Marketing Your Virtual Assistant Business

Providing services as a virtual assistant, or VA, is one of the hottest home businesses today. With its growing popularity, more and more businesses and entrepreneurs are seeking them out. With that, more and more people are seeking to enter into this field. What that means to you is that the field is competitive and finding work is not always easy. 

The first thing you need to do is ensure your skills are sharp. If you have less than 5 years of executive secretary experience, or comparable, you may want to consider enrolling in a certification class with a reputable institution such as Assist U or IVVA. This way you can point out that you are certified in your field. The reason this field differs from that of a “cyber secretary” is that a VA acts more as a partner to the business owner, assisting in all aspects of the business, whereas a secretary may just perform one or two functions for the business such as typing, call taking, or filing. In fact, many virtual assistants act as personal assistants as well as business assistants. Some of their duties may include handling mail and e-mail, arranging business meetings, planning events such as family parties, buying gifts, managing newsletters, faxing, transcription, research, and more. Because their duties generally encompass so much, their pay is usually higher than those performing secretarial tasks. The average VA is said to be making between twenty and forty-five dollars per hour. 

Once you know you are prepared for this work, obtaining clients is the biggest challenge. As with any business, your marketing efforts could make or break you. I suggest doing as much marketing as you can for free before spending a dime on advertising. After all, if you were to put forth large sums of money into advertising that brought you no clientele, you’d really be in the red. 

Here are some free ideas for obtaining clientele.