Marketing your VA Business in 2026 when it feels quiet

It’s tough out there right now

If your enquiries have dried up in 2026, you are not imagining it and you are not on your own. I hear it every week from VAs in the Membership and in The VA Help Desk: clients cutting hours, prospects going quiet after a discovery call, and a nagging worry that AI is about to take the work we do.

When it goes quiet, the instinct is to do more. Post every day, join another five Facebook groups, learn Reels, re-write your website, redo the logo. I understand the panic, but being busy is not the same as marketing. A lot of the advice out there is designed to keep you busy rather than booked.

I have been running my own business and coaching VAs for over 14 years. The VAs who keep a full diary when the market tightens are not the loudest ones. They are clear about who they help, they show up consistently in the right places, and people trust them. Here is what that looks like in practice.

1. Stop marketing to other VAs

This is the one I see most often, and it is the easiest to fix. Look at your last ten posts. How many were about your favourite tools, your morning routine or tips for new VAs? Lovely content, but it is written for your peers, and your peers are not going to hire you.

The same goes for where you spend your time. If most of your online hours are in VA groups, you are networking with your competition. That has its place for support and learning, but it is not client acquisition.  I recommend joining two groups – The Society of Virtual Assistants and The VA Help Desk.

Your ideal client is not lying awake wondering which project management tool you prefer. They are wondering how they ended up answering emails at 9pm on a Sunday. Write as if you are talking to  that person.

2. Be clear about who you help

“I help small businesses with admin” is not a marketing message. It is a shrug. It asks the reader to work out whether you are relevant to them, and most people will not bother.

Compare that with “I help independent financial advisers keep on top of client paperwork and compliance admin, so they can spend more time with clients.” The right person reads that and thinks, “That’s me.” Everyone else scrolls on, and that is fine.

I know choosing a niche feels risky when work is thin. It feels like you are turning people away. You are not choosing a niche here – you are talking to a person. You are making it easier for the right people to find you and easier for everyone else to refer you. If you are not sure yet, look at your current and past clients. Who did you enjoy working with, where did you get the best results, and who paid without quibbling?

Then write one sentence:

I help [who] with [what problem] so they can [what outcome].

Put it on your LinkedIn headline, your website, your email signature and your networking introduction. If someone has to read three paragraphs to work out what you do, you have lost them. (I call this passing the oh shit test!)

3. Start with the people who already know you

When work goes quiet, most VAs head straight for strangers on the internet. Your best leads are far more likely to come from people who already know, like and trust you: former colleagues, old managers, friends, past clients, the other parents at the school gate, the people you volunteer with.

Most of them have no real idea what you do. They know you “work from home doing admin” and that is about it. So tell them, properly and personally. Not a group post announcing you are open for business, but a short message to one person at a time saying who you help, what you help with, and that you would be grateful for an introduction if they know someone who fits.

The same goes for clients you already have. If they are happy, ask them for a referral, and be specific. “Do you know anyone who needs a VA?” gets a polite “I’ll have a think.” “Do you know another adviser who is drowning in compliance paperwork?” gets a name.

Build relationships with people who serve the same clients as you but do not compete with you: bookkeepers, web designers, accountants, business coaches. They meet your ideal clients every week. Make sure they know exactly who to send your way.

4. Go where your clients are, and be useful when you get there

Work out where your ideal clients talk about their businesses. It might be LinkedIn, a local business network, an industry association, a Facebook group for coaches or a membership for small business owners. Pick two or three, not twelve.

Then listen before you speak. What do people keep asking about? What are they struggling with? What words do they use to describe it? That is free market research, and it should shape everything you write.

When you do join in, be the person who helps, not the person who pitches. Answer the question properly. Share how you would tackle the problem. Nobody hires the VA who drops “DM me!” under every post. They hire the one who has shown, over and over, that she understands their world.  The one who comments and builds relationships.

And please follow up. I cannot tell you how many VAs have a great conversation, send one message and then go silent because they “didn’t want to be pushy”. People are busy. They miss messages. They mean to reply and forget. A polite follow-up a week or two later is not pushy, it is professional, and it is often the message that gets the reply.

5. Show your proof

Anyone can say they are organised, reliable and proactive. Every VA website in the country says it. What makes a prospect pick up the phone is seeing someone else say it about you.

If you have clients, ask them for a testimonial, and make it easy. Ask what life was like before you started, what you took off their plate and what difference it made. “She’s amazing, highly recommend” is nice to receive but does very little. “She took over my inbox and diary and I got my Friday afternoons back” sells.

If you are new and do not have clients yet, you can still show what you can do. Pick a type of business you want to work with and build a sample of the work: a client onboarding process for a coach, an inbox system for a consultant, a content calendar for a small shop. Explain the problem, what you did and why. Be honest that it is a sample. It still shows a prospect how you think, which is worth far more than a list of software you know.

6. Make it a routine, not a panic

Most VAs only market when the work dries up. Then they land a client, get busy, stop marketing, and three months later they are back where they started. Feast and famine is not bad luck. It is what happens when marketing is a panic response rather than part of how you run your business.

This is exactly what we work on in the VA Membership, and we use a handful of simple frameworks to make it stick:

• Dream 100: a named list of the businesses you most want to work with, so you stop marketing to “everyone” and start building relationships with real people.
• Momentum Hour: one protected hour of client-getting activity, done before the rest of the day gets hold of you.
• Battle Rhythm: a weekly routine that balances winning new work, looking after the clients you have, and proper time off, so marketing has a place in your week whether you are busy or not.
• The 7Ps: proper planning before you act, because a bit of preparation saves a lot of wasted effort.

None of these are complicated. That is the point. They work because they are simple enough to keep doing when you are tired, busy or fed up, which is when most marketing plans fall apart.

And you do not do it on your own. Members get weekly group coaching, weekly co-working, over 200 hours of training and me nagging them to actually do the thing. Accountability is often the difference between knowing what to do and doing it.

The bottom line

You do not need to be everywhere, go viral or post every day. You need to give an appearance of being omnipresent but more importantly you need to be clear about who you help, talk to the people who already know you, turn up where your clients are, show your proof and keep going when it feels slow. Do that week in, week out, and when the right business owner finally thinks “I need help with this”, yours is the name that comes to mind.

It is a tough market right now, but good VAs who market with intent are still getting booked. Be you, be awesome, and keep going.

Want some help with this?

If you are just starting out, the VA Momentum Course gives you the foundations to set up properly and find your first clients, with bespoke feedback on every module and 12 months of VA Membership included.

If you are already established and the work has gone quiet, the VA Membership gives you the frameworks, weekly coaching and accountability to get your marketing back on track. You can try it for £30.

Not sure which fits? Book a call and we will work it out together.