It’s very important to choose a niche as a virtual assistant. By choosing a niche you will have an easier time choosing the service you’ll offer, and marketing those services. It will also be easier for you to set your rates if you know who your audience is. But to experience all those benefits, you’ll need to figure out what your niche is going to be.
Choose an Audience to Become Your Clients
Many people who start a business do it wrong. They create or find a product to sell, then they search for their audience. In truth, a successful business owner will first choose the audience they want to serve, and then develop their services and/or products based on the audience. What type of people do you want to work with? Be very specific about what you want.
Get to Know This Audience
Who are these people? What do they do for fun? What kind of business do they run? How do they get clients? How do they accept payments? How do they go through their day? Knowing how they run their business will help you know how you fit into their business. For example, do they have a newsletter? Do they speak in public? What is entailed in each of these things that you can do?
List the Skills You Have That You Enjoy Doing
When listing your skills, do not list every skill you have if you hate doing them. List the things you know how to do, or are willing to learn how to do, and want to do, and like to do. After you make the list, decide how they fit in with your ideal audience or client. Those will be your services that you offer your audience.
Who in This Audience Needs Your Services?
As you make the list and match them with your audience, narrow down the services you’ll provide to the ones they want to buy and where they need what you have to offer. There will be a specific narrow portion of the entire audience that needs and can afford to pay for your services.
Get Training to Fill Gaps in Your Knowledge
If you have gaps in your training that you should fill to better offer your ideal client the services you want to offer, find that training. There are so many places today online and offline where you can take a course and learn what you need to learn. As you learn new things, you increase your value to your clients – as long as what you’re learning fits in with their needs.
Set up Your Packages and Watch Scope Creep
One issue that can pop up when you set up your packages is that clients may start asking for services that you do not offer, nor want to offer. Do not start offering these services just to get the client, unless it’s something you really want to do.
You have a few choices: you can outsource, or you can refer the client to someone else. Working with the niche you chose in the beginning, offering the services you have the skill to do and want to do is where you should stay to be happy with your business.
Network Where Your Clients Are
Once you have worked out who your audience is, find your clients by going to where they hang out. Networking with other VAs is fine, but you also need to network with your audience often to be able to market well to your niche.
Finally, keep up to date on your niche so that as things change you will keep up. Today, your audience may be using AWeber.com for example; tomorrow they might be using another program to do the same thing and you’ll need to learn it – either by hiring someone to train you or taking a course.
Be ready to build and grow with your niche. As you learn more, you’ll be able to find your niche instead of casting too wide of a net and not knowing what you’re going to do each day. Or worse – ending up doing things you dislike.
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