How to Use Your Book as a Marketing Tool
Your book is a marketing tool—not the thing you market. Most business book authors make the mistake of trying to market their book. For almost all of our authors, they see a book getting them one of six basic things:
Raise Visibility/Profile — books can increase visibility in any number of ways, like making it easier to gain media exposure or raise your profile in your niche.
Increase Authority/Credibility — books help an author establish authority and gain credibility within their field, especially when the author reaches Bestseller rankings!
Get New Clients/Opportunities — books can easily help generate new business and other opportunities across a variety of platforms and venues in multiple ways.
Speaking Engagements — a book is almost a necessity for becoming a paid speaker, or often getting booked for any public speaking at all.
Leave a Legacy — a book can help establish a legacy and pass your story on to others.
Impact Others — this is somewhat covered by the first question, but you could put it here as well. For some authors, this is often the main benefit to them. They either do not care about what they’ll get from their book, or they care about that only as a secondary benefit. Note that for any book to be effective, it has to impact others—it’s just that authors place a much higher emphasis on this than others.
When you do one of those six things (or several of them,) then your book can make you passive money in a lot of different ways. Don’t be mistaken, every author would like to sell a lot of books. But of course, that’s only a bonus, not the end goal.
Book marketing is a long-term process—not a single event. Set the Foundation for Your Marketing: The purpose of this stage is to set the foundation for your book marketing and capitalize on early opportunities.
Step 1: Get Support from Your Connections – They don’t need to be celebrities: focus on people who host podcasts, write for media outlets, have a large social media following, or run groups of any sort. Anyone that you know who has an audience that overlaps with your book audience.
Step 2: Prepare Amazon for Book Release – Set yourself up for success by being organized, creating email lists and routes for new subscribers via your book’s website.
Step 3: Secure Early Amazon Reviews – Get immediate reviews from direct friends and family. Make a list of close friends and family who would be willing to leave a review. Reach out to each of these people with a free PDF of the book and a clear ask to leave an Amazon review.
Step 4: Engage Your Network – Post on social media, individually message people with large networks, and email all your LinkedIn connections.
Step 5: Build Your Book into Your Assets – Add your book to your email signature, social media profiles, and your bio on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Include an image of the book in your banners for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Add the book as a publication on your LinkedIn.
Step 6: Order 50–100 copies of your book – Leave them next to your desk with a big, thick Sharpie and a stack of manila envelopes. Send them out to new connections and bring them to meetings. The point is to give away as many as possible.
Remember the goal: you are using your book as a marketing tool to promote yourself, and that can happen over a long period. The more you use the book to raise your visibility, the easier it becomes to get more opportunities.
Learn how to master these marketing concepts with Elite Online Publishing’s Consulting programs, or join us for a VIP Book Content Creation Day for 1-on-1 expert coaching.
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