Virtual Buzz Assistant

10 Tips on Marketing your Virtual Assistant Business

1. Blog – You should start a free blog at WordPress.com and Blogger.com – And you should learn how to set up a blog, customize the template and launch a blog for clients.  Don’t write about your virtual assistant trials and tribulations.  Write about what clients are looking for.
2. Networking – People are more likely to hire you if they meet you in person, even if you are going to be working virtually.
3. Email – Build an email list by offering a free download and use auto responders to build a relationship and market your virtual assistant services.
4. LinkedIn – Put up a professional profile and solicit testimonials for your virtual assistant business.
5. Freelance Sites – Sure the competition is rough, but use freelance websites like eLance and oDesk every day.
6. Business Cards – Have nice business cards designed and carry them everywhere.  You never know when you will meet someone that needs your virtual assistant services.
7. Make it easy to contact you – You should not have a single webpage, blog, email or any other form of communication that does not make it super easy to find out about your virtual assistant business and how to contact you.
8. Communities – Find a good online community or two where entrepreneurs are hanging out.  Use the community to learn about business while promoting your va business.
9. Referrals – Ask for referrals from vendors, happy customers and friends.  Ideally they know people that are interested in a virtual assistant to help them grow their business.
10. Meet someone new every day – Set a goal to communicate with someone new every day.  It could be a quick email, a phone call or in person at an event.  You must mention your virtual assistant business.  The only rule here is that you make a new connection every day.  Note that if you meet 20 people today, you cannot move the other 19 forward.  Tomorrow you still need to meet someone new.

This is just some basic tips on marketing your virtual assistant business.  It does not even get into the complexity of advertising, PPC or SEO.  But this is a list of things that anyone can start doing to market their vb business quickly with little or no cost.

How to write a Virtual Assistant Business Plan

If you want to write a virtual assistant business plan, begin with a good business plan template.  I do not suggest the software that is out there, because there are many free resources that will get you a fast start.  Go to www.docstoc.com and find a business plan template that you like.

Virtual Assistant Business Plan Tip #1

It is important to plan your virtual assistant business.  However, I have never seen planning generate a penny of income.  Do not spend weeks or months with your business plan.  Instead, do some research and set some goals.  Then understand that your business plan will continually need to be modified as you learn more about the business.

Virtual Assistant Business Plan Tip #2

Your Virtual Assistant financial projections should be based on facts, or you need to start out with a realistic financial projection.  For example, if you have never sold your services before, projecting 5 new clients next month is not realistic.  5 leads might be.

Does that mean that 5 clients is impossible?  No.  Just not realistic because you have not done it before and experience with selling your services does improve your odds on getting clients.

Virtual Assistant Business Plan Tip #3

Business Plan Monthly Projections are supposed to be used.  That means, the first week of every month schedule time to update your projections and revise your future projections if it is clear you are not going to hit your number – or if you are going to exceed your numbers.

Virtual Assistant Business Plan Tip #4

In your virtual assistant business plan, have a section that clearly explains your plan if you get too busy.  Are you just going to stop taking clients, are you going to hire someone or are you going to outsource some of the work?

Virtual Assistant Business Plan Tip #5

Don’t get lost in the research.  Business plans are a generic document that can be used for retail, consulting and any other type of business.  While it is great to go see what your successful competition is doing, you are really not competing directly with them so much as you are trying to carve out your own special niche and differentiate yourself.

The virtual assistant business plan tip that is the most important is that your business is all about making money and making you happy.  That means you need to focus on ways to create income, and the income must be substantial enough to cover your expenses and make you feel good about the work you are doing.  This is a huge deal.  I spent years in business losing money the first time.  You keep telling yourself the story that you are growing a business and it is necessary to lose money at first.  That is only the case if you believe the story.

Write a business plan that is realistic and makes you happy.  That may mean that you are only working with three clients at a time, but you make a good income and they value your work.  That is a far better business plan vs one that projects selling your services to half of China.

For a thirty day guide to everything you need for your virtual assistant business planning and launch, download the free eBook – Start a Virtual Assistant Business.

The problem with a trend becoming popular is that everyone starts doing it.

For example, I liked Shakira before she ever did an English song.  Years before.  With Hips Don’t Lie how can anyone not like her?  I am just a part of the masses now.

Virtual Assistants have been around for a long time.  However, with the The 4-Hour Workweek, hiring virtual assistants became in vogue.  The company specifically mentioned in that best selling book became so busy that they could not handle the rush to hire their services and lost a lot of opportunities.

Now I see a trend for Virtual Assistants, and if you are one of the pre-4 hours work week virtual assistants, you should be mad as hell.  (Although maybe not, since you cannot do anything about it.)

Everyone is a virtual assistant.

Here are just a few of the careers of people that I know that are calling themselves virtual assistants but still doing the other work as well.

• Business Consultants
• Life Coaches
• Business Coaches
• Freelance Writers
• Internet Marketers
• Graphic Designers
• Web Designers
• Accountants/Book keepers

I am sure the list is much bigger, but you get the idea.  If you are a Virtual Assistant and that is all you do, you are now competing with everyone.  You might ask yourself WHY?

The answer is simple.  Virtual Assistants are people that work remotely and help businesses or people achieve particular goals by completing specific tasks.  Many activities can be done virtually, including most of the jobs I mentioned above.

The reason that people are calling themselves virtual assistants is because it is a gateway into a client.  In Internet marketing, we know that a client that is willing to pay $10 today has a good chance of paying $100 tomorrow.  So a business consultant or coach may begin by assisting a client with a few tasks, all the while offering valuable advice.  Later, that client may chose to upgrade and become a coaching client.

For this same reason, general Virtual Assistants should specialize and up-sell their specialized skills.  For example, a virtual assistant might do general tasks at $25 an hour, but charge $50 an hour for copyrighting or website design.

Oddly enough, a VA that has specialized skills will find it easier to sell their services as well.  Sure, not everyone will need the specialized skill, but when someone does, it is much easier to get that work.  Think about it from the client perspective.

Client: Do you do Internet Marketing?

VA: Sure, we do everything.

- Yeah, I am going to hire this VA.  NOT!

Client: Do you do Internet Marketing?

VA: Absolutely.  That is my specialty.  I help people with adword management and conversion analysis.  I am also quit good at SEO (Search engine optimization).  I do not design HTML, but I have a partner that does that.

- Wow, that VA has got her act together.  And yes, I will pay her much more per hour than the generalist.

So let me propose something.  The term Virtual Assistant is dead.  It is as general as saying you are a Worker.  Imagine someone asking what you do and you replying, “I am a worker.  I work.  I do whatever I am told.”

The good news is you just have to become good at something by focusing on it for a while.  Here we do Internet Marketing and call the virtual assistants Virtual Buzz Assistants.  You could also do accounting, technology, design, sales support – there are a ton of things.  But don’t try to do them all.

The Virtual Buzz Assistant blog has been included in the Alltop Listing Under Virtual Assistant.

Alltop looks for the leading blogs in a particular category or industry and then they aggregate the feeds into one page so that you can see all the most important article titles in just a few seconds.

If you are a virtual assistant or a freelance marketing assistant you really need to visit the alltop virtual assistant page daily and keep an eye out for useful information.

For me it is very gratifying because this blog is fairly new and you would think that the topic would be saturated because there are so many virtual assistants out there that are doing things on the web, helping their clients blog, etc.  Yet we have been able to quickly become a leader in this area.

The number one reason, I believe, is that this blog has two audiences.  We write some articles for virtual assistants that want to provide Internet marketing services.  We also write some article for people that want to hire virtual assistants to achieve particular marketing results.

While it may seem bad initially to have this split focus on one blog, both parties end up benefiting from understanding both sides of the equation.  A business that understands the issues surrounding someone being a virtual assistant will be able to work with the virtual assistant better.  And if you are trying to sell your virtual assistant services but do not understand your clients needs, fears and doubts, you are not going to be very successful.

Thanks Alltop for the recognition.  I hope this blog serves your audience well.

This builds on the Virtual Assistant Jobs article.

How do you improve your chance of getting a virtual assistant job that you see on a virtual assistant job posting?  These tips for getting the job are valid for the virtual buzz assistant network job postings as well as virtual assistant job postings at places like odesk.com, guru.com and elance.com.

Tips for Rocking Virtual Assistant Job Postings

1. Watch for opportunities every day and contact people right away.
2. If you have a phone number, call them and discuss what their needs are.
3. Focus on the client’s need and how you will meet them in the call and email.
4. Find virtual assistant job opportunities that are great fits for your specialization.
5. Follow up quickly.  If you send a proposal, make sure you follow up to see if they got it and if they have questions.
6. Use testimonials from past clients.
7. Have professional contracts prepared.
8. Have a system for managing projects and let them know how the system works before you ever close the deal.  This builds confidence in your professionalism.
9. Have a blog to demonstrate your skills in writing and other tasks.
10. When talking about a past project, word it in such a way that you say, “When I was helping xyz grow his business, we …”
11. Talk 20% – 30% of the time.
12. Ask good questions.
13. Know how to look for someone that has unrealistic expectations and decline to work with them.
14. Have a system that you follow daily for checking for new Virtual Assistant Job Opportunities among the places that post virtual assistant job postings.
    Example: a) Log into Virtual Buzz Assistant Network and Check Job/Project Postings.  b) Search oDesk.com and bid on at least one project daily.  c)  If you are technical, look for opportunities as a more technical virtual assistant on guru.com each day.
15. Have professional profiles online like LinkedIn.
16. Have a clean and professional website.  Do not make things blink, multi-colors, etc.
17. Write and communicate with the intention to get the client and make money.  This is not a personal call/email.
18. Follow up when you do not get a project and offer to help if the person selected does not work out.  Keep in touch if you have built a relationship with the person and look for future opportunities with them.
19. Do not respond to virtual assistant job postings that are asking for people to do unethical things, like fake reviews or spam message boards.
20. Be confident about your offer, your pricing and your results.
21. Do not put the burden on the client to take the next step.  After a conversation, say…”I will send you the contract with this outlined.  All you need to do is review it, sign it and send the charge card information and we will get it scheduled….”  Or something like that.  Clients hire a virtual assistant so that they have less work, not more.
22. Send support materials.  If you are waiting on a project to close, go find some articles of other companies in the potential client’s industry that are doing similar things and send them the link along with a note saying, “Thought this might interest you….”
23. Stay engaged until you get a yes or a no.
24. Put a reasonable deadline/expiration date in your proposal.

To get better results when responding to a virtual assistant job posting, you must understand that the job posting is not for a virtual assistant to fill a vacant virtual seat that the client has.  It is because they need help executing their plan and building their business.  If you approach the client as if you are interested in helping them solve problems and execute thier plan, then you are going to get a lot more clients from the virtual assistant job postings and make a lot more money.

Join the Virtual Buzz Assistant Network to access members-only project requests

I’d love to say that most of the time Virtual Assistants are a great buy.  The fact is, it is a lot like hiring a normal employee.  You get better at it over time.  You learn what to look for and what to ask.  And you eventually realize that you have to manage them, not just tell them what to do and hope it turns out OK.

Here are the 10 top reasons a project with a virtual assistant will fail:

1. Poor definition of tasks the Virtual Assistant must do.
2. Hiring the VA for a big project without first doing a small project to test the Virtual Assistant.
3. Not setting clear outcomes that you expect from a group of tasks.
4. Hiring the cheapest Virtual Assistant.
5. Not monitoring progress and setting milestones.
6. Having unrealistic expectations of the outcome (especially with internet marketing)
7. Hiring a virtual assistant that tries to do too many different things – they will not be very proficient at any.
8. Failure to cut project quickly.  If things are not going well and you are spending more time with the virtual assistant than it would take to just do it yourself, cancel the project and move on.
9. Assumptions – Failure to carefully explain each thing will doom your project.  Assume nothing and document everything.
10. Forgetting about the VA over time and not giving them encouragement.  It is easy to forget they are out there doing tasks for you and they may not stay enthusiastic if you do not connect with them occasionally.

Really all of these items can be summed up into this.  You need to carefully hire, train and manage a virtual assistant if you expect them to preform well for you.  And if you do not succeed with the first one you try, don’t give up.  Assess what went wrong and hire a virtual assistant that is better the next time.

Virtual Assistant Opportunities are everywhere.  The key is not to think of yourself as a virtual assistant, and instead think of yourself as a business assistant that opperates virtually.

For example, I had a virtual book keeper.  Had she said she was a virtual assistant, I would not have hired her.  Instead, I hired a virtual business manager and was happy for it.

I have hired writers that work virtually.

I have hired programmers that have worked virtually.

I have hired PR professionals that have worked virtually.

If you join the virtual buzz assistant network, you will hear me say it again and again.  Do not be a general virtual assistant.  Be a specialist that is in demand – in our case a virtual internet marketing professional, and look for those specific kinds of virtual assistant opportunities.

Opportunities for people that want to work for themselves and be virtual are all over.  The reason is that it really is cheaper and safer for many businesses to try you out as a virtual specialist and then hire you for a bigger project if things go well.

Look for virtual assistant opportunities that match your skill set and focus on closing the deal on a few of them, instead of chasing every opportunity that jumps up, and you will have more virtual assistant opportunities than you need.