Marketing Your VA Practice

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Do you want to increase your customer base through your website?

So many virtual assistants struggle with marketing because they don’t know how to talk about their services. On our websites, or other marketing materials, we need to ensure that we’re speaking the language of the customer… not just telling them what services we offer.

If you’ve done your homework, then you’ve been researched other virtual assistant websites. And, I’m sure you’ve found hundreds of VA websites that read something like this:

“I perform x, y, & z services, and I save you money! Hire me today!”

Ok, I’m exaggerating… but only a smidge.

Clients want to hear what services I offer - otherwise they won’t hire me, right?

Well… yes and no. You see, while clients do need a bookkeeper who can use QuickBooks, what they really want it someone who can solve their bookkeeping conundrum. They really want someone who can take their piles of receipts and compile them in software so they can have an easy-to-understand report. They want someone who can make sure that mess never happens again. They need a problem-solver.

Your copy on your website is your selling point - your place to differentiate yourself from other VAs, from freelancers on Elance.com, and from an in-house assistant. The copy, or text, is the starting point - this is how you communicate with potential clients, and you need to ensure that the right voice is heard, understood, and taken action on.

If you’re just offering a laundry list of services, you’re not helping anyone. Instead, follow these four simple rules to help you craft a moving webpage to get your customers contacting you, quickly.

1. Know Your Niche

As much as we want to be the VA for everyone – a Gal Friday, if you will – this attitude doesn’t translate well into marketing materials. When you try to speak to everyone, it ends up as a generalization and no one cares. (see?)

Instead, begin with some research into your target market. What are their main issues? What is easy for them? What are they likely to outsource? What are their barriers to getting in-house or virtual help? These are all things you’re going to need to address in your copy in some form. You want them to relate to your website copy – so make sure you know your market inside-out.

1. Can You Feel Their PAIN?

You’re presenting your website as a solution to your prospects’ problem – therefore you must know what it is that’s bothering them the most. To really pack a punch in your website, you’ll want to drive home the fact that you really do understand what they’re going through. For example, decide which of these two paragraphs grab your attention:

With over 5 years experience with Top Producer, your Real Estate Virtual Assistant will lighten your load and let you get back to what you love.

~or~

Are you pulling your hair out trying to learn Top Producer? This complicated software could drive any of us insane when we have a business to run. Instead, turn over your Top Producer chores to this Real Estate Virtual Assistant, and get back to what you do best – selling dream homes!

In short, find their pain, and speak to it. They’ll feel like you understand them, and your website will work as a conversion tool.

2. Use headlines and sub-headlines

It’s been proven that most people don’t read on a computer screen – they scan the page and read the ideas that interest them. So, instead of dulling a visitors’ interest with large blocks of text, break them up with a simple headline.

Your visitors, when they visit your website, are looking for you to solve their problems. When they scan your page, they’re looking for something that relates to their problem, and then they’ll read the corresponding block of text. So, when you transition from one thought, or selling point, to another make sure you insert a quick, scan-able sub-headline.

A sub-headline can be something as easy as “Easing Your Top Producer Woes” or something more drawing such as “Do You Find Top Producer Tedious?”

3. Call to action

When you’re talking to someone, you wouldn’t just leave them mid-thought – would you?

The same goes for your website. After you’ve laid out all the reasons why they need a virtual assistant – why you’re the best one for their needs – do you just leave them to find their own way around your website?

The key to really converting customers on your website is to tell them what steps to take next. For example, on my virtual assistant website, www.trinityjacobs.com, the bottom of each page provides a button to continue learning about our services, or to contact us.

This one strategy has been instrumental to our website conversion. We routinely get 3-5 emails a day through our contact form and links, all because we guide the prospect to the ultimate goal – contacting us.

While web copywriting is an art form unto itself, you can make your website pack a bigger punch. By following the preceding tips, your website will pre-qualify a number of your prospects’ and increase your website conversion.