Marketing Your VA Practice

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 Anita Campbell over at Small Business Trends rounded up 26 marketers and asked for their best-kept marketing secrets. My favorite, by far, was:

Tim Berry, Planning Startups Stories – “One of the most expensive myths in marketing is that lower price produces higher volume. That might be true for coal or gasoline, but not for most businesses. Lower price means, well, ask yourself: do you always eat at the lowest price restaurant? Buy the lowest price clothes? Do you drive the lowest priced car? Pricing is your best statement of value.”

Now, why is this so important? Especially in our industry, you’ll find people who can do administrative work for what seems like pennies on the dollar. If you compete on price, then you’ll constantly worried about what the other guy is charging. Virtual Assistance isn’t a commodity yet, so there’s no reason to treat it as such.

I’ve heard dozens of horror stories of clients ‘penny-pinching’ every invoice - instead of seeing the value of the work done, they want the price to be lower. Invariably, the virtual assistant gets fed up, and leaves the client behind.

Will the client ‘learn their lesson’? Probably not; they want someone cheap, and I’m sure they’ll find their perfect VA. There are plenty of VAs already competing on price - they have a business model that can sustain it (or live in an economy that can). If you aren’t willing to price yourself at $6/hour, then you can’t win this competition.

Instead of competing on price, find what your value is - whether you’re an internet marketing genius, a blog maven, or what have you, and find those customers that want what you have.

So, what is your value? What do you bring to the table that is heads-and-shoulders above the rest? Feel free to answer in comments or by email on our contact page.