Author Archives: Michele

woman writing at desk

Marketing your small business is important to raise your brand awareness and build a pipeline of qualified leads that can turn into customers.

If you’re struggling with a limited budget, time restraints, or even a lack of direction, a solid marketing plan can provide guidance as you scale your business.

Here are 5 tips to consider when initially starting your marketing plan:

  1. Know Who Needs Your Help 

Understanding your target market’s pains, problems, triggering events, and priorities is essential in effectively marketing to them. Spend time networking and talking to other small business owners. Find out what they struggle with in their business. Read industry blogs, join online entrepreneur groups or listen to small business podcasts. Targeting the right audience with your value proposition can make all the difference in having a successful marketing campaign and attracting clients.

  1. Set Yourself Apart from Other Small Businesses 

What do you do that will differentiate you from others in your space and make your target market feel that you’re the VA to go with? What do you do better than anyone in the industry? What talent or experience will resonate with their pain points? Conveying this makes a compelling argument to learn more about you and your services.

  1. Be Strategic 

Start small and be scrappy. Figure out where you spend your time online and start there. Use free online tools or invest in a paid Google ad or sponsored Meta post. All these options are an effective and budget friendly option to start with. As your business starts to scale you can invest more time and energy into larger marketing goals and more sophisticated online tools.

  1. Leverage Current Clients 

Your current clients can easily help you with your marketing by sharing your social posts, adding you to their newsletters, and providing word of mouth referrals. Don’t be afraid to ask them for their help by mentioning your business to their network. As long as there is reciprocation, this can be a win/win for everyone.

  1. Have a Professional Visual Identity 

Having a logo and an easy to navigate website can make a difference in attracting customers. Having a unique branded identity (as previously mentioned) is important for your professional online presence. There are free and inexpensive options for designing your logo or website online, or you can also reach out to freelance graphic or web designers who can provide you with design assistance and website building tools.

 

BONUS TIP: Hire a virtual assistant to help you in the areas of marketing that you may not be confident in. Social media markting, graphic design, and email marketing are a few areas where hiring a VA a few hours a week (or more) may be worth the investment. We are always here to help you find the right virtual assistant that will become an asset to your team. 

web apps

A virtual assistant’s job is to support their clients in the most productive and effective way possible, so most VAs are great at researching effective web-based programs or apps that will help them increase their daily productivity.

Below are 3 web programs/applications that virtual assistants find to be extremely helpful when preforming work for their clients.

Canva 

Canva is great for creating graphic designs without having a professional designer on staff. It is a drag-and-drop type graphic design tool which allows the user to produce impressive professional designs. The free account has loads of functionality, but the upgraded options are not very expensive and allows for access to premium content and design tools. You can create some impressive visual content for your social media, work presentations, brochures, posters, business cards and so much more.

Clockify 

Clockify offers a simple way to track and time your work. It allows you to time yourself per task or per project.  You can even download your data to an Excel spreadsheet or PDF that will show your time on tasks, and includes dates, billing and other information. This spreadsheet can be sent to clients with an invoice or for personal use.

Buffer

Buffer takes the hassle out of posting on social media. It enables you to schedule your social media in advance and will post on your behalf at the date and time you have chosen. You can schedule posts for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Instagram Stories, Pinterest and Linkedin. Buffer also allows you to stay on top of your results and engagement. You can connect three channels with their free account, but if you want to connect more than three social platforms the monthly fee is very reasonable.

If you have some web or app-based programs you love to use, please share them with us in a comment or via our social channels.

Working with a virtual assistant can literally save you hours of your work week.  But, you may be wondering who works with a virtual assistant (VA)?

We can tell you from experience, almost anyone who runs a business, or has work tasks that they would rather outsource can benefit from working with a VA.

Below is a brief list of some of the professions our clients work in.

Coaching
Realtors
Chiropractors
Authors
Health care professionals
Sales
Financial Advisors
Advertising/PR
Computer IT
Consulting
Design
Entrepreneurs
plus many more….

A VA can do anything but bring your coffee, even though with mobile ordering, they can do that for you too! The truth is, a VA can do nearly anything in your business that you want them to do. But first, you have to determine what you should outsource. What part of your job do you love? What part do you hate or just don’t have time for? What is it that only you can do, and what can be outsourced?  Once you figure those things out, the next step is to get matched with a VA who has the professional experience and desire to help you. It’s that easy!

Assistant Match is great at matching businesses and VAs, so when you are ready, we can help you  find your perfect VA.

With many companies asking more employees to work from home as the novel coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, we thought we would share our expertise on how to be productive while working remotely.

Feel free to reach out to us if you need more tips or have questions about best practices for working from home. We are happy to be a resource to you. Or share any tips you have that have helped make your work from home experience a success.

 

 

 

 

Today, I’m giving you my top three tips on how to have a successful interview and find the right virtual assistant for you.
After watching the video, let me know how you prepare for an interview. As always, if you ever need help with interviews or finding a virtual assistant, I’m just an email away.

Let’s chat about the power of delegation: what could you be doing more efficiently this year by delegating tasks and projects to someone else on your team?
When you have a virtual assistant on your team, you can scale and grow your business enormously compared to doing everything yourself. So, what can a virtual assistant help with in your business?
  • Create systems and processes
  • Filter and organize communications
  • Manage social media accounts
  • Create graphic elements for social media, newsletter, and website
  • Project management
  • Write content for blog, newsletter, and website
  • Event planning
  • Hotel and flight booking
  • Customer service support
  • and so much more!
What tasks are you currently delegating? What tasks can you delegate?

 

It’s that time of year where many people begin thinking about everything they have to be thankful for. Although it’s nice to count your blessings, being thankful and grateful throughout the year could have tremendous benefits on your quality of life.

So think about what you are grateful for that this month, next month and throughout the upcoming months as you start each day. As the owner and CEO of Assistant Match I want to thank everyone that is part of the Assistant Match community for trusting in us. I am grateful to be able to provide you with the resources you need.

We have a dynamic community of small business owners who utilize our virtual assistant match services, professional virtual assistants who provide our clients with superior service and a large community of people who allow us to email them every month and look to us to keep them updated on relevant information. Our community follows us on social media and they reach out to us for help and guidance when necessary.

In this month’s video message I am expressing how grateful I am for each individual who is part of our growing community.

Showing gratitude is definitely worth doing more than once a year, but for today I say, Happy Thanksgiving!

Are you going “batty” over all that you still have to accomplish this month, or are you “treating” yourself to a little break with a business that can maintain it’s success without your full-time involvement?

I love this time of the year, because I can enjoy the excitement of dressing up in costumes with my family and friends and watching the kids have fun trick-or-treating.

My business is structured with virtual assistants that all have a very specific role, so it allows me to have the flexibility to enjoy this time of the year. But, I know many of you are doing most of the work in your business by yourself. Taking the next step to do anything different in your business can be a little “spooky” or scary.

Watch my video this month and try not to get SPOOKED by success and change. I promise, finding a way to implement assistance will not only help your business succeed, but it can change the amount of time you get to enjoy your life.

With a remote team spread across the country, it isn’t unusual to have some of my team members starting or ending their day before or after me.

This got me thinking: I’ve written and talked a lot about how to hire for a remote team and how to collaborate as a remote team, but I haven’t shared much about how we deal with the fact that we’re scattered over different time zones.

My video message this month discusses that exact topic. I hope you will watch it and see how working in different time zones really doesn’t disrupt a team if you prioritize tasks, and everyone understands deadlines and expectations regardless of the time.