Danielle Keister, “The Gritty VA” recommends focusing potential clients on your expertise, and how you will be able to provide them with excellent results while freeing up their time to focus on growing their businesses.  Read the article Here.

“199 Online Tools” is an indispensable compilation of resources addressing an expansive array of business needs, including audio and visual tools to enhance a website; business and legal tools for incorporating and dealing with the legalities of entrepreneurism; social networking tools; shopping carts and e-commerce tools; financial and money management tools; time management resources; and a number of additional business topics. Each resource is identified as either free, or as having a cost attached from moderate to expensive indicated by a single or several dollar signs $$.

This e-book is one-stop shopping for everything you need to know to get your online business going, growing, and managed like a pro – all at your fingertips in one comprehensive resource.

The authors offer their e-book customers something in return: an opportunity to gain exposure on their website, newsletters and blogs by providing them with feedback, via audio or video testimonial, about their favorite tool and how it has helped their businesses to flourish. Go here to get yours now!

No matter how your VA business is oriented, there is an ezine available which will suit your purpose. For example, there are newsletters that focus on working at home and on using outsourcing to maximize an entrepreneur’s time. To locate the ezines that are most appropriate to reach your target audience, visit the Ezine Directory .

Once you have identified the ezines to use, how can you best promote your VA business? Here are three ways:

• Writing ezine articles. You are knowledgeable about your business and can offer insights related to it or to similar topics. Ezine publishers are constantly seeking articles to publish and will welcome your submissions. This will get your VA enterprise noticed, and it will clarify for potential clients that you have excellent communication skills. It can also give them an insight into your style and personality. The key is to make sure that the article will grab the readers’ attention, as well as appeal to your target audience. Also keep in mind that ezine publishers are seeking timely writings about current topics. For example, late in the year business owners will be looking to the economic prospects for coming months, and a related forecast should be of interest. In order for your seasonal ideas to be considered, develop and submit them a month or two prior to expected publication. Two popular ezines are ArticleCity and IdeaMarketers .
• Advertising in ezines. Compared to the alternative, ezines offer a relatively inexpensive way to reach a large number of people who may be interested in your VA services. The best ezines for advertisement are those that target internet business, marketing, and outsourcing because these readers may be considering hiring a Virtual Assistant. One idea for creating customer interest is to include a special deal available only to those that read the ezine. It is helpful to know that some sites offer multiple ezines and will provide incentives to publish in more than one of them. In addition, you may receive a better price by agreeing to do multiple runs. Always get a sample issue before advertising. Also, be sure to subscribe to the publications that you utilize so that you confirm that your advertisement was run as written.
• Publish your own ezine. Many VA business owners find this a successful way to speak regularly to their target audience. Your own ezine gives you the chance to emphasize your unique VA services by emphasizing your voice, whether it is serious, funny, quirky or whatever. One advertising rule is that potential customers need to see your message more than a dozen times before making a decision. By producing a great newletter for them to read, you can reach many of them. You have given a reflection of your VA business, as well as providing both existing and potential customers with information that they want.

Ezines are a powerful tool for your VA enterprise to easily reach customers and to describe your special services. To learn more about ezines and to decide if they are right for your business, visit Alexandria Brown’s, EzineQueen (www.ezinequeen.com).

How to Market your VA Services – also lists strategies to promote your virtual assistance business.

In brief, they are:

1) Tell everyone what you are doing – Tell your friends, relatives, hairdresser – everyone you know that you have started a business. Everyone knows someone who may be in need of your services.

2) Writing and submitting articles – Look for relevant Ezine directories that would be interested in publishing your articles. Explain your practice and include your website address in each article.

3) Distribute business cards – Give your business cards out everywhere – at personal as well as business functions. You may receive an unexpected call when someone you know passes your card on to a friend or colleague.

4) Register with business directories and networks – Many offer free listings and membership benefits.

5) Participate in online discussion forums – Where is your target client chatting?

6) Volunteering in your local community – Is there a charity in your neighborhood that needs help creating letters, a website, or a database? Offer a few hours of your time to showcase your skills, create good will, and maybe receive a referral or a permanent assignment in the process.

7) Use an e-mail signature – Sign all your correspondence with your business name, tag line and website. This is a great way to keep your business name in front of all your business and personal contacts.

For more, read the article here.

If you want to stand out from the crowd, you must offer a product or service that is phenomenal, memorable, or unbelievable is the advice given in Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable, a book by entrepreneur and best-selling author Seth Godin.

The book explains that the usual marketing methods – pricing, promotion, publicity – are just not working anymore.

The book is filled with examples of companies and products that leave their competition in the dust. But not by slapping on a marketing gimmick – by building something inherently phenomenal into the product or service.

This book is a short easy read – and a treasure for anyone starting or trying to develop a business. The advice is simple:

Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable. It’s a great tool for [tag]small business[/tag] owners and virtual assistants who want to create products and services that are worth marketing in the first place.

For more about the author and professional marketing tips, visit Seth Godin’s blog.

Here are some ways for you to network, share, advertise and grow your business:
Read More…

To begin with a marketing plan, first develop your client profile. Who are you selling to? What is the profession of your target market? Real estate agents? Lawyers? Entrepreneurs? Small Businesses?

Is there a niche market that you can claim within your broad overall market? For example, virtual assistant is a very broad term that can include hundreds of different services. Niche markets usually become profitable more quickly than broader markets. Develop yourself a list of a number of niche markets you can specialize in, such as:

• Legal assistant projects
• Real estate projects
• Marketing assistant projects
• Database entry

Decide how your ideal client or target market could best learn about you. If he or she was searching for your services, where would they most likely look first? That is where you need to be. Your goal is to make yourself “easily found.” Consider trade organizations, magazines, newsletters or other media that your ideal client might read or view. Consider community events your ideal client might attend.

All of the places where your client might be are the places where you should consider advertising. This is also where effective keywords for your website and your META tags factor in. Consider what would the client put in a search engine if he or she were looking for your type of services? Those are the keywords that you should focus on. There is a whole science to keywords and search engine optimization, so I will cover that in a separate article.

Effective marketing requires some market research and analysis. You must become a detective and discover what is “hot” in today’s marketplace! You can do most of your research using your favorite search engine. Create a list of the things you find to refer to later.

Create a profile or biography on your main competitors. You want to know:

• What they’re selling
• How they advertise
• What their web site looks like
• What information they give away
• What prices are they charging

Your objective is not to steal from them or copy them, but to figure out what works best and not have to reinvent the wheel. You also want to know what the going rates are in your specialty, so you can set your rates competitively.

Develop your USP – The USP or unique selling proposition is what makes you different, unique, stand apart. This is what YOU can offer clients that other people cannot. Your USP statement should be condensed down to a couple of sentences, or in as few words as possible –to its essence. Think of Nike® – they convey the whole spirit and persona of energy, adventure, risk-tasking in a single phrase “Just Do It.” Your USP should be repeated as a theme throughout your marketing materials.

Once you have determined your ideal client or target market, you know how your competitors are doing things, and you have a good idea of how much money you can spend on marketing, then it is time to develop your marketing plan.

from Sally Morton, freelance writer, author and virtual assistant specializing in lifestyle and business.

(more on this and marketing strategies you can use now) at http://www.gardenandhearth.com/Virtual-Assistant/Internet-Marketing.htm

Reminder services, online services which allow you to automatically send customized birthday greetings, congratulations, holiday greetings and personal sentiments to your clients or potential clients, can help.

These services are a great [tag]marketing[/tag] tool for a [tag]small business[/tag] to stay connected with their clients year-round. Many of these services offer customizable programs which allow you to choose your greetings, opt for actual cards sent through the U.S. mail, or choose e-mailed or text messaged greetings, even using your own handwriting and signature.

Some of the services are: www.birthdayalarm.com, www.sendoutcards.com, and www.stayconnectedmarketing.com .

If you want to work in a particular industry, you’ll have to know more than how to prepare an EXCEL spreadsheet or a compelling sales letter. Fields such as finance, real estate and the health care sector have languages all their own.

To get those clients, you’ll need to learn to speak their language. Bill Lampton, Ph.D, in his article “Learn The Lingo: Expand Your Vocabulary And Your Client List” at businessknowhow.com, provides these suggestions to bone up on your desired clients’ vocabulary:

• Identify the groups you want to join or market to, in addition to those that you are affiliated with or cultivating now.
• Read the group’s publications. Frequently you can find the Annual Report on the corporate Web site. Request back issues of newsletters, magazines, and press releases. Study the mission statement.
• Interview two or three organizational leaders. When they use terms that puzzle you, ask for clarification. You can do that in the early stages of cultivation without losing credibility. In fact, you will appear interested rather than uninformed.
• Attend special events open to the public.
• Tactfully ask for invitations to “insider” events, such as strategic planning sessions and annual meetings.
• List new words and their definitions, and keep them handy. You could easily compile a glossary for each of your target industries.
• Incorporate the company’s jargon in your conversations, presentations, handouts, and proposals.

For more, continue reading at businessknowhow.com

Dawn Mayo’s article on www.businessknowhow.com entitled “Effective Ways To Market Every Day” offers some innovative techniques to get your business name out there with very little effort:

1) Take advantage of your contacts – When you visit the grocer, hair salon or dry cleaner, take business cards or a flyer with you and leave them on the bulletin board, or with the proprietor. You never know who might be in need of your services.

2) Give a thrill with your next bill – Put your business card in the envelope when you pay your utility bills. It might be passed along to the right person.

3) Send fun notes – Periodic postcards or event cards keep your business in the top of a client’s mind. Make them amusing.

4) Promote when you invoice – advertise discounts, products or services at the bottom of your invoice.

5) Make your voicemail work for you – advertise yourself using keywords on your voicemail, e.g. reliable, 24/7, etc.

6) Create a referral incentive – offer a discount or incentive to clients for referring you to new clients. For more, read the article at http://www.businessknowhow.com/marketing/mkteveryday.htm

What’s the difference between outtasking and outsourcing? Howard Tiano, managing editor of www.outsourceouttakes.com describes outsourcing as an ongoing relationship between a business and a service provider to perform ongoing business services.

Outtasking is when a business owner [tag]delegate[/tag]s a periodic task – for example an annual mass mailing or preparation of a semi-annual report – to a company or individual.

Which are you providing to your client – task completion or ongoing services? If it’s the former, there are ways you might convince your client to outsource an element of her business to you. If she trusts you to complete the periodic assignments she’s been delegating to you, perhaps she can assign you the management of her database or her e-mail. This would be an ongoing assignment, which changes the perception of your role from project-doer to ongoing trusted service provider.

For more on outsourcing vs. outtasking, read the article here.

1) “Email your customers and say that you are developing new marketing materials and you would love to include a client testimonial from them. Then ask if they would be generous enough to help you by emailing you a brief testimonial. ”

2) “Mail your customers a thank you card for doing business with you. In the card say you would be very thankful if they would be generous enough to give you a testimonial by either emailing it to you, faxing it to you, or simply calling you on the phone. ”

For more suggestions, read his article at LINK

The Gritty Virtual Assistant at www.grittyva.com offers suggestions on when and when not to ask.  She strongly suggests waiting at least a week after successful completion of a project and client sign-off.  This allows the client time to use what you have created for her, and to ensure that she is happy with it.  She reminds us to always ask the client whether she is happy, before asking for a testimonial.  Asking in the middle of a project or immediately after completion, she suggests, can seem pushy and can convey the idea that you are more concerned with the testimonial than with her satisfaction with your service.  For more, read her article here.

In her article “Extra! Extra! Read All About It, I’ve Just Started a Home Business,” on www.BizyMoms.com, Liz Folger offers these marketing suggestions:

Read the article at http://www.bizymoms.com/articles/extra.html

Dr. Maya Bailey has some suggestions to overcome these insecurities by using the Law of Attraction in her article in the Realty Times, “Law of Attraction Marketing in 5 Easy Steps.”

In brief, The Law of Attraction is the concept that we get back what we give out. If you radiate positive energy, you will attract positive energy back to you. Thinking positively about yourself, knowing what makes you unique, and then confidently offering these attributes to others will change your perception of [tag]marketing[/tag] from something feared into a pleasant and profitable endeavor.

Dr. Bailey suggests these 5 steps using the Law of Attraction:

1) Think of giving

2) Know Your Unique Selling Points

3) Clear Away Your Self-Limiting Beliefs

4) Create a Mindset Of Positive Expectations

5) Realize That You’re Marketing Yourself at Every Moment

For an in-depth explanation of these tips, read the article at http://realtytimes.com/rtapages/20070703_attractmarket.htm