This is Day 24 in the 31 Days to Become a More Efficient Virtual Assistant Series
Previous post: How Blogging Regularly Can Help Thrive Business Accounting Business
Finding clients can be one of the most difficult aspects of getting your virtual assistant business off the ground. There is so much more to attracting clients to your business than just having a website. Aside from building relationships you can also use a bit of creativity in how you go about getting your name out there.
Here are some tips on how you can get your business in front of prospective clients:
- Used wisely your email signature it can be a gentle type of marketing. You should include all pertinent information (a working hyperlink to your website, phone number, business name, etc.) but you can also use it as a place to include your tag line or a one-line testimonial from an existing client. If you’re using Gmail’s web interface you may want to check out Wisestamp.
- If you’re active on Virtual Assistant Forums be sure to make use of your email signature there as well. This can be used to help your colleagues and peers get an idea of what services you excel at and can lead to potential referral business.
- Contact other virtual assistants to see if they work with subcontractors.
- Put together a one or two page marketing piece and have it available as a download on your website.
- Ask for referrals! Referral marketing can be incredibly effective and John Jantsch with Duct Tape Marketing blogs about it frequently. He has written a book solely dedicated to the what you can do to increase referrals called Referral Engine.
- Use keywords searches with tools such as Google Alerts, TalkWalker Alerts or Mention to identify potential needs your ideal clients have.
- Identify and find your ideal clients and then consistently re-share their content on social media networks, comment on their blog posts, etc. It takes repeated and consistent exposure to a person to stay “top of mind”.
- Be courageous and reach out to your ideal clients directly and see if they have a need for a virtual assistant. You never know unless you ask! (One of my favorite books on the amazing things that can happen as a result of just asking is The Aladdin Factor)
- Blogging consistently serves multiple objectives and just one of those is the ability to be seen as someone who is helpful by sharing tools, experiences, etc.
- Approach those you have built a relationship with and ask if they’d consider featuring a guest blog post from you. This gives you the advantage of having your thoughts and ideas in front of a different audience.
- Inform your social network audiences with the types of work you (or the virtual assistant industry). It’s easy to do by sharing status updates such as: A virtual assistant can handle your monthly newsletters in Constant Contact. Here are 239 Tweets to Help You Market Thrive Business Accounting Business.
Hopefully the list above has jumpstarted your creative juices with ideas you can immediately implement in your virtual assistant business. What other creative things have done to market your business? Let me know in the comments below.