How is your marketing working for you?
If you’re like most VAs, you have ideas of what you want to do in your business.
Getting more clients almost always tops the list.
And your marketing is the vehicle to help you get that done.
But if you don’t have a plan, are you giving your marketing efforts a fighting chance?
Making the decision to get your message out there is great.
Deciding how to do that is a step that often gets left out – either due to lack of knowledge on how to do it, or perhaps a lack of strategic planning ability, or event just sheer desperation (sorry if this is you!).
Getting clients is a stressful thing. But it doesn’t have to be.
If you set a proper strategy in place to find potential clients, you will naturally focus your efforts and those efforts will be rewarded.
If you point a firehose and spray your message out there to anyone who can see it, you risk diluting what you are saying to people who just won’t hear you.
Here are a few tips to help you give your marketing efforts a fighting chance:
1. Set a target audience to market to. Being able to speak directly to lawyers, for instance, clarifies the information and messaging you can use in your marketing.
2. Decide the services you will be marketing to that audience. Knowing who you can support makes this part easy. If you know HOW you can help them, that’s what you will be talking about in networking situations and in your marketing content.
3. Choose two specific places to connect with those potential clients. Only two at a time – it’s a manageable number and you won’t be trying to keep up with an unrealistic goal or be in ten places at once.
4. Set a tangible goal of how many people you will connect with on a daily basis (1-3 is plenty!). Don’t set a goal of connecting with 20 people at a time. It’s not logical, and it will overwhelm your follow up efforts.
5. Engage people with conversation and questions about their business. Conversation is the key to getting really great clients. Ask questions about their business and you will get all the information you need to talk to them about how, specifically, you can support them.
6. Follow up with those that engage you back. It is statistically proven that clients do not buy after just one interaction. Keep the conversations going and follow up with people offline as the relationship builds. Ask them for a sales conversation when the time is right.
7. Publish content that supports the message you are putting out there. Whatever you are talking about in networking situations, be sure that’s what people will find when they go to your website or social media platforms (because they will!). It showcases your expertise.
8. Track your results. You need to check in daily/weekly what is happening with what you are doing. Are you doing what you said you would do? How is it working for you? Tracking your actions and their results is the key to your success.
9. Change course if necessary. If something is not working the way you thought it would be, identify why it is not working, and how you can fix it. If something is not working, consider changing it. If something is working, do more of it.
10. Repeat steps 1-9 for another target group or a new set of two places to market.
We spend so much time marketing our business. You want to make sure that you are not wasting your time, not getting any results.
That happens a lot with VAs because we are unsure of what we are doing, and we often second guess our decisions (it’s a thing, trust me!).
Use the list above to plan your next marketing strategy. It works!
If you want help setting goals and setting up manageable action steps that will help you get clients, have a look at my Inspired Action Mastermind group for VAs. It’s a low-cost, high-value coaching option that will help you set goals, get accountability and achieve success. (and it will help you do what you say you want to do!)
Learn more about it here: www.yourvamentor.com/
You work so hard to market your business. Why not learn how to do it properly, and save your own time (and sanity)?
I hope you’ll join us!