Email marketing

It all starts with incorporating an irresistible free offer on your website that invites your site visitors to give their name and email address in exchange for it. Their details are then added to your subscriber list and allow you to stay in touch with those subscribers via email on a regular basis.

Here are 4 simple steps to get started:

Step 1: Getting Email Marketing Software

The first thing you need is email marketing software. This software allows you to put a form on your website to collect email addresses and other details from visitors on your site in exchange for something you offer for free. It is similar to the one opt-in form on my website where people can sign up for free training. I use a company called Aweber, but if you search around there are many other options available and you can choose one to fit your budget.

The email marketing software enables you to set-up and schedule a series of automated emails called auto-responders and/or once-off emails, typically for sending a regular newsletter or e-zine to all your subscribers. Furthermore the software provides basic to detailed statistics to keep you updated with how many people open and read your emails.

Step 2: Develop an Irresistible Free Offer

Your irresistible free offer is all about giving your website visitors a ‘taste’ of something they could not go without.  It’s giving them something irresistible that THEY want in exchange for something YOU want ….their contact details.

The free offer can be anything from a PDF report, a small e-book, audio CD, workbook, e-course, checklist, video, consultation etc. Its purpose is to get your visitors to take notice and sign-up.

The moment your web visitors sign up to receive this free offer, they enter your client pipeline. People understand that by signing up, they are giving you permission to send them e-mails and to stay in contact with them. This is when the process for email marketing kicks into action and where you can (on a regular basis) provide your subscribers with valuable information, special offers and promotions via email to help build trust and credibility.

Tip: When you develop your free offer, put yourself in your ideal client’s shoes. Ask yourself what type of information would attract their attention and get them to sign up.

Step 3: Develop a Series of Auto-responders

An auto-responder is an email that is send instantly/automatically to a subscriber who signs up to receive your free offer.  It can be only one email or a series of emails that are delivered over a period of time.

Your first auto-responder will typically introduce you and your business, letting your audience know the type of information they’ll be receiving and how frequently you will be sending e-mails. It will also contain a link to your free offer or explain how the subscriber could access the offer.

A second, third and fourth auto-responder email can be sent 2 or 3 days after the previous one, containing something really useful to your audience. It could be a tip that will help them solve a problem or a tool that is available online and that they will find useful.

Tip: Auto-responders are excellent time savers. You set it up once and then basically forget about it. The first 3 to 4 emails are really important since they build the initial trust with your audience. So they should contain high value content your ideal clients can use.

Step 4: Create an On-going Email Marketing Plan

The value of an email marketing plan is to build a great relationship with your list. This can be done by sending top quality content on a regular basis via your newsletter or e-zine.

The purpose is to stay in-front of your potential clients on a frequent basis. As much as we would like to think that our subscribers are always thinking of us (wouldn’t THAT be nice?), it’s unfortunately not the case. So, repetition is necessary to remind them of you, your offerings and your expertise.

Tip: Establish objectives and build a plan for the year.  Start by mapping out what type of content to send on a regular basis. What type of information or topics you want your subscribers to receive? What promotions or campaigns you want to do and when you want to do it? This plan will help you reach out to your customers at the right time with the right information.

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The truth is: You never know how long it will take somebody to decide to work with you. When you do not make use of an opt-in process on your website and email marketing, you lose the chance to:

• Capture contact details and build a database of people who are interested in your services;
• Regularly connect and provide additional value and information to people who want to know more;
• Create an ongoing relationship with potential clients;
• Increase your credibility, build the know, like and trust factor and eventually convert prospects into paying clients.

The truth is: knowing your clients really well, is the beginning of an upward spiral: the better you know them, the better you can tailor your marketing message, the better clients will relate to it, making it easier for you to attract them and convert them into paying clients.

To help you create this positive upward spiral in your business, here are a couple of things to know about your clients:

1)    Who are they? Everyone talks about the importance of defining a target audience…your ideal client…yet very few businesses actually do it. However, the clearer you are about who you work with, the easier it will be to identify places to find them.

2)     Where do they spend their time? Knowing where they spend their time, helps you to also be present – either in person or via your marketing materials.

3)     What do they struggle with? Every business has a number of frustrations and struggles that they want to get rid of. What are those struggles for your clients as it pertains to what you do? Knowing what they struggle with can help you position your business to become their problem solver.

4)     Why are they struggling with it? There is always a reason why people struggle with something. E.g. do they have these struggles due to time constraints or lack of specific knowledge and skills or lack of technology and equipment? Finding the reasons can help you tailor your marketing message.

5)    Why would they work with you? Do you stand out from your competitors? What will be the deciding factor to help your clients decide that you are the one to work with?

6) When do they need your services? Understanding when a client needs your services means that you can approach him at the right moment to maximize the chance of a sale, e.g. if you provide financial services you can start advertising your tax related expertise during the start of tax season increasing the likelihood of attracting clients searching for tax help and advice.

7)     What do they expect when working with you? Understanding client expectations means you can encourage a positive customer experience from the start and maximize the chance of repeat business.  E.g. when you know they expect to be kept in the loop about the project, you can bring that into your very first client conversation to put them at ease about working with you. Then ensure you do that to retain their business.

8)     What are their top 3-5 priorities? The more information you have on what your clients’ top priorities are, the better you will know how to speak to them and understand how you can help them.

Knowing your clients is a powerful way to propel your business forward. It allows you to make positive changes in your own business to accommodate their unique and varied needs. This helps you stand out and makes you much more client attractive.

Here are 6 ways Facebook can benefit your Virtual Assistant business:

1. Increase Visibility – Facebook can be a great resource for generating visibility. If people don’t know about you, how will they work with you?  But as you expand your network on Facebook and more people become connected with you, you become more visible and increase the chances to attract new clients.

2. Increase Know, Like and Trust Factor –  When a potential clients Like your Facebook page and receives constant valuable updates from you on their profiles, the more familiar they become with you and your business. This builds the know, like and trust factor and can encourage people to share information about you with their friends and/or start working with you.

3. Increase marketing reach – The simplicity of sharing information with friends and family via Facebook is a wonderful platform for potentially going viral with your brand and increasing your marketing reach. Facebook empowers your clients and friends to share information they like with their friends. Since the average person on Facebook has around 130 friends, this means that anything the average person comments on or likes on your page is automatically shared with their 130 friends. This can increase your marketing reach significantly.

4. Increase Client Engagement – Facebook is a great medium for reaching out to your clients and potential clients in a personal way which encourages interaction, feedback, sharing of information, communicating promotions, contest and events. It encourages clients and potential clients to get engaged and create a positive affiliation with you and your business.

5. Track Client Behaviour – Facebook helps you to understand how people interact with your page, what they find useful, what they like and what comments they share. This gives you insight into how to increase your visibility, marketing reach and client engagement – thus improving the know, like and trust factor.

5. Drive Web Traffic – By sharing content from your blog, special promotions and events on Facebook, it acts as a portal point for driving traffic back to your website and potentially increase the probability of people entering your clients pipeline.

The bottom line is, using Facebook effectively for your business can enhance your marketing efforts and help you get more clients.

What possibly can be the difference? Especially if two people use the same marketing techniques?

Well, to answers this, let’s first evaluate which of these two statement sums up how you think about your clients?

1. I have a very specific client in mind. I only want to work with these specific clients; I’m not interested in attracting and working with anyone else.

OR

2. I work with anybody interested in what I do. If they have a pulse, they’re a potential customer.

Can you see the difference?

These two statements form the underlying reason why some VAs struggle to get clients and why others don’t (and in case you were wondering, statement 1 is good and statement 2 isn’t).

It is sad to see that a lot of virtual assistants avoid defining a target audience (statement 1). They often worry that if they narrow their audience, they will reduce the amount of money they make. But this is absolutely not true. In fact, the opposite is actually what works.

When you have a specific target audience, versus working with everyone, it’s so much easier to get new clients and increase your income and here is why…

• Having a specific target audience helps you to focus your marketing efforts.
• You can get to know your audience; what they like and dislike; what they need and don’t need; what they struggle and need help with.
• You can tailor your marketing message to be highly relevant to their needs and speaks in a way that they can relate to.
• This helps them to self-select, in other words, when they see your marketing, they immediately relate to it and they understand how they can benefit from it.
• Specific marketing pulls clients closer. They choose to find out more, to contact you or even work with you.
• This makes converting prospects into clients much easier.
• You appear as being a specialist and you can increasingly build up a reputation as being just that.
• You stand out from your competitors. By differentiating yourself from your competitors, prospective clients are less likely to focus on price as the key issue.
• You can raise your rates, thus increasing your income and profit margins

The key to targeting an audience is to be very specific:  To identify a market that you’ll enjoy working with and who’ll receive massive benefits from working with you.

Your ability to target and then connect with this specific audience can mean the difference between struggling and thriving as a business owner.

One day a man was riding his bike to work and was about 10km into it when he stopped in a usual rest spot under a tree. There on the ground was a folded 50 Euro note. He picked it up in a millisecond and put it in his pocket.

When he got home he told his wife about his good fortune and got out the folded ‘fifty’.

When he unfolds it, he saw a total new picture.

The ‘Fifty Euros’ was in fact, as you can see from above, an ingenious and effective way of “God- marketing”.

In a country where openly spreading the gospel was prohibited, the underground church had to come up with a way to effectively reach more people. With the knowledge that people will always pick up money, they printed this flyer (simulating a 50Euro note) and ‘left’ thousands of these “notes” lying around across the country – effectively spreading the message of Jesus.

This is an ingenious example of knowing your target market and then directing your marketing efforts towards them.

That is when alternative off-line marketing techniques can open up a potentially enormous segment of your target audience.

So, assess your current situation, take stock of your marketing efforts and consider some ways where offline marketing strategies can help your business. The ultimate goal is to have all your marketing efforts (both online and offline) support each other, so you have a wide and varied outreach for promoting your business. By getting started today, you can achieve faster results and gain an edge over your competition.

Is marketing one of those things that you know you should do, but you just never get to do it properly because there are so many other things taking up your time?

As a self-employed person, you have to wear a number of different hats. You’re the one doing all the client work and managing your clients. You’re the one doing your own admin and keeping your back-office in order. You’re the one managing your finances and trying to build your business. Because of all these different roles, marketing and getting clients can often be put on the back burner.

The problem is, when you put marketing on the back burner and you only focus on it once in a while (when all the other fires are put out), you never really get to do it properly.

People often don’t realize that if you don’t market your business consistently you won’t have clients consistently.  Thus, marketing should be a priority in your business because attracting prospects and converting them into paying clients is the lifeblood keeping you in business.

Make marketing a priority in your business this year by using the following 5 tips….

1. Plan your marketing activities. A marketing plan, like any other plan, is a roadmap, enabling your business to define its current situation (where you are), its goals (where you want to go) and the path to get there (the action steps you need to take). The thing is: even a rough plan is better than no plan.

2. Pick marketing strategies that fit the goals of your business. Don’t do marketing just for the sake of marketing. To make your efforts hit the mark, pick marketing strategies that will reach your ideal clients effectively. In other words:  go where your clients are! If you for example know your ideal clients are international speakers, it won’t help much putting an advertisement of your services in your local newspaper.

3. Create a frequent and regular communications campaign. A simple rule of marketing success is that it’s necessary to stay in touch with clients and prospects on a regular basis or else they’re going to forget who you are and what makes your services so wonderful. So stay in touch with regular communications: create an email newsletter filled with helpful info and send it out regularly; send unexpected greeting cards for birthdays, valentine’s day, Easter or Christmas; send a gift;  pick up the phone and call clients to ask how they’re doing. Staying in touch does not need to be expensive. A little bit of effort and creativity, can take you a long way.

4. Make time for marketing daily. Block out chunks of time in your calendar daily where you do nothing else but marketing.  It will take a bit of self-discipline to stick to these time-slots in the beginning, but in the end it will bear fruit. Here are some things you can do every day, to market and grow your business: Follow up with a potential client who showed interest in working with you; send an introduction email to potential clients; attend a networking event (online or offline); create a blog and write a new blog post; post a comment on Facebook; call a past client and ask for a referral. Marketing doesn’t have to be complicated. Just make a commitment and do it.

5. Persevere and be consistent in your marketing efforts. It never help much to crank out a few marketing activities only when the appointment book looks a bit empty. Marketing is a process – it rarely creates instant results. The marketing activities you do today will only bring in clients in a few months’ time. So start today. Persevere and consistently market your services to ensure you can fill your business with clients in future.

Remember, your clients need your help. They’re stuck and are searching for someone to help them solve their administrative problems and frustrations. That someone is you!

It is your duty to help them take the first step to get unstuck.  That’s what your marketing is all about.

So, make marketing a priority in your business this year….

1. Clients first knowing about you
2. Then liking you enough to work with you and also
3. Trusting that you will be able to do the work.

This is what I call the “know, like and trust” factor.

Building a Virtual Assistant business and getting clients to fill your business has a lot to do with building solid business relationships. When you “sell” a service it usually brings a more personal dimension into your business (since you work more closely with a client) than when you purely sell a product. Thus relationships with people become a key aspect of your success.

Building a business relationships based on the “know, like and trust” factor follows a similar path than building a social relationship – e.g. you meet new people and as the relationship progress, you get to know them better, like them more and eventually trust them with your friendship or your business.

It works the same for your clients as well. They first want to get to know you and the more they know you, they will start to like you and eventually trust you enough to send you their business.

Therefore building relationships with potential clients should form an important part of your total marketing strategy.

Unfortunately, when many VAs want more clients, they do marketing only on the surface.  They set-up a website,  hand out lots of business cards, send out flyers or pin advertisements on a bulletin board and then hope somebody will react. In the process they unfortunately miss some of these key elements.

Apart from getting the word out there through all their marketing efforts and letting people know who you are and what you do (the “know” factor), it is also important to work on the “like and trust factors” and deepen the business relationship with potential clients.

The thing is: it is unlikely that people will start working with you on the first occasion they hear about you or see an advertisement in a newspaper. It is just human and it is not your fault. Most people need to be re-assured on more than one occasion that you are indeed the person they want to work with.

Be in front of potential clients all the time in order for them to get to know you. When they know you, they will seek to learn more about your services.

This is where the “like factor” starts to kick in. When you keep in contact with potential clients on a regular basis, share information with them that they would find helpful, touch base, check in, and refer them, the relationship will grow, the like factor will grow and people will start to trust that you might be the solution to their problems.

Once a client trusts you – i.e. trust that you can indeed solve their problems, they will be more willing to work with you and become a long-term paying client.

So don’t focus all you marketing efforts solely on the “know” factor, but also incorporate and develop some “stay-in-touch” marketing vehicles to strengthen the “like and trust” factors as well.

If you do, it might be that you are running your business “blindly”, because you don’t really know and understand who your ideal clients are and what they really want. As such your marketing doesn’t really “speak” to people and they just don’t understand how you can help them. So, they’re not interested in working with you.

Does this makes sense?

The thing is: To bring in more money into your business, you want to position yourself to become your ideal client’s problem solver so that they jump at the opportunity to work with you. However to do that, you really need to know your clients and should really understand what they struggle with. It will then make it much easier to market your services, because now you can tell them exactly what they want to hear. You can address their problems and also tell them exactly how you can help them.

The moment you start speaking their language and they feel you understand their pains and struggles, they will be much more willing to work with you.

Let’s look at it this way. If you are struggling with back pain and you read the following headline: “Get rid of your back pain FOREVER in just 6 easy steps”, won’t you be curious and want to know more? Of course you would, because this headline is speaking directly to the problem you experience – a problem you want to get rid of.

So, why not find out exactly what your ideal clients are struggling with and what their biggest frustrations are in relation to what you do. Then you are in a much better position to talk directly about how you can solve that problem for them.

Remember, in many cases, people do not have a full understanding of how Virtual Assistants can help them… so by just asking “How Can I Help You?” is a waste of time.  The response you’ll probably receive in many cases is “Let me think about it …. I’ll get back to you.”  However, if you can TELL your potential client how you can help – because you’ve done your research and you KNOW exactly what they need – then you will experience much more success in attracting clients.

One of the biggest mistakes virtual assistants make when they’re starting out is to think anybody can use their services and everybody is in their market.

Are you making this mistake?

Although VA services can be universal and anyone in the world can use it, the question should not be if everybody CAN use your services, but if everybody WANTS to use it? And the obvious answer is no.

Let me explain and let’s take water for example. Water is a universal product. Everybody in the world NEEDS water to live. So you can pretty much argue that when you put water in a bottle and sell it in a supermarket, you will have a pretty big market, won’t you? Everybody drinks water, so anybody can buy it.

Again, the question is not if anybody CAN buy bottled water, but if everybody WANTS to buy bottled water. And again the answer is no. Because lots of people may feel, why should they buy bottled water when it comes out of their tap for free? So even in the case of a product like water, companies have selected target audiences to which they sell their bottled water to.

Thus my point is: nobody has a service where everybody is in their market and it is therefore important to target a smaller group of people who will most likely make use of your services.

Targeting a market simply means to break the world’s population into small segments or groups, e.g. people in similar industries or people with similar characteristics and then focusing your attention on one of these small segments.

Think of your target market as those people who are most likely to work with you. Ask yourself who would want your services the most and do not be too general.  Do not attempt to offer everything to everyone, refine your service so that you attract a particular customer segment – your target market.

The key to targeting an audience is to identifying a market that you’ll enjoy working with, who’ll receive massive benefits from working with you and who also have the potential of being a profitable market – i.e they can pay for your services.

Your ability to target and then connect with this specific audience will ultimately mean the difference between struggling and thriving as a business owner.

Five advantages to knowing your target market are:

1. Targeting a specific group of people provides direction for your service. Once you know your target market you can then direct all your energy and resources to this potential group of people.
2. Your business will gain focus and you don’t waste your time or money on people who have no interest in what you are offering.
3. It helps you decide where to find your clients and how and where to market your business.
4. Potential customers who read your marketing materials will know exactly why they need to work with you.
5. Your marketing strategy will be more effective and produce better results.

The bottom line for your business is: less time wasted on marketing efforts that will not benefit your business, more time dedicated to locating prospects and turning them into customers and earning a higher income.

Remember, there is a target market for everything.

Just think about it: Why would someone buy water in a bottle when they can get it for just about free from a tap?

So, have you identified your target market yet?

PS: What do you think about having a target market? Just put your comments below.

In my years of doing business and working with many VAs in the process, this is one of the most frequently asked questions:

“Where do I find clients?”

…and it is such a valid question, because without clients, you don’t have a business.

The problem is, throughout our careers, we only learn the skills applicable to our job, i.e. performing our services, working with technology, having good interpersonal skills for people to like us, but nowhere in our careers, had people taught us how to get clients!

Off course, you can find multiple suggestions on the internet on how to do marketing via networking, social media, article marketing, business cards, sending out brochures, advertising your services and hundreds of other marketing related materials and methods.

But the thing is: you will never get any good results from these marketing methods if you do not get the basics of marketing right! In fact, only relying on all these different marketing methods to bring you clients, without implementing the basics first, is the same as doing “hope marketing”. In other words you do a whole lot of marketing activities and then hope some of it will hit the target. Unfortunately, ‘hope marketing’ is not the best way to do it.

The best way to make your marketing effective and to get clients is to think through and implement the following basic steps. This is the starting point for any marketing activity or campaign you want to undertake.

First, you need to know who you want to work with and what problems they want you to solve. With this knowledge you will know how to fine-tune your services to give your clients what they want and also be able to develop a marketing message that tells you prospects exactly how you can help them.

One of the common themes I see that stops Virtual Assistants from marketing effectively is the idea of working with everyone. They don’t want to identify a niche because they don’t want to exclude anyone in the fear that they will lose clients and eventually money. But the problem is, if you are not clear who you want to work with, you cannot have a clear message of how you can help your clients and you will only confuse them.  If clients can’t find the “what is in it for me” in your marketing message and if they are confused on how exactly you can help them, they won’t make use of your services.

Second, when you know who you want to work with, you will have a pretty good idea where to find them. And that is the trick. When you can find your ideal clients in places where they are gathered in large numbers, you can also be present. Then you can start using the best possible marketing methods and materials to start building relationships with them so they can take notice of you.

Third, you need to be where your clients are. People often have a great idea of: “I’m going to start my own business”, so they open up business and then…they wait! And they think “Oh, the clients are gonna come to me”

The problem is, people tend to hide behind their computers and after a while they go on a hope and a prayer and then they start wondering why this is not working for them? What eventually happens is their confidence starts to get chipped away and they start having self-doubt and worry that maybe they’re not cut-out to be a virtual assistant. The bottom line is, if you want clients, you need to get out there in a really big way and go where your ideal clients are.

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Do you agree, that getting these basics in place will make your marketing efforts much more focused and effective than just firing away and giving out brochures randomly or sending emails to everyone you know and then waiting at home, hoping that somebody will contact you.

What are your thoughts about this? Tell us in the comment box below.