Word of Mouth Works So Treat Your Clients Well

Many may not know but one of my websites www.VAnetworking.com recently had a mention on the Dr. Phil website as one of the top ways to make money online by becoming a Virtual Assistant. It is amazing how traffic from a television show like this can boost your service sales overnight. I never would have imagined it but here I am booked solid for the next two months with no room for new clients until the New Year! As a Virtual Assistant for many years, anticipation of this day has always been in the back of my mind pushing me more and more every working minute to achieve this success. I am here…YEAH! So many have asked me, how did you get on the Dr. Phil show's website?

Word of mouth. I have a monthly retainer client who is a coach that I have been working with for about 3 years now. I have always went over and beyond for this client, giving my extra mile in all the work I do for him. If he called on Friday at 5pm right minutes before my closing hours and needed another ˝ hours work in an emergency, I would typically get it done for him. However, he has always respected my time and never abused it.

This client also happens to work in an industry wherein many of his colleagues have Fortune 500 businesses and many other unique connections and networks throughout the business and press world.

One day I got a call from one of his clients he referred me to work with who asked me "in 4 days, one of my clients is going to be on Dr. Phil show and they need their website to be ready for it, can you do it?" The first thing I thought was "NOWAY! There is just not enough time to pull this off" yet instead, I mulled it over for a few, asked her a few more questions and said, "sure, let's get this done for you!" I had 4 business days to make this work and yes, I worked my weekend to gain a few extra hours forgoing a Saturday night out at the movies to put more time in for this client. It was hectic and tiring but in the end, everything came together as planned and worked for my clients.

The first couple of days I spent on making their website more usable. I changed the navigation around to make it easier for the user to surf their way through to find the content they were looking for. I re-organized their storefront to funnel in the visitors from the Dr. Phil show and entice users to buy their books easier. This helped my clients make extra money from this high traffic flow. I also set up a strategic newsletter signup area to collect names for their database for future marketing ventures. In a nutshell, I made their website become something that was more usable and would easily convert into dollars for them.

The last couple of days were spent on publicity and marketing to others online to come and watch their show on Dr. Phil at the end of the week to help their ratings. To do this meant we needed banners all over the place online like yesterday! Yet how could I get banners in such a short time period? That was when I realized that the website itself still didn't have any sticky power and I needed that to keep people at the website to eventually entice them into buying product. Sticky power is anything from contests to articles of interest that keep your readers attention at your website to discover everything you have to offer to them. People love information on the net and what better way to keep them on my client's website than to feed them lots of relevant information (articles) to their desires. Being that the traffic from this Dr. Phil show would all be related to working moms, I decided to ask other high traffic websites that target towards working moms to let me put my client's banner on their website and in exchange, I would put their article with their contact information on my client's website. My client would get more traffic through the banners to watch them on Dr. Phil show and my colleagues would get exposure to their business by people reading their articles from the high traffic from the Dr. Phil show. It was a win/win for both.

In the end, not only were my clients thrilled with my work but my business colleagues whose articles were used to help out in this marketing plan were smiling as well. The high traffic from this television show filled everyone's email boxes to the brim with inquiries and sales. We even had over 30,000 votes on a contest we were offering.

The success of this marketing plan put my services as a Virtual Assistant in high demand. On a business level of success, I could not have asked for more. I can now pick and choose my clients and what a wonderful feeling this is.

All this occurred because of one thing. Word of mouth. Want to be remembered by someone else as a Virtual Assistant? Then always go that extra mile:

When they say "it can't be done!", you say "Let's start at noon today!"

When they say "we need it done in 2 weeks", you say "Here's your completed project, done 3 days early."

When they say "Can you do it for $50 per hour?, you say "Yes and if you pay for 10 hours in advance, I'll throw in free faxing and long distance calls."

Go the extra mile for your clients and reap the rewards with more business which means more money in your pocket!

Tawnya Sutherland, founder of Virtual Assistant Networking (VAN) (www.vanetworking.com) and author of The VAS System, a Virtual Assistant Startup System, is a Certified Internet Marketing Specialist sharing much of her online marketing experience at VAN to help aspiring and successful VAs turn clicks into cash at their websites. Contact her at tawnya@mediamage.com.