More Business

Stuart: Foreign. Welcome back. This is Susan Austin and Stuart Bell for the book More show. Welcome, Stuart.

Guest: Hey, Susan. How you doing?

Stuart: Fabulous. So I'm excited about today's call because we're going to talk about begin with the end in mind. And a lot of times I think authors don't have a clear vision when they start to write a book of how they're going to use the book to attract clients. And I think if we could simplify that for them or at least paint a better picture for them, Stuart, about what that process could look like in real life examples and with real dollars. And I think it'll incentivize them to get excited about a different kind of book versus maybe writing the book they had originally in mind. And so I'll just jump right in, Stuart, if that's okay with you, and share an example of someone that's used their book to generate over $150,000 in sales in the first 90 days of having his book completed. And so is that okay with you, Stuart?

Guest: Yeah, definitely. I think it's great diving in with some real world examples. Really give something for people to sink their teeth into.

Stuart: Yeah, very good. And so this guy wrote a book, Stuart, and in his own words, the COVID design is not that great. There's probably a couple typos in the book. He has it up on Amazon and there are no Amazon reviews. So this is not a case of trying to become an Amazon best seller. This is the other side of that coin where we don't care about becoming an Amazon bestseller because at the end of the day, although it's nice if you could become one, it's not going to hurt you. But we kind of are from the other side of that coin that says, hey, rather than try to get your name out there and become sort of promote yourself, promote your book, how great would it be for your business if instead you got people to give share their information with you? So it's kind of almost the complete opposite approach. So this guy puts his book up on Amazon, but what he really does, which is really fascinating to me and what I wanted to share with the listeners is, is he does Facebook ads. And I know some people have heard of Facebook ads, some people have done them, some people haven't. But I just want to kind of spell out for you guys the way he uses his book. And he has a program, an add on program that sells for about $4,000. So what he wants to do is have you read his book and then you join his coaching program. But it's very rare that someone's gonna read a book on Tuesday and write a check for someone to $4,000. So here's his approach and I think it's really fascinating. He pays Facebook students about $1,000 a month to run ads for his book. And from that he conservatively, in his own words, gets about 300 new leads on his mailing list. And from those 300 new leads, about 5% sign up for a strategy session with him. They jump on a call with him to further discuss to see whether they're a good fit for his program. And I think that's kind of a common model. Pete, that's not an unheard of model, wouldn't you say, where you're trying to get people, rather than just write you a check, get on a call with them and see if they like you, see if you guys connect, see if you can work together. I don't think that's unheard of.

Guest: I think, as you say, it's quite. When we change the kind of the lead in at the top from a book to an ad or mailing, then I think that's quite common. We talk about. If anyone doesn't yet have a copy of the Breakthrough DNA book, I'll put that in the show notes for this episode. Show notes can be found at 90minutebooks.com forward/during podcast, forward slash. I think this is going to be episode zero and I'll put a link in there to the Breakthrough DNA book which talks of exactly this. It's identifying that single target market. It's creating a way for them to raise their hand as interested and then patiently educating them and motivating them towards taking the first step with you and making that first step what Dean calls the mafia offer. Making it a way that's low commitment, easy for them to get started. It's not like you're asking them to write that big check from day one. I think it's a great model to slowly start that engagement piece, leading someone towards taking a bigger step.

Stuart: Yeah. And in this example that I'm going to finish sharing in a moment, his first step is actually very quick and it's actually very dynamic and it's actually very profitable. So it doesn't always have to be a six month drawn out process because what happens is he pays Facebook $1,000 and he puts. And the nice thing about Facebook, he doesn't talk about this much, Stuart. But you can tailor that very specifically to certain zip codes to, you know, business owners that make over 700. I mean, it's Pretty sophisticated stuff, this Facebook ad. And so it's not like he's just randomly putting it on people's feeds. He's targeting his, his, his book to the people that are most likely to raise their hand and say they want that book. And that's a really, really nice feature about Facebook that a lot of other, you know, areas for advertising don't quite let you dial it in that much. But from that thousand dollars, he gets 300 people, conservatively, that raise their hand and download that book. And basically when they're doing that, Stuart, they're saying, hey, I'm interested in this. I want what you have to offer. And of those 300 new leads, 5% then go for one step further and say, yes, I'd like to jump on a call with you. And they're serious, they're ready to get started. And, you know, the other 95% of those 300 aren't ready. Maybe they'll be ready in next month, next quarter, next year. Not like they're dead leads, but of those 300, 5% are ready to get started right now. And of course, most authors, that's what they care about, the people that are ready to work right now. So that gets him 15 new sessions a month of people that are interested in working with him. So of those 15, he does these free coaching sessions with them. One out of four turn out to be a great fit for the program. The other three just aren't a great fit, or maybe they're not a great fit now. And it's a $4,000 program, so about four new clients a month at $4,000 each, that's 15,000 every month. You multiply that times 12, Stuart, and you get 180,000. You backtrack the 12,000 that you gave to Facebook and you're now sitting on $168,000 from a 50 page book. That's not a bad return on investment for someone. And, and I think he used really conservative numbers. I'm saying you could potentially, you know, pay Facebook more and get more number. You know what I mean? Like, it's a formula that Dean always talks about. It's kind of like a vending machine. You could. The more money you put in, the more money you get out kind of a thing. But he. It's really nice to be able to have something. And a lot of people may be listening to that, thinking, oh, this doesn't apply to me. It doesn't apply to my. And I'm gonna call him out on that and say, if you haven't tried it. How do you know? You know, And I just think that's a different way of using their book. Rather than the I'm gonna send it all to my client, I'm gonna send a copy to my clients in hopes that they're gonna send it to their friends and colleagues. And that may happen. And I'm not saying don't do that, but why not use this book in a totally different manner than you had anticipated and play around with it and see what happens?

Guest: I think that's a great example. Like you say, it's not that the other ideas are bad ideas, it's just that this one might. We were talking about in the last show, talking about making the boat go faster. This might be one of the most effective ways of generating new business from an asset that you've already got. So if you did start to write the book, write a book, thinking about it in terms of referrals or authority, then using it in this direct response type approach, you already have the asset there. There's already the book written that you already have the electronic version of it. Then why not use it in a particular funnel and make it do a particular job of work? And I think that ties in neatly with what we were talking about last time in how big the book should be in the target market that congruency all the way through the funnel of targeted Facebook ads looking at a specific group of people presenting them with the offer of a free download of a book that answers a question that they're likely to have. And I'll circle back around to intent in a second. But you've offered something to them that's relevant. They've been able to request that and they've been delivered something that's valuable and free. And then the next step in the process is also an easy step, step for them to take. Those that are interested that 5% that are ready to do business or at least ready to engage now give them a very consistent view. If people. I'm going to try not to just spout off too many links here for further reading. But if people go to email mastery. So Dean's book that we wrote on email mastery, we also ran a Facebook campaign for that and had a 30% opt in from the Facebook page through to the. Through to the book page and the copy on the page there, it was entirely consistent. The look and feel of it was identical from the ad to the landing page to the book that they eventually ended up with that consistency all the way through, just again removed any Other friction from the process. So someone who's interested in the first place, their journey all the way through that funnel is nicely aligned. It's thematically similar. It's a logical progression from one step to the next. And just as you said with the vending machine example, this is just putting cash in at the top and getting a known set of leads out of the bottom. And why not keep fishing from that well until the well run dries. It's a fantastic way of engaging people in an easy, non committal way that you know is something that you can execute. The numbers for him aren't too high in terms of volumes. It's not difficult for him to deliver on the promise of the book and the meeting and the call. He knows what his conversion rate and if at some point that changes, then it changes, he can reevaluate. But at the moment, until it stops working, this is a great way of taking something you've created and in a very direct way turning it into. Into specific business.

Stuart: Absolutely.

Guest: I just wanted to quickly mention intent around the ad. So it's interesting when we look at the different platforms and the different job of work of the platforms and how people engage slightly differently on different platforms, it's the context in which they're receiving the information. So one of the easy to understand examples or that highlights the differences is Google search intent versus Facebook ad intent. So there's lots of nuance under the surface of this. But at a high level, what tends to happen in Google or ad based search based search is that people are going out there looking for something. So the ad in a Google sense might be where they're looking for. We were talking about retirement planning last time, so it might be people specifically searching for retirement planning advice or I think it was just after the call we were chatting about it a little bit more and there was another book we have the 2016 Social Security what's changed in Social Security in 2016? So that as an intent based search would be a great ad in that context. So you would advertise for people searching for those key phrases. In Facebook, it's slightly. The context of it is slightly different. So people don't tend to be searching as directly for things, but what Facebook allows you to do is search much more specifically as you mentioned, on demographic type interests or so demographic type information or interest based information. So if for example, it was retirees that you were looking for, then you can target people of a certain age group. If your business is tied to a particular area, then you can geographically narrow it down. If you're a swimming pool filter sales company and you're looking to share a book, talking about pool maintenance or garden design or that type of information, which is less a specific search in Facebook but more of an intent, then you could advertise to people who like a particular brand of product in that area. So you can advertise based on what, what competitors people may have liked. So it gives a whole new dimension, a whole new element of targeting people and presenting them something in a friendly, easy to access way that is separate but more targeted than perhaps the search based searching. So especially when you're offering something like a book, you're given something for free to people. You giving them information that they're likely to be interested in because of the targeting, ideally you'd know your audience so you could target to the right audience. You're offering them something very easy for them to get started. The conversion rates at that early stage are usually pretty high.

Stuart: That's awesome. And I think too that we probably should do a show, Stuart, literally dedicated to Facebook. I don't think, and I don't know a whole lot about the ins and outs behind the scenes. I've just heard from enough authors of some of the success they're having. It's another avenue of getting your book out there. And you may think, well, on Facebook I'm just, I just have family and friends on there. I don't really use my business for Facebook because that seems more social and I'm more serious, you know, and I think there's ways to do it so that because you're not at, you're not advertising your book to your family and friends, you're actually targeting and saying business owners that live within five miles of here, you know, that are a certain age bracket and there's a whole bunch of other demographics that I don't even are aware of. And then you're just going to put the opportunity for them to download the book in front of them and those that are interested are going to raise their hand and from there, you know, you have a follow up email campaign that asks them if they want to jump on a call with you or do they want to talk to someone you know. And so you target your follow up message that's geared towards keeping that, you know, person engaged, getting them excited about getting on a call with you, talking about their, how you can help them solve their problem. And from there then invite them into your coaching program or into your, you know, your practice or whatever it is that you ultimately make your Money doing.

Guest: I think that's a great idea. I've actually got a call next week with one of our authors where we're talking about some of the follow up sequences now that they've written their book. So Facebook's definitely going to be part of that campaign. They're doing something already, but we're going to dial it in quite, quite a lot. So I think in a few weeks time we'll have another very specific case study that we can follow up with talking about Facebook as a platform. And it's always interesting, I mean you get so coming from the position of kind of being behind the curtain on this side, it's easy to forget that not everyone is interested in or has exposure to some of the advertising opportunities. So the point you make there about it being detached from your own Facebook page, your own personal account advertising, Facebook advertising now is completely separate from that as far as the targeting goes. So yeah, just imagine that you could go to a vending machine and dial in that you wanted people of this particular gender in this particular area at this particular age who have liked these particular complementary or competing brands, who have expressed an interest in this particular subject. Put your money in the top of the vending machine and those leads spit out at the bottom. Then all you need to do is dial in your message to make sure that you are making it compelling to that group. Then it can be as automated as the customers that you're requesting can be as automated as just punching in a few numbers into the advertising platform. Obviously the details themselves of getting into the platform, there's a little bit more to it than that. But for people to think about that type of demographic based advertising, putting an offer, a compelling offer in front of someone. Which loops back to last week's subject of kind of the single target market of a book. If you've got, if you are a vet and you do work with dogs and cats and guinea pigs, then you could write a book about animal care. But why not write three books, one about dogs, one about cats, one about guinea pigs. And then when you're targeting, when you're writing the ad copy, when you're targeting groups of people, rather than wasting money on ads to people who aren't going to be interested advertising to people who like animals, you would advertise the dog book to people like dogs. You can imagine dialing it down even further to particular breeds. So you could have the Labrador Guide to Good Health, the Chihuahua Guide to Good Health. If someone see their sat on Facebook again, because Facebook is an intent Based search. People aren't out there searching for particular things. They're just things pass them by. If you're sat there as a Labrador owner, you're much more likely to respond to a book advertising Labrador health versus just dog health. Although you might be interested in the higher level one, the more specific one is really going to push your buttons and to be able to then advertise to that group of people. If you can advertise to Labrador owners with a Labrador book because you've got a Labrador based product, then it's going to be far more effective all the way down. You can imagine, even just from the conversation, that the conversion rate is going to be far higher because it's much more specific to what that person's interest is and the thing that you can offer them.

Stuart: One of our authors, speaking of dogs, wrote a book called Dogs Don't Cry. And it was a very interesting book about how dogs don't, like, by their very nature, because of the way they've evolved. They don't want to show pain because that's a sign of weakness. And in the wild that could mean death. And so they actually are built to hide their pain from you. And so he wrote a book on like the eight signs, the secret signs that dogs are in pain, but they're not letting you know of that pain. Wow, interesting. And at the end of the book, he invites you, he sells a supplement, a natural supplement for dogs that are experiencing some of the hidden pain signals that maybe you weren't first aware of, but now you've read the book and you are aware of it. And I would imagine that would do really well on a Facebook campaign because there are very many, there are many people that are passionate about their dogs and they would be easy to target and find. And there's tons of value in that book. So there may be someone that doesn't order the supplements, but maybe they experience a couple, they see a couple of the signs that their dog has and they take it down to their vet. Well, there's a lot of value generated in that. Maybe they'll never do business with this guy, but this, this vet has helped someone or many someones across the globe figure out how to diagnose their dog, that they're in pain and you need to take them to the vet. And I think that's a great service. And he's going to get a lot of sales from the book too, I'm sure of it.

Guest: It's a great example of one to pick up on and kind of dive into because I think that one does. There's such great examples on that book and I love what James has done. So when we think about what his end business is, his end business is dog vitamins. That's different from the subject of his book. So that's one key takeaway. The aim of the book is to get people within your broader target market to raise their hand as interested in the subject. That doesn't need to be the book title wasn't 10 Ways to Find out how your dog needs if your dog needs vitamins, it was getting his target group to raise the hand by offering them something that they were interested in. So I think that's one key takeaway. The second one is on is on the title. So the title again doesn't talk about how to know if your your dog needs vitamins. Find out why or find out the 10 things why your 10 secret reasons you're killing your dog and you don't even know. It wasn't about that. It was a very compelling title for the audience. Switching it back into the ad campaign, the COVID from memory should go back and check, but I think from memory, the COVID has got several different breeds of dogs on. Now, like I said, I know James. We've spoken a couple of times in the past and we've been at a couple of the same events. I think that he's had a conversation in the past to determine at what level it makes sense for him to advertise by breed versus at the generic, more generic dog level. So I think in other circumstances he is a little bit more breed specific. And if he knows from his data that again, Labradors, if they make up 50% of the population of his audience, then it may well worth tailoring the book in a little bit further to Labrador owners. But the book itself has a couple of different breeds on the COVID The advertising campaign that he does, it doesn't necessarily need to show the exact cover of the book on that particular ad. Or again, we're talking about digital delivery here. And most of the things we've talked about, we're not necessarily talking about physical delivery. So on the one hand, he's got the physical book with several different breeds on the front. What he could do is have a second set of covers made up because the COVID is just the first page of the PDF. So he could get a Labrador cover, a Chihuahua cover, a Rottweiler cover, and then target the books to people who have identified themselves on Facebook as Labrador owners or like Labradors or dog owners generally, and then just Split test the ad cover type and then people who are seeing the ad pass by in their stream as they're going about their daily business. Again, this isn't intent based. This is kind of passive search. If he's able to dial that into Labrador owners and advertise to Labrador owners and then deliver them a digital copy of the book, whether or not it's actually got a Labrador on the COVID or not. I mean, it would be great if it did, but it's not essential. But that ad, the ad is the thing that makes them raise their hand if all of that is dialed in, if all of it's as specific as practical to the funnel that you're trying to engage, the uptake, the retention rate. So the engagement rate, the conversion rate at each stage is going to be far, far higher. So than just having one generic thing that you're trying to advertise to friends and family because you put it on just on your Facebook feed and hope that people kind of pick up on that and do something with it at every stage, that specificity at every stage, from one core thing. And again, last point, but just as you said, that core product, 80% of those people, 90% of those people may never need vitamins for their dogs, but they've still got something valuable. He still collected the leads of people who have dogs and has the opportunity to communicate to them. He still delivered something of value. It's small enough so that he was able to create it pretty quickly. And I mean, in fact, he did the book with us, so he was able to create it with just nine minutes of his time. And it's out there collecting leads rather than the overhead of creating a big book that's trying to cover all of these things and back it up with all this scientific evidence about why dogs need this or dogs need that or chemical compounds and vitamins, none of that. This is just a way of getting passionate people to raise their hand about a subject that they're passionately engaged with. And a number of those will convert, a number of them don't. But there's no incremental. As long as he's not wasting money advertising to people that are definitely never going to convert, then there's no incremental cost in delivering 10 copies versus 100 copies. As soon. As long as you know your numbers, as long as it's worthwhile for those 10 that do convert, then the ones that don't, it doesn't matter. One last point, and then my voice is going to give up. So I'll Let you talk. But the last one was just on that conversion cycle. So we talk about it quite a lot. And again, I think it's in that breakthrough DNA book when we talk about educating and motivating leads towards raising the hand and converting. There was a study done by a seminar group, groups that put on like expos in convention centers where like a home, home improvement expo, that type of thing. So this organization was the organization that organized the expos and then they would follow up with the leads afterwards and they would call them, I forget the details, but it was something like they would call them 15 days, 50 days and 500 days after the event to see if they bought anything from the expo in that period of time. And it was something like 80% of people who bought only bought after about 90 days. So the point of that is to think about the longer conversation with people that it's the minority rather than the majority of people that convert immediately. So we get very focused on that immediate conversion and then forget about nurturing people over time. Certainly we're as guilty as that as everyone else. But just to make the point that in the numbers that we talked about at the beginning of the show, the Guy was putting $1,000 into Facebook generating 300 leads and 5% of those were doing something to convert immediately. The remaining 95% of those people who didn't take that first step, of all of the ones who were going to, the majority of them are going to be over the longer period of time. So just to remind people those immediate conversions are great, but you've also got the opportunity to think about this as the beginning of a long term conversation. You've engaged with people on a subject that they're interested in by writing a book that's valuable to them. It might only be narrow, but it's deep. It's answering that one question that you promised to answer in the best way possible. But you've then got the opportunity to follow up with them and, and have regular communications broadcasts going out to them by email, delivering them more information that they're going to be interested in, giving them opportunities further down the track to convert, reminding people that that conversion opportunity is always there. And we've got, we can have another show talking about that type of thing. But you've collected the lead, the book's done its job in the first place, it's collected the lead. It's the minimum viable commitment. It's that small step to go from the ad to the first piece where you collect their email address and then after that you've got the opportunity to follow up with them, provide more value, continue to be front of mind and at the point when they're ready. Sticking to James's example, a dog owner may have got the book because it kind of pushed their buttons. They were interested in it. Their dog may be perfectly healthy at the moment, but once they've read the book, if the dog starts showing symptoms or they start thinking, you know what, this maybe looks like my dog's crying on the inside, then they've got the opportunity to go back to the book. James is always going to be there as the person that introduced them to that subject in the first place. And if they don't convert on day one, they may convert six months down the track when their dog starts showing symptoms. Or a friend's dog might start showing symptoms and it gives them the opportunity to again be front of mind and get back in. There's another opportunity to engage with people further down the track.

Stuart: Well, and I would imagine if someone's friend, Stuart has a friend, that dog is experiencing some of those symptoms, you're going to step up and say, oh my God, I totally know exactly what you're talking about. And here you need to read this book. When the books are done right, they're very referable, you know, because they're solving a problem. And when you hear someone else having that same problem, ah, someone's. I get calls all the time. People are like, ah, a friend told me about you. I told him I was trying to write a book and I was frustrated and they pointed me to you here and I'm sure that friend was like, oh, I have the perfect solution for you, you know, so.

Guest: And you know what? We should do another show on the psychology of referrals as well. So we use this in the. We've got quite a big real estate community, so we, we use this quite a lot in that, in that sense. This is covered in the 8 the Breakthrough DNA book. So again, I'll link to that in the show notes, which are going to be at 90minutebooks.com podcast008 so definitely grab a copy of that. But that the psychology of why people refer to a certain degree, it's a sense of superiority thing. It's so that you can give your friend the. You can feel superior by saying to your friend, you're there. Look at your dog. You don't know it's sick, but I know it's sick or it's. It's crying. Let me give you this book that will tell you all about how you can help your dog out and then I'll get a lot of kudos for being the person that shared that with you. It's a bit like referring a great restaurant. If you're able to refer a restaurant to people and they come back and say, oh, that was the best meal ever. Gives you quite a sense of it boosts you up in the social standing of the group by being the person to refer. So there's a whole psychology around referring and exactly to say the single target market books that answer a question in a compelling way, that really give people value, very easy to get people to refer. And in fact, as part of the follow up campaign, we just talked about the minimum viable commitment taking people step by step down a journey. One of those steps should in fact be kind of orchestrating those referrals and saying to people, hey listen, let's play a game over the next three weeks as you're meeting your other friends in the dog park with their dogs, see how many symptoms you can check off the list where you think that those dogs might be in pain and then feel free to give them a copy of the book so that they can sort that out.

Stuart: I love it. I definitely think we should do a show on that. And just tying up this show. Stuart, I think what I would love the listeners to walk away with is an appreciation for a possible another way of manifesting their book out into the world where they eventually have thousands of people who have raised their hand and downloaded their book. And to me, from a business owner's point of view, that is a much bigger, more valuable asset to the business owner than saying I sold 200 copies on Amazon or I have all, you know, or I've sold so many books at $10 a pop, you're not going to get rich that way. There is a possibility, if it's done right, that if you get thousands of people that have raised their hand saying they're interested in what you have to say and what your specialty is and how you can help them, to me that that's potential to hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, in your pocket. All from a 50 page book.

Guest: Yeah, absolutely. I think that people getting sidetracked on wanting to sell them, I mean that's the. Unless you want to be an author, unless your job of work is an author, then selling them is almost missing the gold coins for picking up the brass coins there. It's a real distraction. Yeah, I think people should. If they haven't yet, there's a show, I think it's episode two in the stream. So either head across to the website or go to itunes and pick up the show with Glenn McQueenie. So Glenn was talking about how, really how he's used his book to really grow the business and develop the business and open some doors that were previously closed as he tried to get through them in the past. So really looking at how to use the book rather than just how to sell the book.

Stuart: Perfect. All right, thank you again, Stuart. I look forward to the next one. And they can go to 90 Minute Books podcast to subscribe.

Guest: Yep, definitely. So, yeah, head across 90minutebooks.com podcast and there's all of the old episodes there. There's some show notes. There's a link through to itunes. So if you haven't yet subscribed, then feel free to subscribe and that will automatically get delivered to your podcatcher of choice if people have got any questions. We're going to do another Q and A show. I mentioned it last week. We'll do another Q and A show next month. So feel free to send questions through to podcasts at 90 Minute Books. It's probably the easiest address to send questions to, and then we'll make sure that we address those in upcoming Q and A session as well.

Stuart: Thank you so much.

Guest: Okay, thanks, guys. Catch you next time.