When people hear the words ‘creative virtual assistant’, they often think of an assistant to a movie producer, or someone who does admin-related virtual assistant work in some mysteriously creative way.
Here’s the thing, though: more and more business activity (and success) depends on the creative expertise that goes into branding and presenting an identity, whether you’re an entrepreneurial startup or an already well-established business jockeying for market share. In the global economy of a post-Covid world, the one quality that people will be looking for is authenticity coupled with creative originality. Those things don’t happen by accident.
They’re the result of deliberate thought, inspiration, and creation.
Paint a Picture in Your Client’s Mind
Neuroscientists say that the human brain processes images and visual concepts an incredible 60,000 times faster than it processes written text!
For that reason, you want your business imagery to pop: it has to instantly resonate and communicate with your audience, or you’ll be left behind. And to do that successfully, there are a whole range of focus points you’ll need to pay attention to. These include:
- The quality of graphics and visual messages on your website.
- Attractive, clever, and well thought out social media material.
- Visually engaging media everywhere someone sees your brand.
- A consistent look across platforms that defines your brand voice and tone.
Giving Your Business an Identity
Of course, a creative virtual assistant can help you with far more than just graphic design or curating a great look for your business. But without those elements in place, it’s difficult to get customers to recognize your business at a glance. If you’re going to be working with a virtual assistant skilled in graphic design, here are some of the basics you should be looking at:
Branding to Create an Emotional Connection
The purpose of business branding is to create an emotional response in your customers. Obviously, it should be a positive one that makes them want to buy from you. And there will be a pretty big difference between the image you choose to project if you’re in the investment business, for example, as opposed to the ice cream business.
A skilled creative virtual assistant who provides graphic design services will help you establish the visual tone projected by your business (the types of images and messaging) as well as a good brand identity. This should include your logo, color palette, and visual symbols.
Instantly Recognizable Logo and Visual Devices for Your Brand
Perhaps you already have a logo, and some visual elements that you feel portray your business well. But if you don’t, or you’d like to refresh things, this is another really important consideration.
Just as people frequently judge a book by its cover, or someone by the way they dress, they also form a perception of your business based on familiarity and likeability. A good graphic designer or creative virtual assistant who works with branding will help you attune these things, so they appeal better to your target audience.
Consistent Visual Themes Across All Platforms
Establishing a universal ‘look and feel’ for your business is one of the most important things you can do. What you’re after is for a customer (or potential customer) to have that ‘flash of recognition’ the very instant they see your logo or color scheme – or anything visually unique that sets you apart from the rest. A customer should see (or sense) the same thing everywhere, whether they’re on your website, receiving a mailer, or seeing you on social media.
And when they see it, they should ideally associate it with something positive or attractive about your business.
Image-Based Customer Communication
Images and other visual material are the smartest and quickest way to communicate with your customers. Think about it:
- Infographics enable your customers to understand a concept or process at a glance.
- Newsletters and mailers are 10X more likely to be read (and acted upon) if they have a creative element to them.
- Marketing that’s creative and eye-catching is more likely to get customers to respond to your call to action.
More Than Just Graphics
Of course, the type of creative virtual assistant you need may vary with the role and what you need. Remember that we’re talking about a specialized field of skill here, so someone who’s great at producing website graphics will probably not have the same level of skill at recording or editing a podcast!
However, you could also look at utilizing a creative virtual assistant who has creative flair, all-round organizational skill, and a keen sense of coherence, to coordinate and tie these elements together for you – saving you an unimaginable amount of time and stress in the process. This creative flair can serve to enhance just about anything within your business:
- Blogging assistance: curating and organizing your blog content and liaising with your copywriter.
- Video and audio: managing the creation and editing of video clips and audio clips for your business.
- Event styling and setup: coordinating special events or company functions, with a creative edge.
- Visual training and marketing aids: turning data into graphs and visual representations for employees and customers.
- Ecommerce presentation: curating sales-producing product images and descriptions for your online store.
- Product design and concept: creating images, quirky slogans or message-based material for clothing or other merchandise.
- Linking text and imagery: transcriptions of podcasts, subtitling of videos, and short summaries of long-form information.
Creativity is a Communication Skill
A creative virtual assistant can also be an individual with a gift for great communication. This can be incredibly helpful in terms of building a relationship with your customer audience:
- Organizing promotions, surveys, and initiating creative conversation and engagement with your customers.
- Managing and responding to online communities – whether on social media or on private groups.
- Monitoring and responding to clients on social media.
- Monitoring and translating your social media performance analytics – and using that to create even better audience engagement for your business.
Having someone who can articulate the ‘voice’ of your business is priceless. It’s a great way to build trust, loyalty, and long-term relationships.
All in Good Time
Creativity is a learned skill, but it also requires an ‘X-factor’ – inspiration and intuition. And that in turn requires time – the one commodity you probably don’t have enough of as a business owner. When you engage the services of a creative virtual assistant, you’re paying for the skills of creative conceptualization. Then there’s visualization, and iteration. But you’re also getting something else: time. Time that you can use on other key aspects of your business. You are secure in the knowledge that the creative side is in great hands.
Ready to add a powerful element of new creativity to your business?
Book a discovery call with us today and find out a creative virtual assistant can add value to your bottom line – and build a bigger, more profitable audience.
