The Savvy Entrepreneur

Welcome to this edition of Weekly VA Marketing Tip! This series is specifically designed to help virtual assistants avoid marketing insanity.  Every Monday, my posts will prompt you to accomplish one specific marketing action to promote, brand or position your professional virtual business.

Implement these tips each week and I guarantee you’ll sustain your marketing momentum, increase credibility and visibility in your field, build stronger relationships, boost your ‘know, like and trust factor,’ get more ideal clients looking for you, and have a consistent marketing game plan for your virtual assistant business.

You might even start to like marketing!

Bundle Up

Bundling is a marketing strategy where you offer 2 or more products, and present them as one package at a discount, bonus or flat fee.

Bundling is a brilliant strategy to marketing your virtual assistance services, especially if you’re constantly justifying your hourly fee or defending the hours you spent on a project.

For starters not many Virtual Assistants are doing it. This positions you as an appealing alternative from all the other hourly-fee-only VAs — a welcome and refreshing change, indeed.

Secondly, it can turn the most hesitant of prospects into paying clients. A few reasons (benefits?) are:

• They no longer fret or fear about how many hours you’re spending on their tasks.
• They know exactly what they are getting and how much it’s going to cost them.
• It gives them a sense of security and will be more willing to send work your way.
• It’s a more tangible getting-to-know-you offering (as opposed to a dollar amount or percentage discount).

Finally, you don’t have to punch the clock. As you get better and more efficient, you’ll spend less time and get the same fee.

So how exactly does a Virtual Assistant go about bundling her services to attract new prospects or keep existing clients? Here are a few bundle ideas to get you started:

• Pre-pay a 3-months retainer, get 1-year SpamArrest (or other software subscription) free.
• First-time clients securing 5 hours or more, get a $25 Amazon (or other popular) gift card.
• Pay for three teleclass transcriptions, get the fourth free.
• Buy business name + logo + tagline, receive 1000 business cards for $50.
• Purchase a WordPress blog upgrade, get your choice of 3 new plugins installed at no extra charge.
• Update 4 social media profiles, get a 50% discount on a custom Twitter background.

The secret to making bundles work is that all parts of the bundle must be of value to your audience. Don’t give away something they could have received for free elsewhere.

You can also try packaging your services for a flat fee. For example, how much would you charge a client for doing the following:

• Submit 7 articles (or press releases) to the top 10 online article (or press release) directories
• SEO package (come up with your own variations)
• Social Media package (come up with your own variations)
• Branding package (come up with your own variations)
• Create, submit and track 3 Google Ads
• Schedule publication of up to 25 pre-written blog posts per month
• Solopreneur 6 month bookkeeping package (come up with your own variations)
• Pre- and Post-Teleclass package (come up with your own variations)
• Media kit package (come up with your own variations)

In my opinion, packaging your VA services is a key element to “tangibilizing” what you do. How?

Instead of trying to come up with clever ways to answer the what-does-a-Virtual-Assistant-do question, you can say something like: “I can build a professional-looking website and blog from scratch AND teach you how to do your own updates for only $800.”

Isn’t that easier than trying to explain how you can handle all their admin tasks for less than an employee would cost?

Now it’s your turn:

1. Come up with three bundles or packages you could offer today.
   Hint: Choose three things you love doing the most.
2. Define exactly what is and what is not included.
   Hint: Spend more time on what IS included.
3. Crunch your numbers and come up with a flat-fee for at least one.
   Hint #1: Give yourself a raise FIRST, then crunch your numbers.
   Hint #2: Add a 25-50% time buffer.
4. Spread the word. Call or email past and current clients to let them know about your “new” services, talk about them on your blog, add them as a news items in your newsletter, add them to your Services page on your website.
   Hint: Create a product page per offering, add a Buy Now button for each and send people to those specific pages.
5. Test and tweak to find the perfect combos.
   Hint: ‘Perfect’ means it’s a win-win for both you and the client.

There you have it. I could go on, but it would only keep you from getting on with this week’s marketing tip.

Let me know how this one works out for you!!