In light of the recent COVID-19 breakout, running a virtual assistant business can be filled with so much uncertainty. With the future unknown, there are so many questions. How can I continue to market my virtual assistant business? How can I continue to make an income? Do I diversify my offerings to capture more clients?
As the owner of Ava And The Bee, a digital marketing company for wedding professionals, I know this is a hard season. My industry, and my clients, are getting hit hard right now with cancellations and postponed weddings. So I have been working to find ways to diversify our offerings, and continue to grow my business!
This is a list of five ways to market your virtual assistant business in any emergency situation. The systems, processes, and changes we make now can be impactful in any season! It’s important to use this time to really look at your business, and what you can do in case of any emergency – even if it’s not a global one.
Keep your leads warm
Don’t let your leads turn cold! If you’ve spent considerable time and money building your social media following and email list, then you won’t want to let your audience go ‘cold’. Ensure that you continue to engage and nurture your leads so that when market conditions improve, you’ll have a ‘warm’ list to market to.
This means to continue your email newsletter and consistent social media postings. And of course, engage! This is a time to really open up to the community, and help others! It will be far easier to generate growth and get your business momentum back if you are still top-of-mind when your prospective clients are ready to buy again.
Of course, it’s important to also be respectful in your messaging. Take time to look at any pre-scheduled posts, both on social media and your email newsletter. You may need to re-word or re-arrange your marketing schedule to accommodate this season. Be open and honest – and be human! Have empathy for this situation. Everyone out there is struggling and is stressed.
Offer new services
Focus on helping industries in need – even if it is outside your current niche. While I talk about niching down a lot in my signature course, The Creative VA Academy Masterclass, I also know how important it is to be open to other industries or services. There are a lot of industries out there that need help! Here are some ways you can offer other services during this season.
Project managers: In this downtime, your clients might have a lot more downtown. This is a huge opportunity for OBM’s and project managers! You can help your clients get ahead of so much work, and collaborate on new systems and processes. What services do you offer that are OBM/workflow/backend management? Promote those services right now!
PR: This is a time for business to continue to market, and even launch a new PR strategy. Work with your clients to come up with new strategies, and ways to grow their PR efforts.
Digital marketing and content creators; Just because your clients might also be in a downtime doesn’t mean you can’t prepare their business for the future! Use their free time available to collaborate with you and get ahead on their work. This can include graphic design work, creating content and marketing strategies, and how to alter their language and copy for the next few months.
Just because you are offering to other niches, or diversifying services, doesn’t mean you have to change your website, or branding. Continue to focus your messaging to your ideal clients.
Grow your education
This is the perfect time to focus on education, and learning new skills. Don’t be afraid to offer and try new things. I am a huge student of Google and YouTube university. What can you be learning right now, that you can offer clients?
One of the biggest things you can start to learn is Pinterest. Pinterest is seeing a huge uptick in users and views, since people are at home right now.
My course, The Pinterest Elective, will teach you everything you need to master your Pinterest, get clients, and become a Pinterest Virtual Assistant – In just 7 days. I highly recommend you look into learning this quickly growing service!
Offer smaller packages, but DO NOT lower your rates
Think of ways to make your packages more accessible. Maybe you offer 4 blogs per month as a minimum – be open to offering 2 per month during this season. Personally, I am opening up hourly services, something I don’t normally offer. However, do not lower your rates, or offer services for free! You are worth every single penny. This isn’t the time to offer free services. Remember. You are not taking their money. You are giving back to them with a service!
Optimize your website
Take this time to really look at your website, and work on the SEO! This can mean blogging more, and ensuring that you have SEO metrics in place (Make sure to have Google Analytics set up!) Be sure to include targeted SEO keywords within your copy and write blog posts that provide the answers to your client’s biggest problems or pain points.
From a technical perspective, you’ll want to ensure your site loads quickly and has no errors that will block the search engines from finding your site. When it comes to site functionality, you’ll want to ensure your site and menus are easy to navigate.
Looking for information on what to include in your virtual assistant website? I have a blog post with everything you need to know, here!
No matter what season your business or the world is in, it is important to know how to continue to get new clients, and grow your virtual assistant business.
