Online Marketing is growing rapidly and getting your Virtual Assistant business out there is important to enable you to attract visitors to your website, which in turn should ideally lead to new clients and increased revenues.
So here are 5 online marketing tools to help you get more clients.
Website
It goes without saying that any VA business should have a website. Your website is where you send visitors to when they see or read about you elsewhere on the web. Thus your site should ideally be more than just an online brochure as it is important to tell your site visitors what you want then to do. Should they sign up to receive free information from you; should they contact you for a free consultation? As an effective online marketing tool, the purpose of your website is to get (at least) the contact details of your visitors. This will ensure a visitor who might be interested in what you offer, do not leave your site, never to return. When you offer them something of value in return for their contact details, you can stay in touch with them and grow the Know, Like and Trust factor. By keeping in touch you can turn cold leads into warm prospects and eventually into paying clients.
Article marketing
Article marketing is the practice of posting keyword-focused articles on article sites to make a wider audience aware of your existence. Some of these article sites have a significant readership following and a well written article (and bio of you and your business) can result in a traffic boost to your website. The key is to write helpful, informative, easy-to-understand articles that can help readers and make them curious to find out more. When they follow the link to your website (usually in your bio at the bottom of an article), it gives you the opportunity to attract new potential clients into your clients pipeline.
Press releases
Online press releases are similar to article marketing, but instead of writing a piece on just about anything, a press release involves placing a newsworthy story about your company, website and/or your services on the web. A press release is more time sensitive (much the same as news), and is generally used to create short-term buzz for a particular event or to promote a certain aspect of your business for a specific purpose. It has the same purpose to lead readers to your website.
Online Networking
As with “off-line” networking, online networking is used to build contacts for your business. Online networking is primary through joining forums, chat groups and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The purpose is to connect with people in your industry as well as with people in your target market. The golden rule is to do diverse networking. Do not only be part of VA forums and social groups. Also build networks on business forums, marketing forums, women’s forums and social groups that can place you in direct contact with you ideal clients. Participate in the discussions, become visible and start building the know, like and trust factor.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM is when you market online by:
- improving and optimizing on-site and off-site elements of your website to help it rank higher in the search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo (called search engine optimization (SEO)). A better ranking site will increase the number of visitors to your website.
- buying pay-per-click (PPC) ads : These are ads placed with a search engine, such as Google, Yahoo or even Facebook. These ads can appear in search results when people search for specific keywords or they can appear on other peoples’ websites when their site is set-up for displaying ads. PPC ads increase your visibility and reach and although you pay each time someone clicks on your ad, a well written ad can attract targeted visitors to your website.
Online marketing should be part of your overall marketing strategy. The Internet has greatly enabled VA businesses to prosper because of the reasonably low cost to start and maintain a web presence and the ease of spreading the word.
However, before you do any marketing, always keep in mind that knowledge of your targeted clients (who they are, what they need and where you can find them) is critical to give your marketing efforts maximum impact and make it most effective.
