The Gritty Virtual Assistant

I constantly see Virtual Assistants asking other Virtual Assistants to review their websites.

It’s all well and good to ask colleagues to check your site for typos and other goofs, offer opinions and give tips for improved SEO (search engine optimization). However, the most important opinion and advice you should be seeking should come from your target market. THEY are whose opinion will matter most as THEY are the ones you are going to be marketing to and working with… not your colleagues. If your site and offerings don’t appeal to them, it isn’t going to matter a whit what us other Virtual Assistants think.

If you are running a business (and not a hobby or freelance sideline), you want to design your site to be attractive and appealing (both visually and content-wise) on all levels to your specific target market and ideal client. That information should come from your market/field research efforts.

There are lots of ways to go about doing that:

1. First, identify a target market as well as profile your ideal client. Once you know who you are talking to and trying to attract, can you begin to understand specifically, in great detail, what colors, shapes, fonts and other visual elements appeal to their collective, professional tastes and sensibilities, what their unique business problems are, how to craft your offerings in a way that most resonates with them, and how to speak and write in their “language.” You can’t do that if your audience is anyone and everyone.  

2. Obtain market research about your target market from a company that specializes in that work.  

3. See if you can get your hands on some surveys conducted by your target market’s professional associations.  

4. Look at some of the more professional looking sites of those in your target market and look for common themes, visual personalities and design elements. Model your site after the mood, look and colors. For example, is it a market that has a more serious, studious bent or is it one where whimsy and fun are welcome? If you are trying to appeal to a serious audience, they are not generally going to be attracted (or have confidence in) a site that feels more like a circus sideshow than a credible business they can confidently give work to.  

5. I consider this one THE biggest, most important step: TALK TO YOUR TARGET MARKET.
   This absolutely astonishes me, but I can’t believe how many Virtual Assistants NEVER make any effort to actually talk to people who work in the industries and fields from which they are seeking to obtain as clients. It’s absolutely insane NOT to talk to your target market.

   And I do mean target market—NOT ideal client. You can find ideal clients in all walks of life, but the only thing that will give you the path you need to find and understand clients most quickly and easily is to have a very specific, defined target market. It’s what will also give your site and offerings the absolute greatest level of clarity, meaning, resonance and attraction.

   That is the thing that is going to open up a path and give you the greatest clarity and direction for knowing who you are talking to, how to talk to them and what they want from you and how to frame your offerings for them.

   Once you know that, go about making friends with some folks in that market and ask them for their advice and opinions and ideas for creating a site that is going to be attractive to others in that same field. Have lunch with them. Invite them to be on your advisory panel. Probe them about the obstacles and loads they have in running their business. Develop feedback forms and online surveys for them in order to get the information you need to most effectively develop your offerings and marketing to them.

This is work that is going to yield a gold mine of information that is not only going to put you head and shoulders above other Virtual Assistants, but also allow you to provide very intentioned administrative solutions of great value that you can very appropriately charge handsomely for.