5 Easy Steps to Find Your Niche as a Virtual Assistant
One of the first things you need to do as a new Virtual Assistant is decide what services you want to offer.
The freedom you have as a VA means you have plenty of options on the type of business you can create… Do you want to offer administrative services, technical services, or creative services?
Finding your niche can help you focus your business and help you make the right decision for you.
What Does ‘Niche’ Mean?
As a Virtual Assistant, niching down comes in two parts:
- Niching the services you offer
- Niching down on who you work with or who your ideal client is
For example, you could offer social media services to lifestyle coaches or administrative services for HR professionals.
You can get as specific as you want, but niching down helps you to focus your business, create a more effective strategy and attract more clients.
It can be easy to get stuck on this part and spend hours agonising over where to begin, so to help you get started here’s 5 easy steps to help you find your niche as a Virtual Assistant.
Step One: What Are You Good At?
The best place to start is by niching down on your current skills, so start with identifying what those are.
You already have natural abilities and experience, expertise and skills you’ve gained from previous roles. Throughout your life you have picked up transferable skills or even knowledge on certain software and systems that you can offer to other business owners.
Identifying what those skills are can be a great starting point for figuring out your services as a VA.
Step Two: What Do You Enjoy?
What you’re good at and what you enjoy aren’t necessarily the same thing.
You might love to be creative but have just never had the chance to utilise it in previous jobs. As a Virtual Assistant you could offer social media services, create assets on Canva or photoshop, or offer web design services.
Think about what you really love to do, or previous client work you have enjoyed.
Remember, as a Virtual Assistant you can build your business to suit you so make a list of everything you want to offer as a service.
Step Three: Who Do You Want to Work With?
By walking through your ideal client and who you want to work with, you can dig deeper into the problems they have and the services you can offer to solve them.
Think about what industry they’re in, what keeps them up at night, what their daily tasks are… this can help you build a list of possible services.
If you aren’t clear on who you want to work with yet, think about the things you’re good at and enjoy doing. Who has the problems those services can solve?
Step Four: Do Your Research
Make sure to do your research and look at what is – or isn’t – on offer in the online space. Competition isn’t always a bad thing but it’s important to be aware of what’s already out there.
If there are people already solving the problems you are… Is there any way you can differentiate your offering from those offering similar services? What will make you unique and stand out from the crowd?
Step Five: Combine Everything You Have Identified
Once you have looked at what’s out there and identified what you’re good at, what you enjoy and who you want to work with, you can use your answers to make a clear and concise decision about your niche.
If there’s something you love doing, but there are gaps in your skill set, you can start to teach yourself the things you need to become an expert in your chosen niche!
Don’t let yourself get stuck on your decision. Your niche will evolve over time, so start broad and keep refining as your business continues to grow and you get a clearer idea of the services you love.
If you have been considering becoming your own boss and launching your VA business, I’m running a free webinar on ‘How To Get Started With Your VA Business’.
In this one-hour session I’ll be covering the key points of what it takes to launch your own VA business.
You will get an honest walk through on how much you can earn, how long it can take to land your first client, what you need to get started, as well as the legal essentials you must have to protect yourself and your clients.
It will be an informative but informal session with plenty of time at the end to ask questions and everyone who registers will receive a recording of the session.
