Virtual assistant marketing plan

How to find clients

Achieve your targets and goals faster by using a marketing plan for your virtual assistant business.

Virtual Assistant Marketing Plan

Having a marketing plan that you stick to will help you stay focused and achieve the best results when marketing your virtual assistant business. It is an action plan that will show you how to find clients as a virtual assistant.

A marketing plan will tell you where, when and how you will be marketing to your target audience.

The marketing plan is like a mini business plan that you should refer to before doing any marketing. It will help you meet your targets and business goals.

Download a virtual assistant marketing plan template here.

Your Virtual assistant marketing plan should include:

Targets 

The top section should be your business targets. This can relate to a specific amount of customers, e.g. 3 customers, or it could also be a specific amount of revenue, e.g. £3000 a month.

Having this clearly displayed at the top of your marketing plan will show you what you are working towards.

You can specify what period of time you want these targets to be achieved. If it is your first time trying a particular marketing method or you have just started a virtual assistant/ freelancing business, you should try a method consistently for at least 4-6 weeks to see results and decide whether it is a method that should be continued or not.

Marketing method

Determine which method of marketing you will be using in your marketing plan.  It’s best to stick to 2-3 that you’ll really focus all your efforts on. Check out different marketing options here.

Frequency 

Decide how often you need to do each method to achieve your desired target. This can be different for each method, e.g. You may decide 45 minutes spent on social media relationship building every day is enough to achieve results. But you may only need to spend 4 hours a month on Email marketing.

This means you will need to determine how long you need to spend on each method and how often. You may be able to tell how long if it is something you have done before, sometimes you may only really know by doing it first and then tweaking your plan as you go along.

Purpose 

What is the main purpose?

If for example, you decided to focus on email marketing, it needs to be clear why you are doing this. Achieving your target is one point, but you also need to break this down further by thinking about what you want to get out of it.  Also, what action do you want the customer to take?  e.g. book a consultation. 

Measure 

In this section, you will write your results. You can do this as you go along or when it is convenient for you.

The aim is to monitor and measure results to match your target.

e.g. 2 customers if your target is customers or £3000 if your target is revenue related.

Review/ Notes 

Enter the date you will be reviewing each method. In this section, you can also add notes relating to the method you used to achieve your targets.

Example: One of my marketing methods is social media marketing. I achieved 2 clients from this. Using this section, I would write how I did this. This could be by participating in a group chat on Facebook and searching and answering questions on Twitter. I would also add the date I will be reviewing this method.

If you have not successfully reached your target, you can use this section to input what you need to change or implement to achieve it. This may need to be determined by further evaluation of your marketing or additional marketing training. 

If, after 4-6 weeks of consistent effort, you cannot see any results, you may need to explore an alternate marketing method. Remember, just because it works for one virtual assistant doesn’t mean it will work for another. There is a perfect method for you. You just have to find it. 

How to use a marketing plan

Your marketing plan will show you what you are doing and what the results are of your marketing. Having everything in one place will help you stay on track in your efforts.  

It will ensure you are on track to seeing the results you want. It will also help you see what is working and what is not working and make any necessary changes.

How to find clients as a virtual assistant is one of the most popular questions I get asked.

You create a plan by starting with your target and goals.

Then identify which methods you will be using to achieve your targets.

Your marketing plan should feature a section that displays how frequently you should be doing each step.

Once you complete this part, you will need to remember to complete each step of the plan when it is meant to be done. I usually enter the information into my diary, so I don’t forget.

When I started using this style of marketing plan, it helped me stay organised and have one place where I could see my targets and the exact plan that would help me achieve them.

Including the WHY? section I found particularly helpful. It ensures my marketing is most effective and that I am not wasting time blindly marketing with no sense of direction or outcome.

The measure and review section will indicate whether you need to make changes to your marketing plan. The measure section will show what results you have achieved with this method.

During a review, you will need to look at how things can be changed to improve results, whether this particular marketing method needs adjusting, what you did that worked etc. Using this information, you should be able to come to a confident conclusion of what to do next.

We have created a virtual assistant marketing plan form available to download on our forms page. It will show you how to write a virtual assistant marketing plan from scratch. The form is also available for free as it is featured in our virtual assistant start-up course and client finder course.

If you are a virtual assistant and you provide marketing services then download the form to use for your clients as well.