What can a fast pivot mean for your retail sales?
In January 2020, the economy was expected to grow. But, as everyone knows, that year didn’t turn out quite like anyone expected. Many of those early retail sales projections were quickly revised downward as businesses and retailers were forced to temporarily close doors or reduce access. Instead of almost 3% growth in retails sales, experts expected a 10% decline.
They might have been right, except for ecommerce.
Retailers quickly pivoted as the pandemic landscape changed, moving to online sales and doing such an effective job that retail sales actually grew by 3.4%. That number is expected to double by the end of 2021.
You read that right: in the midst of the pandemic, retail sales were higher than the original pre-pandemic estimate.
Ecommerce isn’t just a fallback option, though, a one-off to rely on during unpredictable times. Currently, ecommerce is up 17% year over year, comprising 15% of all retail sales in 2021. It’s expected to grow to nearly 24% by 2025. That’s fast growth, and evidence of a consumer pattern of spending that isn’t about to change.
With this wave of ecommerce constantly building, the question you probably have is how to ride the wave instead of being crushed by it. by being unprepared for continued growth.
This requires working on your business instead of working in your business, and it’s where a top-shelf, tech-savvy executive assistant can help.
How An Executive Assistant Helps Build Your Ecommerce Brand
Whatever it is you think you know about what an executive assistant does, set it to the side.
Too many business owners have a picture of someone doing basic administrative duties and don’t see how they could possibly help with something like growing an ecommerce brand other than maybe taking a few tasks off of a long to-do list.
What you need to build your ecommerce brand.
Let’s take a look at what you’ll need to build your ecommerce brand, and compare that with what an executive assistant does.
To keep your ecommerce chugging along, you need to:
- Maintain product inventory and integrate that with your website.
- Maintain product/service databases.
- Actively market your ecommerce brand on social media, in advertising, via email, and in other outlets such as SMS marketing or engaging with influencers.
- Have strong SEO strategies so your brand is found via search engines.
- Handle invoices, vendors, and other bookkeeping.
- Provide great customer service and support.
- Engage customers online through social media platforms.
- Develop and execute data-driven marketing plans.
- Collect data from sales, marketing, and customer feedback to use for planning future growth or marketing.
- Create content for your website, social media, and product descriptions.
- Research and stay on top of trends.
You know what that is?
It’s just the beginning, and many of those items (e.g. SEO) require a long-term commitment to make them work. Ecommerce is incredibly fluid, and there’s simultaneous feedback and decision-making happening from that feedback. Drop the ball in one area, and you feel it somewhere else.
So what can an executive assistant do to help you out?
- Help you with your marketing. Whatever your marketing plan calls for, an executive assistant can help you execute it. This includes sending emails, light writing and content creation, managing social media posts, researching copyrights on images before you use them, and much more.
- Take care of customer service. Social media and customer service overlap, and having an executive assistant involved in both ensures your messaging stays on target. Think fulfillment coordination, data entry, handling refunds and coupons, or responding to customers.
- Help with bookkeeping. While you might have an accountant, there are things like data entry or invoice creation that you might still be handling and don’t need to.
- Coordinate project management. Projects are like the business within the business. They add another layer of detail. Your executive assistant can oversee complicated projects, handle event planning, arrange meetings, coordinate schedules, and create timelines to make sure projects are managed effectively.
Your specialized knowledge, as the owner and expert in your business, shouldn’t be set aside because of general tasks that need to be done. Let your executive assistant handle it.
An executive assistant makes an impact, fast.
If you wonder how quickly an executive assistant makes a difference, ask yourself what’s your time worth? How much is it costing you to be wrapped up in your email instead of planning sales strategy?
An executive assistant could save you 15 hours a week, easily, by handling your email, helping with social media, managing your calendar, and more.
While personal support and admin tasks aren’t exclusive to ecommerce, they are something every business owner should be looking to get some help with. When your executive assistant helps clear your plate you focus on building your business.
That’s where growth happens.
Hiring An Executive Assistant Quickly
Hiring is no one’s favorite pastime.
What we mean is that it takes a lot of time and money to hire someone. Ecommerce moves quickly, pushed along by online trends. If it takes you over three months and several thousands of dollars to bring on a new employee, you might have missed a significant opportunity already.
Plus, there’s the issue of quality of the new hire, along with affordability. Are you going to need a part-time or full-time employee? If you need to level up down the road, will you have to go through the hiring process all over again?
Those kinds of concerns are the reason we offer the subscription staffing model.
We already took care of the recruiting, interviewing, and hiring, making sure we built our team of talented executive assistants out of the best people available. When you come to us, you jump to the head of the recruiting line and get access to people who are the best, some of whom have Fortune 500 experience.
No hiring. Just a phone call, a conversation, and we match you with the best fit for what you need and how you work.
But here’s the best part: our executive assistants are our employees.
We handle payroll, taxes, and everything that goes with it because we want to offer you agility and flexibility. Instead of being locked into contracts with a set number of hours, a subscription model means that you pay for what you need. As you need more (or less) hours from your executive assistant, you adjust your subscription each month. You save time, you save money, and you inject flexibility into your brand.
The common denominator in all of this, when it comes to ecommerce, is time. It’s the most valuable component of any thriving ecommerce business.
Ecommerce is fast and fluid, and you don’t have the luxury of dragging your feet. You can’t ride the wave of growth if you miss the boat entirely.
As the owner, you have specific knowledge and strengths that are reflected in your business. Let someone else manage your invoices or respond to customers on Twitter so you can focus on what matters.
If you’re ready to get your time back and grow your ecommerce brand, contact us. We’d love to talk to you.
Topic: Remote Executive Assistant
