Virtual Assistant - Are You Making These Marketing Mistakes With Your Website
By Karen Fritscher-Porte

If you're a virtual assistant who has a website to help sell your business services, then that's what you should be pitching on your website: Your VA business services. Yet the websites of many virtual assistants do so much more than just pitch their VA services. And that's a mistake. Virtual assistants who try to do everything, be everything and sell everything with their website will chase prospective clients away. In fact, you may not just be chasing prospective clients away but you also may be leading them away. To make your website more effective you need to know exactly why you have it.

WHY DO YOU HAVE A WEBSITE

Are you trying to attract clients?

If that's the number one purpose of your website, then everything on your website should play a role in selling your services to prospective clients. And that includes your navigation structure. Many of your prospective clients may purposely come to your website. Or they may inadvertently stumble across your website. No matter which road that prospective client took to get to your website, you need to show him or her which direction to go from there. Lead prospects through your site. Do this by starting with a great headline suggesting how a person will benefit from your services. End their "guided" trip with a call to action statement such as to contact you for a free consultation and quote.

Are you trying to educate people about virtual assistants?

Some virtual assistant websites prominently display a text-book definition about what is a virtual assistant. In reality, most prospective clients want to know how you as a virtual assistant can benefit them. And it's best to tell them in the most simple terms possible. Focus less on the formal definition of a VA and focus more on the benefits of using a virtual assistant. Show prospective clients bullet lists of benefits to them for using your services and bullet lists of your services offered . Don't show a two paragraph definition explaining what is a virtual assistant---unless the purpose of your website is not a sales tool but rather an educational tool. You can define a virtual assistant. Just do it in one sentence. Or better yet work that one sentence definition into a sentence that discusses benefits to the client.

Are you trying to help other virtual assistants enter the business?

If you're displaying information about how to become a VA, then the purpose of your website should be to sell VA coaching or training services. But if you are a VA trying to attract business clients, then you're wasting sales copy space by also trying to educate your VA peers and prospective VAs. Your job is to try to sell your VA services to get business clients. If you want to teach or coach other VAs then you should set up a separate website for that niche purpose. Or participate in VA forums on other websites serving this purpose. Don't put links to this type of information that may lead your prospective clients astray of the reason why they came to your site.

Are you trying to make money off of products not directly associated with you and your business?
If you're running Google AdSense on your VA business website, stop. You don't want to distract prospective clients with ads to other businesses, perhaps even competing VA businesses. Unless you're making hundreds of dollars weekly from those pay per click ads, you're doing yourself a disservice. You're leading your prospective clients right out of your website. The same goes for affiliate product ad banners and text ads. Do you want clients to click out of your site? Are you substantially adding to your bottom line by having clients click away from your site? If you're trying to increase client activity for your business, you're working against yourself by giving prospects an almost immediate reason to leave your website. Let him get to know you before you send him to your competition and you'll have a fighting chance to get his business, perhaps long-term.

FINAL WORDS OF WISDOM

Don't make a prospective client who is interested in using the services of a virtual assistant have to hunt through your website to learn about your services. Your prospective client doesn't need to be excessively educated on the formalities of what is a virtual assistant. He doesn't need to know how to get into the VA business himself. He's not there to browse the ads for complementary products. If he came to your website, the chances are he is purposely searching for a virtual assistant to hire, now or in the future.

Make it easy on him to

---navigate through your website information in an easy and logical manner.
---discover the benefits of using your virtual assistant services.
---learn about your basic services, general rates and how to contact you.

Take anything off of your website that is not relevant to the reason you as a virtual assistant have a website. Your benefit: More prospective clients contacting you.

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Karen Fritscher-Porter publishes http://www.GetYourAssistant.com - a global directory of virtual assistants for hire to small businesses and home-based businesses. If you're a virtual assistant, learn how to boost your income, not your hours. Subscribe to the 100% free VA Marketing Tips Toolkit Series at http://www.getyourassistant.com/va-marketing-newsletter.htm Plus list your VA business free for three-months in the http://GetYourAssistant.com global VA directory at http://www.getyourassistant.com/more-business.htm

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