaval of 2020. 

1. Build a business 

Starting a new business always comes with some risk, and this is especially true now, when markets are changing quickly and unexpectedly all the time. Against this backdrop of uncertainty, opening a franchise brings with it extra security and reassurance – you will benefit from starting a business within an established and proven brand, and you will have the support of other franchisees to help you through those difficult early months. A franchise allows you to open a business, but not alone. 

2. Work for yourself 

Many people have had to rethink how they work over the last few months, from finding a new office space, to adapting to new regulations, to having to leave a previous job. Although these things can be extremely stressful, they also provide an opportunity to take a serious look at your working life and see if you are in a position to make a more long-term change. You must weigh up your options carefully, but these new circumstances may be just the push you need to finally pursue the dream of being your own boss. 

3. Manage your own time 

One of the greatest benefits of running a business is that you have the freedom to manage your own time. This is more important than ever when life is unpredictable and you never know when you might need to help out a relative or do some last-minute childcare. Running your own business allows you to be flexible – you can take on extra work when you have the time, or prioritise your other commitments if you need to. 

4. Work remotely 

Almost all of us have had to adjust to remote working this year, and you may have discovered that you really like it – the freedom to build your work around your family life, the flexibility of the working hours, and the peace and quiet of having an office all to yourself. If this sounds like you, then starting a franchise could mean you can benefit from the home-working lifestyle for a long time to come! 

If you’re interested in running a virtual assistant agency, providing administrative and business support to small businesses in your area, then the Get Ahead VA franchise opportunity could be perfect for you! Contact us on 01483 332 220. We’d be happy to talk to you about your next big career move! 

As we embark upon England’s second lockdown, it’s great to see how many businesses have been able to relaunch (or continue) homeworking, building on everything they learned last time. In these trying times, we’ve seen a material demand for Zoom facilitation, particularly for training sessions. We’ll be honest with you, we’ve had to ramp up our skillset pretty quickly too, but now Get Ahead VA is offering a behind-the-scenes service for online training that we are really proud of.

Because Zoom training facilitation is a new service, we’ve noticed that while some clients know exactly what Zoom challenges they are trying to overcome, others have no idea what aspects of online training they could possibly outsource! In this blog, we break down the elements of online training facilitation to give you a clearer picture of how outsourcing Zoom management and tapping into our Miro expertise could help you.

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At Get Ahead VA, we have a large team of virtual assistants to draw upon, so we can always find someone with the right skills and personality to work with your business. As such, we’re quietly confident you’ll develop a good working relationship with your VA and that the positive feedback you give will outweigh the negative!

VAs are professionals and are used to receiving comments, positive and negative, and acting upon them. For many reasons, it’s important to give feedback. When business owners withhold criticisms, it can result in issues going unresolved, ultimately causing the breakdown of the working relationship. And when business owners don’t show their appreciation, the VA might feel under-valued and less motivated. Fortunately, when you give useful feedback, it enables the VA to develop the work they are producing so they can support your business in the right way.

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In any other year, businesses would have booked their Christmas party back in August or so – big room, catering of some sort, maybe a magician visiting your table doing some close up magic. If you were really (un)lucky, someone might even have hired a karaoke machine.

But this year, it will all be different. Lockdown didn’t just introduce new restrictions; it introduced a new way of working. So many businesses have noticed how much easier remote working is that it’s looking like it’s here to stay, even when restrictions are finally over. What’s certain is that we’ll be having our works Christmas parties remotely, and we’re proud to report that our VAs with Zoom expertise are already receiving bookings to provide tech support during the virtual party season.

Here are some ideas for virtual Christmas parties!

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Hiring a virtual assistant (VA) can be a really smart move for your business – they can provide skills and support when you need them the most, and they’re totally flexible so you only hire them for as long as you need them.  

If you’ve never worked with a VA before, you probably have lots of questions about how it all works. As a virtual assistant agency, we know the most common queries that people have about VAs, so we’re here to help you learn more. Here are the top 5 most frequently asked questions about VAs.  

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It’s safe to say that, for most people, this year hasn’t exactly gone to plan – perhaps you started 2020 with big dreams of finally starting your own business, only to have to put those dreams aside in order to make it through the crisis. But the pandemic doesn’t have to stop your entrepreneurial aspirations forever. In fact, opening a franchise could get you back on track sooner than you think. 

There are all sorts of fantastic benefits to opening a franchise, but today we’re looking at four key advantages that could make this a great career move for you, even in all the upheaval of 2020. 

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