Got a virtual assistant niche?
Got a virtual assistant niche?
Finding your virtual assistant niche can be key to the success of your VA business.
With 68.9%* of our SuperVAs (those earning a replacement PA salary of £20k+) and 60.4%* of Established VAs (those in business for 5+ years) having a niche, successful specialisms can supercharge your VA business.
Why is finding your virtual assistant niche key?
Firstly, it lets you get away from price comparisons… So if you are THE dental VA or THE Infusionsoft specialist, it’s a great marketing tactic to get people coming to you. Not only that, they aren’t going to quibble about how much you charge – they are paying for your expertise.
Secondly it makes it a lot easier to find those clients – your marketing will have a lot less wastage, the more targeted you can make it. So for example, let’s say you specialise in legal audio transcription, rather than targeting all the businesses in the UK (a huge data purchase and difficult to effectively follow up) you could narrow your search criteria to:
- lawyers
- based at home or in small office environments (so unlikely to have in house staff)
- who have at least £XXX,000 turnover a year (ensuring they can afford your fees!)
It also lets you speak to them in their language – if you know all the jargon and buzzwords, you’ll be able to use them in your marketing and communicate to them that you know their business.
When is having a virtual assistant niche NOT a good idea?
VAs are sometimes reluctant to have a niche “in case it puts people off”. You can easily have specific pages for specific industries/services that you offer.
However there is a couple of things to consider about having a virtual assistant niche:
- What happens if the market goes dead?
Talk to some VAs who specialised in property work circa 2007/2008, and they will tell you how having a niche killed their business. Overnight, suddenly there was no work and all their marketing, all their clients and all their experience was geared towards servicing just one industry. Back then trainers told VAs specifically that they should be specialising in just one area to improve their marketing…
Now the advice is to make sure you have 2-3 niches, so that might be the same skillset (i.e. typing, as in the example above) but you might target lawyers, journalists doing celebrity interviews and online content producers looking to type up captions for videos/webcasts. Same skill, totally different industries. Or it might be that your niches are totally different skills – which offers some protection if, for example, voice recognition software improves to the point it can cope with different accents and background noise.
How can I protect my virtual assistant business?
Try to have no more than 50% of your income coming from one industry or 30% of your income from any one client.
How to find your virtual assistant niche?
Look at skills you already have – have you worked in a particular industry? Or do you use a set of skills suited to a particular kind of client? SVA has run a series of interviews with special VAs on their virtual assistant niches over the years which might inspire you!
Or, here are just some of 2017’s virtual assistant niches (no particular order!):
Legal secretarial
Court work
Creative Businesses
Automotive Aftermarket
Healthcare Businesses
Recruitment
Business support
Handmade small business
Diary Management
Transcription Medical
Copywriting and proofreading
Design
Farming
Organising workshops and events for coaches and consultants
Administration Paperwork
Agricultural
PowerPoint Presentations
Education
Building Surveying
Wellbeing
Social Media
Marketing
Pure PA work
Full Business Support service
Research
Audio transcription
Financial Services Admin
Intelligent first port of call
Trades
Minute taking
Construction Industry
Video animations
Medical secretary
Knowledge of business coaching industry
Web & Graphic Design
Bookkeeping
Professional CV Writer
Commercial property sector
Environmental Science
CRM Systems
Copyediting & proofreading
Company Secretarial services
Wellbeing industry
Accountability courses
Events
Service-based small business
Social enterprise
Import & Export
Aviation Security
New Energy
Public Tender
Languages
Database administration
HR
Social media
bilingual service
Customer Service
Transport
Road Haulage
Project Management
Female Entrepreneurs
Email Marketing
Bookkeeping & Social Media
Construction industry
Oil & Gas Industry
Recruitment
Minute taking
Excel
Board Secretary
Infusionsoft
Activecampaign
Event management
Management Consultants
Exec Coaches
On-site admin
Health services
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Entrepreneurs
Science and engineering
Medical
Video Transcription
Bookkeeping
Mental Health
Private Equity
Women in Health & Fitness
Wind Industry
Legal Research
Blogging
Organising processes
Online marketing
Tech support
Food businesses
Further reading: Specialist Virtual Assistant Niches
Purchase UK VA Survey – £25 from https://societyofvirtualassistants.co.uk/va-products
* Details from UK VA Survey v8