Today’s Quote: If you want to stand out from the crowd, give people a reason not to forget you. – Richard Branson
Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Being ridiculously good at providing VA services means that you become known for being the go-to person for your clients.
In this episode we will talk about some in-demand services that clients are seeking, and how you can stand out in the crowd by providing these exceptionally well for them.
Click the play button above to tune in, or choose your favourite podcast player below:
Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
Ideally we want to have a few great clients to work with, and do what we love, and not really have to be looking for new clients every time we turn around.
At least that’s the way it was for me. I had a great group of clients who all needed specialty services, who were growing their businesses, whose work I was proud to do, who pushed me to learn new things as they learned them, and who referred me to their friends who also needed support.
I did that by deciding what service I wanted to provide for them, charging appropriately for it, and then knocking it out of the park when I produced their work.
There are lots of things that you can do for clients that I would consider in demand. Why in demand? Because it means that the clients NEED you. These aren’t the clients who are learning as they go. These are the clients that have a vision of where they want their business to go, and who are taking steps to get there.
This is the first part of providing an in demand service. That the clients actually want you to do it. So start there.
Here are 5 services that I would consider to be in demand – and each of them in itself is huge, and has lots of different branches that you could decide to provide for your clients, depending on what you love to do.
General Admin
Being a general admin VA gets a bad rap, I think. People think it’s where you start and the grow out of. But think about it. How many business owners are there in the world? Why did they start a business? Because they have some kind of talent or product or service that their clients need (or want). The thing or the service they are selling is the most important part of their business. It’s their ‘thing’.
But to keep their business – in business – they need to do all of the other things that need doing. But these things are not usually within their wheelhouse of talent or ability. So that’s where we come in.
Every single business owner needs general admin support – especially if they aren’t good at it.
So this to me in so in-demand that I always put it first in my list!
If you are providing general admin services, that doesn’t mean that you have to do everything a client needs. You can still suggest they get different people to help with certain things if you don’t like doing them.
Only do what you love – scheduling, email management, CRM, research, bookkeeping, lead management, business documentation.
Trust me, there are other VAs that will love to provide support for the other stuff.
Online or Digital Marketing
If the last 3 years has taught us anything, it’s that online marketing is very important for any business.
That could mean an email list,. affiliate marketing, content marketing, or just social media presence.
There are an awful lot of facets to digital marketing. Figure out what you love to do and then create services around that.
I always used to provide email marketing to my clients because it meant ongoing work for me. When they were doing newsletters and email blasts or broadcasts to their clients, that meant that I was the one to do them. When you are looking to become in demand as a VA, you need to be working with your clients regularly. Not that websites are not a good service to provide, but you are constantly working with new clients. I preferred online marketing initiatives because we could see the results of having me help the client (money, clients, etc).
Launch management is also a really good digital service to provide. Launching a program, a group, a book, a podcast, anything like that takes a lot of work and has a lot of step (balls in the air) that a client most definitely needs help with. Great online service.
Social Media
Social media is digital marketing as well, but of course it’s in a category of its own because it is so vast.
Lots of social media services you can offer, from creating content, to scheduling it, to reporting, community management. And they are all very much in demand. Why? Because they are time consuming, because they take special skills, because they take interpretation. Because it is necessary for many businesses to do well with their social media in order to keep their pipeline of potential clients full, and to communicate with their clients that they are working with or want to work with.
So many people are already on social media, using it all day long, so it’s a great place to be able to find clients.
Community management is probably one of the emerging services in social media.
Paid ads are also a specialty. I remember taking social media right out of my service offerings way back when because it changed to frequently and I didn’t want to specialize in it. So we had other people on the teams to do that part. But I feel that I could now handle a community manager role as part of a customer service role.
Blog and Website Services
These are definitely still very much in demand. It’s a huge time suck for people who think they can learn to do it themselves. VAs try, and it often puts them months and months behind of getting their business started. You have to invest in getting something done properly – and quickly. It’s so worth it. The only thing you really need to be able to do it easily make changes to content once it’s live, so no custom work.
But as a service for VAs it’s a great one – offer levels of service packages so that you have different investments for people. Blogging is a great hand in hand service for website VAs too, mainly because it happens more frequently – like weekly. Once a site is done, it’s done and maintenance packages can be hard to sell. But if you also offer blog publishing along with a maintenance package you can continue working with your clients after their site is done. If you want to ha ha
Funnels and lead magnets can also fall under website development. Setting up people opt ins or registration pages (landing pages) can also be part of tech support which is our final in demand services.
Tech Support
This is the final in demand service I want to talk about in this episode.
Again it takes a certain level of skill or training, but it also has a variety of services that you can offer your clients. What can be part of tech support? Well landing pages, opt ins and registration pages or sales pages can be , as I just mentioned. But tech also includes things like CRMs, events (all the new online meetings but there are still online trainings). Course creation. Membership sites, Ecommerce sites. Podcasts.
All of these things are really in demand, and some clients even use all of them, depending on which industry you have decided to target.
What does providing an in demand service do for you, the VA? You can earn more money, you can work with higher level clients, you can only do what you want, you can invest in training that is useful for your growth, and more.
There are a lot of services that bridge more than one of these categories, but I hope I’ve given you some tips on what you can focus on – or change in your business – to start bumping up your rates and finding even better clients.
Clients who will appreciate you, value you, rave about you to their colleagues – who will also want to work with you (that’s what happened for me!). Be in demand, with in demand service offerings!
What You Need to Do Next:
If I can help you learn how to figure out which are your best service offerings (or change yours to something new), reach out to me at tracey@yourvamentor.com. I’ve helped hundreds of VAs through their challenges and got them on their way to the next thing. I’d love to do the same for you. I do private coaching, and registration for my new mastermind group The Virtual Circle is open now. Maybe one of those is right for you!
That’s all I’ve got for you this week, thanks for tuning in to learn to become a ridiculously good Virtual Assistant.