Today’s Quote: Commit to a niche. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. – Andrew Davis
Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Today we are going to talk about how choosing a niche for your VA business can help explode your success, among other things.
Click the play button above to tune in, or choose your favourite podcast player below:
Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
If you want to explode your VA business, you need to get focused.
Not just on the work you do, but on the marketing side of things.
A lot of Virtual Assistants don’t like the idea of a niche, or a target market – but it really is the key to getting lots of great clients, with less effort.
Let’s begin with defining what a niche is.
Niche and target market are similar. but they are not interchangeable terms.
A target market is a group of people that you choose to focus on – to network with, to market your business to.
Targeting a group of people that have common needs is smart because it means that you can talk to a group of people instead of finding one person at a time.
For instance, if you decide that you want to support podcasters, you will find large groups of them to spend your time with. Why? Because they all need the same services. So that means when you have a conversation with one of them, it can be heard by many of them.
In traditional networking, we talk about connecting one to one with people. That scares a lot of VAs because it can mean that you do a lot of talking – something that some VAs shy away from.
But if you are networking with similar people, say in a Facebook group, then when you answer a question that one of them has, you can answer it and hundreds (or more) of them will see that answer.
Like VAs, many business owners do not speak up in groups – they don’t talk about their struggles or problems – but they will respond to you if someone else asks the question, sometimes privately, or sometimes as a comment in the conversation.
In short, target marketing is good.
A niche can also be a target market. A niche is a group of people who need the same services (as each other).
But a niche can also BE the service you are providing. You can ‘niche down’ your services so that you are offering something very specific, for different types of business owners.
So for instance, maybe you offer Pinterest management. You can provide that for lots of different clients, but it’s a specialized service offering. You don’t offer support or management of ‘all’ social media platforms – you are upleveling yourself and standing out as a specialist.
Why is choosing a niche necessary?
Because it helps you to become a specialist – whether that means you are a specialist who supports podcasters, or you are a Pinterest specialist.
And becoming a specialist means that you can market yourself accordingly.
You can set your rates higher.
You can create content that is very specific.
You can work in your brilliance.
You can do what you love.
You can build a business that allows you to work when you want.
Let’s go on the podcast idea for a moment to illustrate this.
if you offer podcast management, you will learn all of the things that you need to know to be a master podcast producer or manager.
What are those things?
For a solo podcaster:
– topic research
– recording
– audio editing
– show notes
– transcripts
– podcast audio storage
– podcast uploading and publishing
– promotion items creation (blog, audiograms, graphics, social media)
– marketing of podcast (ie emails, blog posts, social media channels)
– reporting
And for a podcast that has guests, all of the above as well as:
– guest research/acquisition
– set up and management of booking form/guest intake form
– scheduling
– collection of guest contact info and
– promotional content sharing
– reminders to promote when episode airs
– follow up as necessary
–
You get the idea. There are SO many tasks that go along with every episode of a podcast, and a lot of podcasters do weekly episodes.
And so how does this help you? You set the deadlines (often far in advance, at least a couple of weeks, sometimes more) – and you can then set your schedule any way you like to complete the work.
It’s one of those services that doesn’t keep you chained to your computer 9-5 – and that’s the first mark of specializing your services.
You can even do podcast setups – which include tons of tasks that are one-off projects.
Anyway you see how it works – and podcasting is not the only niche that allows you to build your business this way.
Find the clients that need ongoing high level services and you can pick your niche.
Let’s get back now to Andrew Davis’s quote: Commit to a niche. Stop trying to be everything to everyone.
This is extremely common for Virtual Assistants – never wanting to say no, and then doing things they don’t want to be doing. Some VAs think that they are supposed to do whatever a client asks them to do, simply because that’s the nature of our experience.
I remember coming back to my desk and checking my inbox (literally, the box on my desk!) to see what else needed doing. Over the years this moved to the email inbox – and now it has moved into project management systems too.
If you allow your clients to add projects and tasks and deadlines to your project management system, you are acting like their employee.
You can definitely let them add tasks (it saves time – and if you get a client who likes to log into the project management system, that can be a good thing) – but YOU set the deadlines – and the lead times.
Remember always that you are an admin specialist -whether you call yourself that or not, you need to act like one.
The client requests the work – you can accept it turn it down – and they can tell you when they need it by, but you can also accept that or turn it down.
The way to get around this is to ensure that your client is very aware of the lead times involved with every task you do for them, as well as what they need to provide to you and when you will turn the work around.
I’ve told you before of my client who I told needed 24 hours notice for all work to be done. She consistently sent me an email on a Wednesday at 11 am and tell me it needed to go out on Thursday at 11 am. That’s not quite how it works, and that is on me for not explaining it well enough and holding the boundaries in place.
We need to be really clear with our clients – and that’s what specialists do.
One of the biggest issues with working with multiple clients is that we try to turn things around much too quickly, and that can become unsustainable when we get more and more clients.
So you have to set them clearly from the start – or now, if you are already working with clients.
Being a specialist, and not acting like an employee, means that you get comfortable with talking about things like that. And working with them daily.
Getting back to the podcast niche, you can tell your client that to get a podcast published on March 1st, you need the content recorded by February 15th. You can decide when you do that huge list of things I mentioned earlier – they can be done whenever you want, because you are allowing yourself enough time to do them.
I still work regular business hours, but I don’t want someone giving me 24 hours notice to get their podcast done. I’m a specialist, so I am in demand and I need more lead time.
Do you see why choosing a niche is necessary? It helps you build a business that can give you a lifestyle of your choosing.
If you want more time with your kids, if you want more money, if you want to build a team, if you want to work from anywhere, or just travel there, whatever you want.
It pays to be a specialist. It pays to pick a niche.
And it’s easy too – you just need to choose!
When you are deciding who to work with, or what service to offer, you can start with who you want to work with, or the industry they work with or in, you can start with the services you want to do.
The services are the important part for your lifestyle, of course.
Do some research to see what kinds of clients need great VAs – and what services they need that you can provide.
And then pick. Easy!
Now the last piece is something that I have to constantly talk to VAs about – it’s about working only with the clients you choose as your niche/target.
The biggest reason that VAs do not want to niche down is that they think they are going to be turning down clients who want them to work with them.
Well, yes, you will. But when you are marketing to and networking with the right clients for you, that won’t matter anymore – you will have SO many clients.
Really great clients – that you want to work with. That will be desperate to work with you, and will want to pay you.
When you stay in the poverty mindset (that is where you are when you don’t want to do what you need to do ‘in case’), you are only making things more difficult for yourself..
Go to where the clients are that you WANT to serve. Never mind the other ones – there are plenty of VAs who will help them.
You will be too busy building your amazing business, and living your amazing lifestyle.
For real!
Stop trying to be everything to everyone. It simply doesn’t work. Be the best to a select group who needs you, and wants you.
Need Some Help?
This is exactly what I help VAs do. As a VA coach and trainer, I help you find those services, and create the marketing messages, and find the groups of people, and talk to them, and get those clients.
I’ll help you get clarity around it all, and cheer you on as you walk through the steps to do it.
I’ve helped hundreds of VAs through their challenges and got them on their way to growing their business and the lifestyle that they dream of.
I’d love to do the same for you.
You can work with me privately, or you can join The Virtual Circle, my mastermind group for Virtual Assistants. Check it out at www.YourVAMentor.com/TVC (the virtual circle) – I bet it’s exactly what you need to start running the VA business you dreamed of.
Reach out to me if you are interested in starting your journey today.
That’s all I’ve got for you this week, see you next time!