Answer:
It’s got to be tough working full-time while trying to start a business. On the other hand, that gives you an income you can count on while you work on building your business.

Since you have such a busy schedule, it’s important to make an appointment with yourself to make time to work on your business, write blog posts and market. Then keep your appointment as though you were meeting with a new client!

Here are some suggestions from the Action Guide, Building Blocks: Succeed as a Chief Virtual Officer:

• Write a “how-to” article or a “ten tips” article
• Answer questions you get from prospects and clients as a blog post (much like this one)
• Invite prospects to write guest blog posts.
• Write about a client’s success
• Post a list of relevant links with a short comment on why you found each valuable
• Share a recent experience you had

It’s very helpful as part of your marketing strategy to also visit other blogs and post comments there that will link back to your own blog.

More tips on blogging and marketing can be found in the Action Guide, Building Blocks: Succeed as a Chief Virtual Officer.

What topics do you write about on your blog?

Question:
I ran a VA business from 2007-2009. As much as I loved it, I found that I was having to spend a large percentage of my time marketing my business. I would like to start up again, but what alternatives should I consider besides doing my own marketing?

Answer:
To give the best answer, I first asked some additional questions.

• What percentage of time did you use to market your business?
• What marketing strategies did you use?
• Would you be open to having someone else do your marketing and if so, how would you envision that?

The virtual assistant stated she spent at least 50% of her time marketing her business. Now that may seem like a lot. However, I did a bit of research and found several entrepreneurs who encourage spending at least 60% of your time marketing. I do know that if I’m working 20 hours a week for clients, I’m spending an additional 10 hours or so marketing my business. So the amount of time seems right.

What we sometimes forget is that we are entrepreneurs and business owners. That means usually we are the one person doing it all: sales, marketing, client work, administrative work. And that takes time. If we don’t want to spend the time doing the marketing, we have two choices:

1. Hire someone as our marketing person
2. Find a J.O.B. – because a business owner must market their services and products in order to succeed

Some marketing strategies that are very effective are in-person events such as SBA events, BNI meetings, professional associations. Then there’s online marketing: a blog, social networking sites, ezines, press releases. Yes, these all take time. That’s why it’s important to put together a simple marketing plan and calendar and schedule these events and actions. Our Action Guide has a sample marketing plan and calendar with details on how to put them into action.  Having a plan helps you make sure you’re using strategies that are most effective and less-time consuming than just haphazardly posting something on a social network every day.

Joining local small business groups and attending monthly mixers are effective marketing strategies. Get to know the people, what their needs are, how you can refer them to others. It’s important to build relationships with these people before you ever try to “sell” them your services. There’s a whole section in our book, The Commonsense Virtual Assistant – Becoming an Entrepreneur, Not an Employee, that has lots of great information on marketing. You can purchase a copy on the website.

The Commonsense Virtual Assistant

I believe doing your own marketing is most effective. However, hiring someone to market your services for you is also a viable option. After all, isn’t that what many of our clients hire us to do for them? You can hire someone to help promote your services – online, via mailings, follow-up phone calls, and even by attending in-person events.

Another great marketing strategy is article writing. It establishes you as an expert and always links back to your website. Check out my articles at Ezine Articles.

You can read more about proactive marketing at another blog post of mine.

I’d love to hear your comments!

• Provide clients with information about the industry
• Promote your products and services
• Invite people to an event
• Send out a monthly newsletter

When planning your email marketing strategies, you need to answer these basic questions:

• What is the purpose of your communication and who do you send it to?
• How often should I send out a communication?

The purpose of you communication could include:

• Driving traffic to your website
• Get clients to purchase a product
• Get new “likes” for your Facebook fan page

Once you’ve defined your goal, you’ll know who you want to send your communication to.

The most challenging part of creating a newsletter is creating valuable content. You want your message to be education-focused. This will help build trust, loyalty and retention. Don’t just sell – provide value. The content should be interesting and relevant to your readers. Ask yourself, “How will this information benefit my readers?” 

Communicating more often is not necessarily better. It is more beneficial to send quality content in a quarterly newsletter than a monthly newsletter with so-so content.

If you’d really like to know what you readers want from you and how often they’d like to hear from you, ask them. Ask, “What topics would you like to see addressed in the newsletter? How often would you like to receive it? Weekly, monthly, quarterly?”

Take time to plan your email marketing so it’s most effective. Remember – it’s not how many people you send it to that measures your success. It’s how many people who actually read it and take an action such as:

• Click through to your website
• Call you for an appointment
• Buy a product or service
• Share your content via social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Please share your most successful email planning tips. And get more great tips in our book and Action Guide.

So, they’re as good as the next guy.

Is that any way to advertise yourself? Is anyone going to switch battery brands (or, more importantly, start working with a “virtual” partner on mission-critical tasks) because they’re “as good as the next guy” ?

Marketers talk about your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for a good reason. If you can’t show a prospect why you are the only possible choice, why you are the perfect match for them, ask yourself: why should they choose you?

If you’re only as good as the next guy, what happens when the next guy gets just a little bit cheaper, or a little better, or both?

(By the way, even if you’re far better than the next guy, if you can’t show a prospect why you’re a perfect match, consider the possibility that they aren’t a perfect match for you.)

Who are the people on your list that receive your newsletter or blog? Do you have hundreds on your list? If so, do you know where they all came from? If you had to write each one of them an individual message, could you include something specific that you know they would want to hear?

We have an extensive network of people around the world that we stay in touch with via blogs, emails, newsletters, forums, etc. Some have opted-in to a newsletter or blog that we don’t personally know. Otherwise, I can tell you something about just about everyone we to whom we send out a  mailing.

Joel and I were recently getting ready to send out a mailing about our web design company, Spinhead Web Design. We wanted to announce our new service, Kindle Formatting. It had been a while since we’d sent anything out so we decided to review the list first to make sure that only people who would really be interested received our email.

We started out with over 300 on the list and pruned it to about 120. But I could tell you where every one of those 120 contacts came from – how we met, whether in person or online. We knew these were people that had either done business with us or were fans of ours. These all are people who are our fans. If they don’t need our service, we know they’ll refer someone else who does.

It’s not effective to send eblasts out to those who are either going to ignore you or feel annoyed. But targeting our fans – that’s effective!

Thank you to all our fans!

You just know those words are going to be followed by a pitch, don’t you?

First, I’ll get the rant off my chest: telling me that you have $10,000 worth of ‘products’ for only $297 is selling, period. It’s not special, it’s not a gift. In fact, if these are electronic products with zero cost to reproduce, there’s no such thing as a ‘special’ price because even if I only give you a nickel, your profit margin on that sale was 100%.

Folks looking for yet another tricky advertising gimmick (you can tell them a mile off because all their prices end in ’7′) are delighted to imply that they’re giving you a gift, some amazing mega deluxe special extra deal, in order to make a sale.

Let’s stop corrupting what the words ‘gift’ and ‘special’ mean. Don’t you dare imply you’re doing someone a favor, and then ask them for money. Making a smaller profit isn’t a favor, it’s business.

Remember when you used to be able to ask someone out for coffee in order to get to know their business better? Smart folks realised that by unselfishly learning about others in order to send them qualified prospects, our networks grew and in the long run, it came back around to us.

Selfish folks figured this out, and started asking networking victims out to coffee to ‘learn about your business.’ And then, as soon as they’d trudged through the formalities, the hard sell started. Pitch pitch pitch.

Try asking someone out for coffee so you can learn about their business. Watch the panic in their eyes, the scramble for an excuse. Selfish sellers have done their best to suck the juice out of an unselfish but brilliant method of organically, humanly, growing your business.

Promise me that you, yes you, reading right there, will never resort to deception, no matter how subtle, in your marketing or your business. Promise me that if you offer a gift, it is truly a gift, with no thought of return. Promise me that your ‘special’ price is actually less than what you’ve actually sold for in the past, and explain why you’re reducing the price (otherwise, it just looks like you couldn’t sell it for a hundred so you’ll try fifty.) Promise me that you’ll stop ending prices in the number 7 because even if it works, it’s psychological trickery and it’s unethical and immoral.

Find someone who’s corrupting the gift culture which has been fundamental to civilization for thousands of years, and send them a link to this post. Let’s make sure everyone everywhere knows that we’re not gonna take it anymore. At the very least, the lazy clowns will have to find something else to corrupt.

Rise above the garbage and noise. You’re better than that. You know that, of course, but you’re afraid. I get it.

Sometimes being a hero is hard.

During his one (and only) art class, Dr. Seuss turned his drawing paper around and was sketching sideways. The teacher scolded him, and said, “You can’t draw that way! If you do, you’ll never succeed.”

What Dr. Seuss knew, and the teacher didn’t, was that in order to succeed you can’t do what everybody else is doing. Nor can you try to appeal to everybody. You’ve got to separate yourself from your competition in some way. Many people can draw and write books for children. None of them can do it like Dr. Seuss did.

Be memorable

Dr. Seuss’s characters, The Grinch, Sam I Am, and The Cat in the Hat live on more than 50 years after they were first published because they’re unique. Before you try to market your business, think about what you offer that’s different. Do you specialize in a particular industry? Are you the most expensive or offer gold-plated, super-special service that’s completely over the top – like having papers delivered by a butler dressed in white tie and tails? Do you do one thing really, really well?

Stick to your passion

Dr. Seuss wrote a truly awful movie called The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. It was so bad that he called it a “decabulous fiasco” and didn’t mention it in his official biography. He was doing something he wasn’t particularly good at. And it showed.

Choose a specialty that you care about. If you have a passion for genealogy, follow it and help people trace their ancestry. I love working with creative people, but I’d be hard-pressed to drum up much enthusiasm for promoting NASCAR. Be genuine, not artificial.

Not too narrow

If Seuss had stuck to writing for left-handed children named Max who live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he’d have been in trouble. No, his books were aimed at beginning readers. One of them (Green Eggs and Ham) had only 50 different words. A niche that is too small will make you unique. It won’t make you money.

Be yourself

You may be worried that other people have said and done everything there is to say about being a Virtual Assistant or found every niche that’s worthwhile. Someone else may also be concentrating on offering bookkeeping to dry cleaners – but they’ll bring different skills, a different perspective, and a different personality to their clients than you will to yours. Stick to what drives you.
As Dr. Seuss said,

Jodi Kaplan has been called the Clarity Driver and the Wizard of Words. She blogs about broken marketing and how to stop it at Fix Your Broken Marketing.

• How do you find your first client?
• What are affordable and effective ways to market your services?
• How can you attract and educate prospects with your website?
• How can you develop a business plan, blogging strategy and article writing strategy?
• How do you determine your rates and pricing structure?

Chief Virtual Officer offers an intensive 5-month course customized to your specific needs. Each month focuses on a specific area of your Virtual Assistant practice. Each week you will receive homework with specific strategies to implement in your business right away. In addition to two monthly coaching sessions via telephone, we will reply to all your questions via email as often as you like.

We are currently taking on new clients. Use the Contact Form to schedule your free 30-minute coaching session so you can determine if this is the right program for you.

Get all the details on our Coaching page.

Many industries, like real estate, have created a code of ethics for their members; a firm set of rules by which they must abide. And, as long as the follow those rules, they are officially ethical.

Thing is, two 6-year-olds on the playground know the difference between right and wrong, between fair and cheating. If your industry has a code of ethics, its purpose is not to provide loopholes, to let you get away with sleazy behaviour because it’s not officially sanctioned by the code of ethics.

Don’t ever misbehave just because there’s not a rule saying it’s wrong. Ask your 6-year-old. Or mine. They’ll tell you what’s fair.

When tea first arrived in England it was expensive. Not, a little bit pricey expensive, but prohibitive, only for the rich expensive. But it caught on quickly, because, well, it’s great.

One woman in the south took a full pound of her expensive cache and sent it to her sister in the north, telling her how marvelous it was. Her sister boiled it, dumped the black liquid off and served it like a vegetable. She wrote back about how terrible it was.

She’d prepared it like a vegetable, which she understood, instead of seeing it for what it was: something entirely new.

Some business folks hear about the ‘new marketing’ and assume it’s just more of the old marketing, except online. They still want instant results, measured in dollars return on dollars invested. They want ways to convince people to buy, no matter what they’re selling. They spend time and money bolting a website and blog and email autoresponders onto their old-school advertising.

They’re dumping the tea and eating the leaves, and then they wonder why it doesn’t work.

If you help your clients with their marketing efforts, you may, like the first woman in the story, assume that they’ll know how to brew a pot of social media marketing. Erm, tea. Whatever.

But, like the second woman, they don’t. They can’t. Because it’s so foreign to them, they have nothing to connect it to. Give information away, with no firm plan for monetising it? That don’t make no sense!

Had the first woman included some simple instructions along with her glowing praise, the story may have had a happier ending. Don’t leave anything to chance. Clients who are new to the new marketing will need a lot of hand-holding, a lot of encouragement and explanation and nudging.

Don’t assume they get it, unless you actually see them drinking the tea.