Five More Tips to Build Your Newsletter Subscriber List

August 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

We all need to fill our marketing funnel with the contact details of potential clients and referrers of our business services. The following tips give you some ideas about how to collect contact details – and, in particular, email addresses – so that you can begin to build relationships with your prospects.

11. Collect business cards from people you meet, and then email each of them asking if you can add them to your newsletter list. Do not add them without their permission, as this will not win you any friends.

12. Host back copies of your newsletter on your website as an archive. At the foot of each article, include a link to your sign up page with a message to ‘sign up to our newsletter for more articles like these’.

13. When you have added previous newsletters to your website, Twitter the link to the article page. Make sure there is a link to ‘sign up for more articles like these’ at the bottom of the article page.

14. When you have added previous newsletters to your website, add the page address to your Facebook status. Make sure there is a link to ‘sign up for more articles like these’ at the bottom of the article page.

15. Include a link to your newsletter sign up page on your Facebook profile and from time to time include it in your status. The day that you have sent out your latest issue is a great time to do this.

We have written a whole load of articles that you can reproduce in your newsletter. Download them today for free at: http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk/virtual-assistant-freebies/articles/
 

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Additional Services Your Virtual Assistant Business Can Offer

August 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

There are a number of different services that you can add to your business to take it to the next level and provide a ‘one stop shop’.
Some of these include:

Telephone answering
This can be a really popular, but you must consider whether you want to provide the service yourself, or if it something you would prefer to pass on to a fellow VA with whom you have forged a partnership arrangement. I do offer the service, although, I do not do it myself as I am often out and about, so I cannot guarantee the quality of service that my clients deserve. However, I do have a VA partner who is more than happy to do this type of work.

If you do offer this service, it needs to be from 9am to 5pm as a minimum, so think hard whether it is something you want to do yourself before you start advertising the service.

Website design
This is a specialist skill and something that is charged at a higher rate. Before offering this service, ask yourself if you possess the necessary skills, or whether you would need to outsource the work.

Another service you could offer is a maintenance retainer package, whereby your clients pay in advance for maintenance of their sites.

Legal Virtual Assistant
A legal virtual assistant is someone who works with solicitors on either an ad hoc or regular basis, providing all the services of a legal secretary.

What will you add to your VA business?
 

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Virtual Assistants and the Importance of Client Consultation – part 2

August 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

For part 1 of the article, please see the post on 18th August.

To give a great impression straight away, it is important to ask the right questions at the first meeting with your potential client, before they sign up. You need to ascertain where you can be most useful to them. What are their weak points? What work do they continually put off, either because there is no time or because they do not enjoy it? Find out what their plans are for their business. What do they want to achieve?

Once the client has come onboard, you need to maintain the momentum with scheduled meetings as an ongoing process. This applies to both regular and ad-hoc clients. By having detailed monthly ‘catch-up’ meetings, either in person or by telephone, you can identify how much of their forthcoming work you can help them with.

For some really great documents to help you both with initial client consultations and ongoing client reviews, take a look at New Client Pack and Client Management Pack at: http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk/virtual-assistant-document-templates/

For help with your Client Consultation, check out the podcast at: http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk/virtual-assistant-teleseminars-webinars/
 

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Free Article You Can Use: Growing Your Virtual Assistant Business

August 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

There are many ways that you can grow your VA business, from adding additional services to bringing other people on board to work with you.

Check out this great article about Growing Your Virtual Assistant Business.
Visit http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk/virtual-assistant-freebies/articles
 

 

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Niche Marketing for Virtual Assistants

August 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

When you start out in business you will get very excited and, probably, target small- to medium-size businesses as your perfect VA clients. This is what most new business owners do. So, many people will be targeting exactly the same prospective clients as you, including other virtual assistants.

The key to a successful and thriving VA business is to be specific and narrow your target market, because ultimately it is easier to market a smaller prospective client base. Believe it or not, marketing to fewer people is easy, because you can target your approach, which will be much more cost-effective.

If you target your message to everyone, how can you make it relevant?
If you are going to be working with people in different industries, they will have different issues, different problems, different jargon, different ways of doing things and different service needs. So, trying to create marketing material that is relevant to everyone is almost impossible.

By being selective about whom you help, and about the specialist services that you offer, you can target your marketing material accordingly.

To put this into context, let’s go over some numbers. There are hundreds of thousands of small businesses in the UK, and the number increases on a daily basis. So, ask yourself how many of these can you realistically have as clients. We are not superhuman, so I imagine you would agree that you could not work with all of them. But, if you narrow it down to a specific type of industry (maybe a few thousand companies), would you be able to work with one per cent of this market? Now the figure becomes far more manageable and achievable.
 

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Virtual Assistants and the Importance of Client Consultation – part 1

August 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

With a large number of virtual assistants to choose from these days, how can a potential client choose with which one they would like to work? How can you project a professional image and create synergy with someone you have never met? What can you do or say to make them think ‘I’ve got to work with this person’?

When I first started out as a virtual assistant, more years ago than I care to remember, there were very few VAs around, which meant I had little competition. Nowadays, many of the clients I take on have worked with at least one other VA in the past. When I ask what differences they notice between our way of working and that of other VAs, with whom they have worked previously, they often say that what they like more than anything is that we work as a partnership with our clients. They say that we are proactive in their businesses and look for opportunities for them and suggest ideas, whereas, other VAs just wait for work to be delegated to them.

So, how do we achieve this distinction? Part of it has to do with the mindset. When you make the leap from being an employee to a sole trader, or business owner, you will quickly realise that if you sit around and wait for work to be delegated, you will not get very much of it. At that point you learn to make yourself an active member of your clients ‘team’ very quickly, or you will soon start to founder.

For help with your Client Consultation, check out the podcast at: http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk/virtual-assistant-teleseminars-webinars/

Part 2 of this article follows on 25th August
 

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Five More Tips to Build Your Newsletter Subscriber List

August 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

We all need to fill our marketing funnel with the contact details of potential clients and referrers of our business services. The following tips give you some ideas about how to collect contact details – and, in particular, email addresses – so that you can begin to build relationships with your prospects.

6. It is simple but effective to include an ‘opt-in’ form on every page of your website. It is also worth checking your web statistics to see where people leave your site. Check the last page they view before they leave and make sure there is a note asking them to sign up for your newsletter at the bottom of this page.

7. Consider a pop-up window, which appears when a visitor leaves your site. Ask for their email address so you can keep in touch – make sure it links to information telling them about your privacy policy, how to ‘opt out’ and how often you will contact them.

8. Include a ‘Forward to a Friend’ link in your newsletters, so that your readers can forward an article to anyone that you think might find it interesting. For this reason, also include a link to your sign-up page in each emailed newsletter.

9. Offer email-only discounts and tell visitors to your site that you do so. If they are interested in your services, they will sign up in the hope of getting a discount.

10. Ask telephone callers if you can add them to your newsletter list. If they have enquired about any of your products or services, they are prospects and will not mind your keeping in touch in this unobtrusive way.

We’ve written a whole load of articles that you can reproduce in your newsletter. Download them today for free at: http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk/virtual-assistant-freebies/articles/
 

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What To Ask During Your Client Consultation Process

August 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

You may want to consider some of the following questions when writing your own client consultations.

Contact information
You need to ask for telephone numbers and an email address before your scheduled consultation so that you can contact them if they don’t call.

Business type
What industry do they work in? What products/services do they provide? With what types of clients do they work?

What are their goals/vision?
What are their goals for the next five years? This is a good question as you can tell them how you could help them to achieve their goals.

What are they struggling to complete in their businesses?
Some prospective clients may have an idea of areas in which they need some help. After I have ended the consultation, I ask all prospective clients to keep a list of all the tasks they have insufficient time to complete, or that they do not like doing, over the course of a week. I then schedule a follow-up call for a week later to go through the list to see where I can help them.

Describe a typical day for you
This will reveal some details about their personality and work style, which should tell you whether you want to work with them.

Have you worked with a PA or virtual assistant before?
This is an important question as, if the answer is yes, you can ask supplementary questions to see whether the relationship worked or not.

What information should you reveal about yourself?
What information should your prospective clients be told about you? Do you want to tell them you work full-time, fit your work around children, or work only during term-time? Establish now what information you want to share, so that you do not forget during the call.
 

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Tips For Advertising Your Virtual Assistant Business on a Budget – part 2

August 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

For the first three tips in this series, please see the post from 4th August.

Tip Four – Press Releases
Press releases are useful for generating a buzz about your virtual assistant business. The business editor at your local newspaper will always be on the lookout for a good business story to fill the paper’s business news section.

Of course, the business editor understands the economics of running a paper, and is more inclined to run your story if you buy advertising space, but will still print stories for special events and openings. Think of an angle. Could you offer a competition prize? Could you help a local charity?

The important thing to remember about press releases is that they must be constructed in the form of a news story. Even if you are a sole trader, quotes from you should be written in the third person – Joe Bloggs says: "Your quote here."

When writing a press release, put the important information at the beginning of the copy and supplementary details towards the end.

You should always provide the reporter who gets the task a simple and easy way for him/her to contact you directly. Often the reporter will want to contact you to get details that will enhance their take on your story.

Tip Five – Online Presence
It goes without saying that, as a virtual assistant, you needs a website. But have you really thought about the best way to use it? Some visitors will arrive at your site as result of your telling them about it, or seeing the URL on your business card or marketing material.

What you really want, though, are visitors to arrive at your site because they are actually searching for a virtual assistant. These are not just visitors; they are also prospects. They have actually gone to the trouble of going to a search engine and entering a relevant term into the search bar and are busy looking through the results to find someone with whom they want to work. So, how do you make sure your site is the one they choose?

Well, search engine optimisation (SEO) companies charge a small fortune for ‘optimising’ your site in an attempt to make it appear at the top of search engines results, and, with good reason. The search engines constantly change their indexing criteria to keep out the ‘spammers’. So, the SEO companies have to consistently keep one step ahead. If you do not have the budget to compete with the big players, the best thing you can do is be listed on their websites. Visitors will then see your information and click through to your site.

There are several directories advertising virtual assistants and their services in the UK. The UK Association of Virtual Assistants consistently appears on the first page of Google and can be found at www.ukava.co.uk

Tip Six – Test Everything
Whenever possible, you should test your advertising and marketing efforts. It is natural to want to ‘jump in’ and try various ideas and formats, and that’s admirable. But, try to keep a record of where each enquiry comes from, and which enquiries you convert into paying customers.

With this data to hand, you can then look at what has been cost effective and what has not. For example, if you paid £500 to join a networking group, and attended 50 breakfast meetings, costing £10 each, over the course of a year, and, as a result, you got one new client, that client would have cost you £1000 to source. If you put an advert in the UKAVA Directory for £49.95, from which you gain five new clients, each client has cost you less than £10 to source. In this scenario, you may decide to drop the networking group and advertise in the directory more frequently.

The important point is that you cannot improve on what you do not evaluate the situation. If you do not know what is working for you, and what is not, how can you expect to improve your results in the future?

Sometimes, you may find that the lower-cost advertising and marketing strategies are the ones that bring you the most business.

For a listing in the UKAVA Directory visit: http://www.ukava.co.uk/html/join_the_uk_association_of_vir.html

For an in-depth online course on how to market your virtual assistant business, visit: http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk/virtual-assistant-online-courses/marketing-for-virtual-assistants/

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Free Article You Can Use: Tips For Setting Up Your Home-Based Office

August 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A question we are frequently asked by aspiring virtual assistants is, "What should I consider when setting up my office at home?"

Check out this great article about Tips For Setting Up Your Home-Based Office.
Visit http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk/virtual-assistant-freebies/articles
 

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