Marketing Friday: More marketing tips and tricks for virtual assistants

Here are five ideas which you can work on today – Marketing Friday – to get more business next week!

• If you must advertise (and sometimes there might be a specific industry publication or must read local paper) try and get some free guaranteed editorial to go with it.  Get figures of exactly who reads the publication (don’t believe circulation and take “readership” figures with a large pinch of salt especially for free papers).  Try www.jicreg.co.uk for independent readership data.
• Offer a freebie.  Maybe a free report, or a free assessment, or a free guide or how to advice.  People love freebies, and they build trust and rapport.  Plus they can be used as an incentive to sign up for newsletters e.g. sign up for our newsletter and receive a free one page report on how to streamline your business processes.
• Write an article and post it on the internet.  There are literally thousands of article sites out there who will host your article (often for free) along with your contact details.  Not only does this place you as being the expert in your field but it also creates more links into your website.
• This one seems like a no-brainer but you would be surprised: ANSWER THE PHONE!  Have a reliable answer phone or answering service and check messages and return calls as soon as possible.  It’s silly to make all that effort getting people to call you and then not following up. Ditto emails – if you are out of the office put an autoresponder on telling people when you’ll be returning and responding to their email.
• Plan!  Make time in your schedule for marketing your business.  Sit down and plan when different activities will need to be done in order to bring in business at quiet times over summer holidays or at Christmas.  Not only will this help you manage your time properly, it will also help you budget.  Aim for about 50% of your time being spent on marketing in the first 6 months.