Questions and Answers

Stuart: Foreign. Welcome to another edition of the book More Show Stuart here with a Q and A session this week. So we've had a lot of questions in over the last following on for the last couple of episodes, so we've got a nice selection to run through. We're going to do Q and A shows every month to six weeks or so, depending on how many questions we've got coming through. So if there's anything that you're sat there thinking about we haven't answered or addressed in the show, go then just drop us an email to podcast 90minutebooks and we'll make sure we add that to the list for next time. Okay, so we've got six or seven to go through. So diving straight in, Simon was asking how best to use a book in a trade show type scenario. Trade shows provide a couple of unique opportunities or challenges and it depends on the individual setup of the show. That depends on how you would best address it. The main difference with the show or physical environment versus sending something to someone digital is obviously the ability to collect contact details. So as you've probably heard us talk about enough now, the context in which we talk about a book is always to start a conversation. It's making invisible leads visible and enabling you to start a conversation in a relatively non threatening way that then leads people towards a hopefully a buying decision or a solution that works out best for them in the end. So depending on the trade show, you may or may not be provided with people's email addresses, the volume, the depending on how many people at the show, it mean it will impact how long you've got to talk to each person as they walk past the booth. So the best thing to do is think about what outcomes you want. Generally speaking, again, you'll want to be starting a conversation with someone. You want that opportunity to engage with them. If the volumes are low, if it's a relatively small show, you, you may well be able to have that engagement one on one with the person requesting a copy of the book at the time. And then you can use the book in the context of an authority building piece or reinforcing some of the points that you make in that conversation. In that scenario, you wouldn't necessarily want to ask the person for their details before giving it to them. You might want to just offer it as a kind of as an extra element that you're giving with them there and then and assume that they'll follow up with you afterwards because you've already made that connection. It may be a very big show, lots of people passing, not really practical to have a conversation with each person, in which case you really want to think then either it's just a volume game, in which case you're going to pass out enough books and if you get a 10% of people follow up with you, that's still worthwhile, or it may be the case that you want to make sure that in the book there is a way of you collecting leads. So the call to action, the next steps at the back, make sure that's set up in a way that from a minimum commitment without asking too much from them, a minimum viable commitment. Next step, then they're opting in to ask for follow on information and you've got the ability to capture their details. At that point it may be the case that the organizers are passing you all of their email address details of attendees anyway because it's a pre registering event. So again you don't necessarily need to collect all of their details because you can make the assumption that you'll have the person's contact details anyway. But the limits or the challenge on that side is that you're then just assuming that everyone's interested in the book, everyone that attended, rather than having a sifting and sorting mechanism whereby people are requesting something or opting in to gain that copy. So think about where it sits in the funnel, the book itself, the trade show itself. Those are specifics of the overall funnel. The overall funnel is at the top. You've got a broad interested group of people, you want to give them a non committal, an easy way for them to get started and then over time have a conversation and educate and motivate them to take the next step. So placing the actual events, the actual show itself, whether you're using the book as a mechanism or a video or something else some other opt in, placing all of those into the funnel will then help you decide which is the best way of using it. But you can certainly use a physical book at a trade show environment. You can certainly use it as an authority building piece as well as just a lead generation piece. But the only thing too that we would always encourage people to remember is that unless you capture some details at some point, unless you give people the opportunity to raise their hand and then you can have the conversation with them. If you're not doing that, then it's just a numbers game. It's just a case of putting enough of them out there so that the ones who are the most motivated to take the next step will take it upon themselves to do it. And Follow through. Okay, so the next one, Tanya was asking how can I use the book with some partners? So a couple of shows ago we were talking about the Dogs Don't Cry example where it was a vitamin, the company was providing dog vitamins, but the book was more around identifying pain that the dog might be suffering from, helping you identify the pet the dog might be suffering from. And there was an opportunity there to pass that to various different vet practitioner partners or other complementary but non competing businesses. So as a strategy, Tanya was asking how can that be leveraged? So if we look at the, again look at the scenario, we've got a funnel that we want people to identify themselves as interested then over time educate and motivate and engage them to take the next step. So working with non competing complementary businesses is a great way to feed the top of the funnel in a way that doesn't necessarily rely on just yourself. So you've got the opportunity to push the book out to people who know you. You can advertise the book in various channels, but using partners then leverages their audience. So when we look at complementary, non competing businesses, whatever your industry is, I'm not, I don't think the email particularly specifies what, what industry Tanya's in, but whatever your business is, there are going to be, there is going to be a crossover with other businesses that are complementary. So it may be additional services. If you build swim pools, it might be the filter manufacturers or other garden landscaping professionals. If you're a bakery, it might be a kitchenware manufacturer. Whatever industry you're in, there's usually always, in fact, I probably can't think of an example where there's not complementary businesses where their customers could benefit from the book. The information that you're sharing and by offering it in a way that is non threatening, it's really piling on the information. It's a valuable piece in its own right. Then you've got the opportunity to speak to these people, these partners, these complementary businesses and say, hey listen, I'd love to give your customers a book. I'd love to be able to give you the opportunity to give this to them. It's nothing to do with me, it's all you are adding value to your customers. But then the call to action towards the back of the book, as we've talked about in the past, if, if people don't have a copy of the hot prospects book that, that we wrote specifically for that particular funnel, then I'll l it in the show notes and that talks about constructing funnels in A way that really adds value to the book and a minimum viable commitment next step. So that the step that you're expecting the reader to take at the end of it isn't coming to my office for a consultation. It's a small step that's easy to take. The benefit, particularly in this context, is that you yet don't have any emotional capital with these readers. There's no relationship if it's coming from a third party audience, they don't necessarily yet know, like or trust you. So if the call to action at the end is a minimum viable commitment step, it's an easy step for them to take, then more people are likely to do it, which again reveals invisible prospects in a way that you can then engage with them. So working with competing. Working with competing, sorry, working with complementary non competing businesses is a great way of leveraging someone else's audience. Now, the other option you've got is to take that to the next step and really create something that provides even more benefit for them. So if we take the example of I'm sat at, it's the weekend, as I'm recording this, I'm at a friend's place, just quickly recording the show, looking out. They've got a beautifully manicured lawn here. So if you were a landscaping company, you're very interested in getting the business off people who are looking at redesigning their yards. You might be able to work with a complementary company, which is a water feature manufacturer or swimming pool manufacturer. So imagine now going to that complementary company and saying to them, hey, listen, we've got a crossover in our audience, we've got a shared interest. I'd love to write a book with you that specifically talks about how swimming pools can add value to your property. And rather than then writing it entirely focused on just the benefits that you can provide, write it on the benefits that they can provide. It will then be far more valuable. They'll be far more likely to want to promote it to their audience because it's adding value, it's making them look good. And you've got the opportunity of including your message, including a compelling next step, a compelling call to action, which the details might need to vary slightly. The call to action might need to be a little bit something that's of value to both of you in that scenario, but all you're trying to do is identify invisible prospects and have the opportunity of starting a conversation with them. So it doesn't necessarily need to be all about you. It doesn't necessarily even. We were talking in the show I think it was last week or the week before with Dean about bridging topics. And there's a conversation going on in the head of your ideal prospects out there at the moment. How do you intersect that and allow them to identify themselves as interested? And working with complementary businesses really gives the opportunity for it to be a win win for both businesses. You're listening to this podcast about creating a book. They're not. It's not something that's a unique ability for them. So you can really add value to them, get access to their audience and then present a minimum viable commitment offer towards the end which allows that audience to identify themselves as interested. Or you could even take it a step further and speak to the partner, the complimentary business, about collecting leads up front and then just sharing those leads between the two businesses. Okay, so Michael was asking, should I focus on the physical or digital version? So you can see we've themed these questions together a little bit this time and I think there was just a commonality of questions that came through focusing on the physical or digital version. Very similar to the conversation we had about the trade show. That was obviously quite a physical focus. To answer Michael's question, I just want to touch on a point that I was talking about with one of the authors who wrote one of the 90 minute books. Jim Hacking is an immigration attorney, wrote a book called Staying Here. Jimmy uses the book quite a lot to engage with students that are coming to the end of their student visa and then want to switch status into an employee status. He uses that in a physical environment in schools and brings people together in a seminar talking about the benefits and challenges and the process for changing status, but he uses both. So we were talking about being able to leverage the same asset into multiple engagement points. So think about the funnel that we've talked about a lot. You've got the audience, the potential customers at the top. They identify themselves as interested. Over time, you're able to educate and motivate these guys to raise their hand to identify themselves as more interested, hopefully in as automated way as possible. And then once they get to the end of that, at some point in that funnel, you can then start engaging with them on a one on one basis. And then you're really leveraging your time to focus entirely on the hottest prospects first, before then engaging back with the ones where the time's not quite right for them. So whether you should focus on the physical or digital depends on the funnel that you've got set up. Both of them have got value, so it's certainly not one versus the other. It's very easy to think about the benefits of the digital product because you don't have the physical constraints of where to send it. But there's also, as we've talked about previously, there is a certain magic about having the physical book. The fact that we call ourselves authors, the fact that we say we talk about a book, we never refer to things as ebooks or digital versions. It's always get a copy of the book. There is a magic, a presence around something being printed. So for this question I'd suggest a. A policy of both. Now, there's a cost constraint with printing and shipping books, obviously, but if you can make that, if you know what your numbers are, if you're tracking your conversions through this particular funnel, then it should be relatively straightforward to decide whether it's worth the extra effort or not. So imagine a scenario where people start on the digital track, they request a copy of the book, you send them that. There's an engaging question saying, hey, what's your book about? Or hey, what breed of dog do you have? Or hey, what's your current visa status? Or how long do you have left on your visa? An engaging question to start a dialogue. Whether or not you get an immediate response or not, a further follow up could be, hey, Sam, if you drop me your address, I'd love to send you a physical copy of the book and additionally a checklist that we've got so you can confirm what your status is or what challenges you might face with the status. Give someone the opportunity to provide you more details, to provide you with further information, to engage a little bit more. You sending them the physical copy of the book raises your status. Because he's physically sending something, there's a sense of reciprocity starting to be built because you're engaging with them a little bit more. There's a delivery, a gift giving a friend of mine, when the. I can't think what it's called in the US in the UK there's a dissertation as part of a degree. So she was doing a psychology degree and her dissertation was on the psychology of gift giving in text messages or text messages as a gift. So this was back a few years ago now. But there is a psychological benefit with delivering something to someone. So whether or not you collect their leads in a digital sense, there's the opportunity to back that up and reinforce it with the physical. Likewise with the if they were to go the physical track first. So let's say for example, it was the trade show example so someone has a physical copy of the book. There is an option to change the back cover copy, change the call to action, or include a leaflet or postcard, or put a sticker on the front of the book, something to say, we'd love to give you a digital copy and an audio recording of the book, or a digital copy and a checklist. Again, to engage people, to encourage them to opt in, to sift and sort them more interested from the less interested. All of these little psychological triggers to help people progress down the track towards deciding that this outcome is something that they want. This is going to provide the benefit that they're looking for. Reusing the same asset, asset in multiple ways is a great technique of piling on the value, piling on the engagement, without necessarily having to create a whole new set of assets, a whole new set of things that you can give to people, just reusing or repositioning similar content. And whether or not you start on a digital track or start on a physical track, there's the opportunity to use the other as one of those steps in the funnel. Okay, so Ian was asking, should I bother with Kindle? Now, this is a, this is an interesting question. Again, it highlights the difference between the physical and digital channels, but it also starts to touch on audience access to the audience. So there's a couple of ways of looking at it. The big challenge, like we've said before, is just collecting the leads and starting the conversation. There's very few occasions where we would say to someone that selling the book, the money that you'll make back from the book sale itself is going to be anywhere near more valuable than converting a lead into whatever your business is. For the majority of people that we're talking to or talking with, then a lead is worth 50 to 100 or even a thousand book sales. So having said that, though there is some value in recouping some of the cost of writing the book in the first place. There may be a case where if you can position the book price low enough so that's not a barrier to entry, it's still going to convert into numbers that might then trickle down into people converting. So again, that might be worthwhile. But the main challenge is that Amazon doesn't give you the name and address details of the person who's just bought. So it is very much putting some information out there, but not really starting a conversation with them in a direct way because you can't follow up. So a couple of ways around it, include in the book the opportunity to opt in over Here to download some additional detail or here's some additional things. The follow on the next minimum viable commitment. You may need to tweak it slightly for the Kindle version, knowing that you're not going to get access to that audience. The other thing that's worth remembering as well is the actual reading rates of books is pretty low, even for kind of for bestsellers. For fiction, the reading completion rates are very low compared with the purchase rates. So if you do have a call to action, better mention it sooner rather than later. Because Kindles are very linear in the sense of starting from page one and going page by page through. It's not like a physical book where you can just turn to the back cover. So that's worth bearing in mind. Make sure there's a call to action in there somewhere, somewhere early, so that you can guide people to the next step. The other point I wanted to touch on briefly is access to an audience. So the Kindle bookstore or Amazon generally is a source of an audience that you might not otherwise get access to. Amazon search is keyword driven, so a relevant title may well reveal some people that you wouldn't necessarily have come across otherwise. I'm down here actually recording a book with a friend of mine on Shockwave Therapy. So having Shockwave Therapy in the title is going to make it more likely than less likely that if we called it Pain Free Joints, that's not as specific as someone searching for a book on Shockwave and finding this, this particular book. So there is a discovery element to Kindle, which is a channel, an audience that you might not otherwise get. So that's worth bearing in mind. It's probably not the most direct route to the customers. There are challenges in having the follow on conversation, but for the overhead, for the extra work that you've got to do, it's probably worthwhile, particularly if you've got a way of capturing those leads relatively early on in the process so that anyone that does come through feels like they're getting value. The only other thing to briefly mention actually is that feels that they're getting value. So a book, if you're pricing a book, there's an expectation of what people get in the bookstore. If you price something at 5.99 or 9.99 and they receive a book that's 50 pages and it reads like a sales pitch to go to, to come into an appointment that's probably not going to be very well received as opposed to pricing it at 249, which I think from memory is about the Lowest price you can price Kindles at, usually pricing it at 249. It's specifically answering one subject, however narrow it is, but as deep as possible. So again, try and be the world's best answer to the single question that you're trying to answ. And people are more likely to engage with that. And if there is a call to action for the next step, then they're more likely to take that step. Okay, so let's move on. Time's going quick. I'm actually going to jump ahead and we'll cycle back to a couple of these other ones next time, just because there's one for Matt that I really want to get answered. And if we've got some time at the end, I'll cycle back to a couple of the quicker ones. So Matt was asking what are some typical questions to engage the audience? So we were talking in the Bridging Topics episode about a conversation going on in your audience's mind. Your ideal customer, your ideal prospect. There's a conversation going on in their mind which may or may not be directly related to what your solution is, but there's the opportunity to bridge that conversation into your solution in a way that offers them some value. So Matt was saying that he doesn't specifically have a business, doesn't necessarily have something that he wants people to lead to. So that definitely makes it more challenging. And actually ask a slightly different question of I don't necessarily have a business, so what should my book be about? To a certain degree, if you just want to write a book for the sake of writing a book, then it can be on anything. Because who cares? If you just want to do you want to do it, then fair enough. It's interesting exercise and it might help your mind kind of dial in on the next book, which might be more specific. Starting with the end in mind is always the best way to go. So just doing something for the sake of doing something isn't necessarily going to yield the best results. So if you've got absolutely nowhere where you want to lead people to, then the only option really is to have a book about your own story. Try and have something that's engaging and entertaining. If you don't have that either, then what are you doing it for? Save your time and your money and do something else. If you do have even the beginnings of an idea of where you want to lead people towards, even if you don't specifically have a product yet, but you know you want to engage people, you've got a general interest in health and Fitness. So you want to engage people in that area. You've got an interest in Roman archaeology. So engaging people in that area, you've got an interest in UFO conspiracy theories, you want to engage people in that. It can be on anything. But starting with the end in mind is always the best outcome in terms of bridging topics of what should you, what kind of questions can you ask people in order to engage them? It's a little bit specific on what you want the outcomes to be, what business you're in. Usually what we'd say to people is if you don't have a clear path, then think about what are the most common questions that your business gets asked. So emails to the support desk, phone calls, speak to the sales guys and ask them what kind of questions they get when they engage with a new customer. Depending on what your industry or how complex your industry is, are the things that are more difficult are the kind of conceptual things that are difficult for people to understand. I was listening to, in fact I need to write something on this because it was, it was quite interesting. There's a new book out called Sprint by Greg Knapp. I think talks about Google ventures and really it's a kind of lean model agile business process for quickly getting to the point where you can put something out there and then moving forward and kind of pivoting as you go forward. But this book was talking about Airbnb and one of the challenges that Airbnb had was communicating to people what the premise was, the fact that this isn't hotels, it isn't a bed and breakfast, it's actually staying in someone's house. So if your industry does have challenges like that, where there's something conceptually challenging, then a book can be a great way of, from a non threatening way of engaging people in that conversation, of helping to explain it. So all of those sources are likely to reveal some of the common questions. You can do other things as well. So like keyword research in Google for what people are searching about for a particular topic or subject, you can look at what other elements. So if you know that people in your business are always interested in, well, go back to the lawn care, the landscaping issue. If people are always interested in a particular type of plant because in your area it's, it's the most popular. So there's a big search volume around that type of thing that might be a good thing to answer questions on the subject itself, the engagement, as long as there's enough of an audience that are going to be interested in it. As long as it's worthwhile doing. Particularly the way in which we structure the 90 minute books, we try and make it a very quick way to get something out to market, a very quick way of capturing some of your thoughts in the best possible way and having that in a relatively accessible, easy to create authority building valuable element that you can get passed back out to people. If it's quick and easy and cost effective, then you can test two or three of these things in the same time and same effort that you might write one more traditionally written book where you try and cover four or five different areas all in the same book. So picking one subject, answering it as thoroughly as possible, going deep and allowing people to then raise their hand and ask for more information afterwards means that the questions that you can address can be very specific. It's just trying to fix one problem. It's just trying to give people advice and guidance in one area, that one area, whether it's the most popular question or the most pressing question or the most valuable question, the question asked most often, the most difficult question that customers ask your business, pick one and then engage from there. And if you're really stuck, then as I say, things like keyword research, just see what other people are asking. Even things like Google Complete. So when you're in Google and you start typing in the words for something so how do I find the best or tips for lawn care. In November, the autocomplete suggestions are going to come up with the most popular questions and that might be a good place to start a little bit of research on your part then to just make sure you've got a valuable comprehensive answer. But as I said at the beginning of this question, the most valuable thing is knowing where it sits in the journey, knowing how you're trying to take what the next step is that you're trying to take people towards, how they're thinking about your service in regards to a solution that they're trying to get. Start with the end in mind. That's the best possible advice. Okay, so we're just coming up on half an hour. I've got a couple of other questions, but we're going to save those for the next show. If you do have any questions to add to what we've talked about so far, then just drop an email to podcasts at 90minutebooks and we'll add that to the list for next time. Check out the show notes for this particular episode. I'll include there a link for the hot prospects Cool publishing book that we wrote. That one was specifically for another There was a talk series that was done a few months ago. We wrote this book specifically for those guys on the back of the talk that we did for them as a demonstration of how quick and easy it is to write a book and get it out. But that talks about the four steps of dialing in your message, how you can build that into a funnel and then engaging people on the next step. So I'll include a link to that. Obviously, if you don't have a copy of the 90 minute book as well, which talks about how you can write your book, then grab that from the website if you're ready to get started. Again, as I mentioned, it's very quick and straightforward process. So in the same within a few, we usually say to people within four to six weeks you can have a book outlined and written and published and out there collecting leads. So if you do have one particular idea from this that's come to mind, find one particular question that's really going to engage your audience. This is a great way of quickly and easily getting something out there. That means you can start collecting leads by the end of the summer and start that conversation to convert them into customers. So if you're ready to get started, then just head over to 90minutebooks.com start or reach us out to us if you've got any questions at support at 90 minute books and either myself, Betsy or Susan waiting there to answer your questions. Okay guys, thanks very much for your time. Next week we'll be back with more of an information based show rather than Q and A. Looking forward to that and speak to you all next time. Thank you.