Many entrepreneurs are aware of the time-saving support they receive from outsourcing tasks to a reliable virtual assistant. But did you know that you can hire a VA to help you generate leads for your business?
Entrepreneurs managing the day-to-day needs of current clients or launching products find it time-consuming to generate business leads. In the midst of running a busy company, especially as a solopreneur, do you really have time to collect data, check contacts and create a database for leads?
Developing a list of people genuinely interested in purchasing your goods and services requires patience, experience and a little ingenuity. For your virtual assistant to be effective with this task, they must have brilliant people skills, problem-solving strategies, and strategic internet research experience.
From collecting data to verifying contact information, creating a solid database consisting of people who are genuinely interested in purchasing your goods and services requires patience and experience.
Note: This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission if you use them. I only recommend tools that I use and trust.
Here are 5 ways your virtual assistant can generate leads:
1. Common Business Lead Generation Tasks
Chances are, you have several methods of gathering leads, from direct mail to website landing pages with opt-in freebies. This alone can easily be a full-time job! So instead of trying to manage this task, why not hire a virtual assistant to do the bulk of the work for you?
Making the task of generating leads for your VA easier by creating a list of specific tasks with deadlines. Below are some ideas to get you started:
- Manage email lists, including email sequences
- Dedicate three days per month to cold calling customers
- Responding to comments and queries on social media pages
- Contacting prospective clients and customers directly by email or phone
- Monitor social media and other online content at the beginning of each day to ensure a quick response.
- Create an email sequence that sends correspondence to your leads from your lead generating funnels (If you are looking for a powerful email marketing tool with landing pages, my recommendation is ConvertKit!*)
Additionally, If your VA has an “eye” for design, they are able to create marketing materials and send them out.
Creating a well defined lead generation schedule helps you and your VA maintain a positive relationship with new and existing clients / customers, now and into the future.
Making the task of generating leads for your VA easier by creating a list of specific tasks with deadlines. I’ve created a Success Planning Sheet for your use. Click below to access your planning sheet to get you started!
2. Researching New Leads
What’s the point of having a hundred new leads if most of them don’t result in new business?
Before spending time and money courting potential clients and customers, ask your VA to conduct online research to determine how your services or products may interest and support current leads.
Knowing more about a lead – such as the industry or company they work for, rank within a company, services and products they offer can usually tell you if the lead is worth pursuing or not.
3. Build a Contact Database
Building a lead contact database complete with full names, phone numbers, email addresses, business websites and even physical business addresses will help in maintaining regular contact with potential clients and customers. Your VA can complete this task as well as creating specifically focused email lists. This allows you to send mass emails in a more personalized and strategic way.
As additional leads come in, your VA can simply update these databases. Your VA can also go through the database periodically to delete or update contact information, as necessary.
4. Create Marketing Materials and Lead Capture Funnels
In addition to following up on leads coming from your website, social media pages or from face-to-face meetings, your VA can also help create marketing materials, edit journal articles, post blog entries, and update webpages to generate interest in your business.
Depending on the specific skills and experience your VA has, they may even be able to design webpages or graphics, create business apps and offer suggestions for other ways to generate leads.
One tool that you can use to create robust lead capture forms is ClickFunnels.* The website based application allows you to create 2-step funnels immediately with a link to email marketing tool to capture email addresses. Side note – ClickFunnels is a powerful sales funnel tool! Lead capture forms are the very minimum of what it has to offer. If you would like to test it out for free, sign up for a 14-day free trial of ClickFunnels here!
Just be aware that VAs with this skill set charge higher fees because of their ability to strategically and implement such plans using such tools.
5. Maintain Regular Contact with Your Leads
After creating lead generation funnels and building relationships on social media, it is important to maintain regular contact with viable leads to remain at the forefront of their sight lines. Creating a communication and marketing plan, such as a monthly newsletter, for your VA to work on will keep these valuable relationships intact. Developing a quarterly plan combined with email, social media posts, and direct mail marketing is typically more than enough to keep new and existing clients and customers aware of your products or services.
So when hiring a VA to help you increase your flow of business leads, it’s important to find a person with brilliant people skills and extensive experience!
Most of all, if you are looking for virtual assistant services for lead generation, contact us!
Don’t forget to pick up Ms. Virtual Maven’s Success Planning Sheet!
*This post contains affiliate links.
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Great tips. These tasks would take a ton of time if we try to do them all ourselves
Yes! That’s why it’s great to have a VA that is knowledgeable in lead generation.
How long would you recommend giving a VA to complete similar tasks? For example, how long would you say you would give a VA to do #2?
It can take a couple of hours to complete such a task depending on the size of the list. The goal is to share services or products to the appropriate clients.
Would be great to get to the stage of having a VA !!
It might be closer than you think! A VA can take away a lot of the tasks that are consuming your time and profit-generating abilities. There is no way to get more clients if you are swamped with operational business tasks.