Marketing Fundamentals

Stuart: Foreign. Welcome to another book More show. It's Stuart here and today we have the pleasure of being joined by Betsy Vaughan. Betsy, how are you doing?

Guest: I'm great, Stuart. Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Stuart: Yes, good to have you. So Betsy, as some of you will know, is our chief client Concierge here at 90 Minute Books. She looks after all of the client requests as they come in. Initially deals with a lot of people, questions before they come on board, and then the behind the scenes work, which a lot of people don't appreciate, but it really keeps the wheels moving, is being the kind of customer advocate back here behind the scenes. So making sure that we're on target to hit deadlines, checking in with people if they've got any events or things coming up, making sure that we've got all of the pieces to really support production and design. So today, today we're going to talk about people asking how to market their book.

Guest: Yes. So that's probably one of the biggest questions that I get asked towards the end of the process is how do I market this book? Where do I go next? The book looks good. We're ready to use it now. What do I do with it?

Stuart: I think it's an interesting question because so often the actual execution of any task, whether it's writing a book or doing any other piece within the business, a lot of effort goes into the actual doing that is sometimes easy to forget about the context of why you do it and how you should use it. And then oftentimes things will take a lot of effort to actually get done that you forget about. That's only the first part of the puzzle, really. The benefits come from using it and getting some business from it afterwards.

Guest: Absolutely, yes. So give us some of your ideas on what we should tell our clients on how to market their book, which direction to take it in.

Stuart: I just got off the phone with Kevin earlier on Today. We were talking about the context of how he could use his book. What really came to light in that conversation is the existing opportunity that you've got already to kind of leverage some of the work that you've done by kind of amplifying your message with a book and then the opportunity of attracting a new audience that you might not have had before. So for people coming into this process, again, whether you're working with us directly or whether you're doing this by yourself, think about the end game in terms of those two groups. There's leveraging, amplifying what you've already got and then there's Attracting a brand new audience that you may not have had opportunity to work with before. If people haven't downloaded the Breakthrough DNA book which we often talk about. If you head over to breakthroughdna.com and there's an opt in there where you can download the book, the framework, the eight Profit Activators framework runs through everything we do. So there's a concept there about identifying invisible leads or identifying leads first and then secondarily following up with them and over time patiently educating and motivating them to take the next step. And I think people's books fall somewhere in either one of those two camps or in the middle. So identifying the prospects first, we've often talked about that. There's a couple of previous shows that people have probably listened to. If not head over to 90minutebooks.com forward/podcast for the archive. There's a couple of podcasts in there about making invisible leads visible. So I'll touch on a couple of specific examples shortly. But I just wanted to elaborate slightly on this second option. The kind of educating and motivating people you've perhaps already got a relationship with to take the next step or to take an action. So this is less about going out to maybe Facebook ads or AdWords or running print ads. It's less about identifying brand new people. But for a lot of businesses, particularly if you've been in business for any amount of time, you've already got a list of people who have previously expressed an interest in a product or service but not converted. Perhaps you've got a big list of previous clients who haven't necessarily done anything. The opportunity to re engage those people and offer them the book that you've written as a way of starting the conversation again is an opportunity that's often overlooked because it's not necessarily the first one that springs to mind. So we were talking about running some educational events. He'd already identified a large number of people who hadn't necessarily previously converted. So reaching out to those guys, again, reaching out to an existing list with a new offer, with something that is broadly on topic because they've already expressed an interest in a similar subject, if not specifically that very same subject, you've got an opportunity to kind of re engage and make the offer of something new, give them something of value rather than just sending them a blanket kind of every six months email saying we've got an offer on come and do some business with us. So I think that context of using it as a re engagement piece, using it to start a conversation again with an Existing list with some people who know you already is as interesting and perhaps in some cases even a bigger opportunity than just using it as purely generation at the top of the funnel going to a brand new list.

Guest: Great. I just lost my training.

Stuart: I think today's going to be one of those days where I talk a little bit too much because my voice is already getting a little bit croaky.

Guest: That's okay. You're giving us good stuff, good information out there. You mentioned you were talking about working with current clients, people you know you've got this book and you know how to re engage then we can do that. But I get a lot of, you know, on our end of the business we're looking for brand new business. We're looking for, you know, to build our business more. So they've captured their current clients, they know they're interested in the book. But looking for completely new clients. Some people want to use social media strictly, some want to do email blasts. What is your recommendation on people who are really looking to capture that new business? Because ultimately that's what they're. They have those clients and they can re engage them and maybe just remind them that they're there. But as far as new clients, what would you say? Where would you head with that?

Stuart: Yeah, you know, it's interesting, isn't it? And I think there's a couple of studies around. I should find the, I'll try and find the link for the show notes although I'm usually pretty bad at following through on that. But I'll try and remember to it this time. There was a, I think it was a Harvard study talking about it's seven times more more likely or more successful or easier to engage or convert existing customers than it is to find brand new customers. But so many people just think about new people, new people, new people not wanting to kind of beat the same point to death. But I'd really suggest that people, unless they've got zero list whatsoever or they've been really hammering an existing list and it's really exhausted then even for people who come to us and are starting to having conversations around wanting to find brand new leads, I'd really strongly suggest them they look at the re engagement opportunity of existing people just because it's closer to the money. These are people who have already raised their hand as interested if you need to go out, which I will get to now because it's a perfectly valid question. But if you need to go out and run CPM type ads where you're paying for visibility rather than paying for clicks. You're targeting, you're having to target a brand new audience of people you don't necessarily know. And there's such a high degree of wastage there to find the people who are interested versus a list of people who have already raised their hand as interested for one reason or another. Now having said that, people may not have been collecting leads previously or they might be relatively new in business, or they might have exhausted their existing list already because they've been mailing to them quite often anyway. So finding new people, businesses still at the end of the day need brand new business. So it is a valid question. Again, just to make the point that if you've got anything like an existing list, maybe not even customers, but lists of people who've expressed interest but not converted, that's, that's a prime target of, of customers just waiting to have an opportunity to re engage with you. So anyway, to get on to your actual question, which is perfectly valid, how to engage a brand new audience. So I think there's a couple of things that spring to mind. It basically comes down to advertising in areas where you think your target audience are likely to be or finding opportunities to be in the areas where you think your customers are likely to be. So that's going to be more like joint ventures with other similar organizations. Basically opportunities to be in front of the crowd without necessarily paying for it. The advertising option really comes down to like you mentioned social media. So Facebook ads, some people were talking recently about Instagram ads. Snapchat actually has just started an advertising platform as well. All of these areas of pain to get in front of eyeballs. It's a generally similar technology. It's usually sort of like a cost per click type technology where you put an ad in front of people and then when they click on it you get charged. But the thing that people should remember, and this is really stealing straight from Gary Vaynerchuk's book that he's been heard him talk a lot about recently, is context. So the context in which people see your ad is important as a, a measurement of engagement or not so much how you word the ad or contextualize the ad, but what they're likely to do on the back of it. So something like Google AdWords versus Facebook. Those two are pretty much the biggest platforms in their individual areas. They're the easiest for most people to visualize because some, most people have got some awareness of it. So something like Google Ads is a search based, intent driven search. So most people in that area are looking for they're typing in a particular problem or a particular search and then an ad will come back. Facebook, on the other hand, is a more passive, transient scenario. People are rarely going out and searching for things on Facebook though it does happen. But most of the time the ads that you see will just be passing by when you're just looking through the wall of posts that are going by in like a day to day browsing. Similar with Snapchat and similar with Instagram. All of those platforms, they're less intent driven and more you've got the opportunity to demographically or interest based target them. So the important thing for people to remember there is that the nature of the ad, the thing that you're offering them needs to be received in a slightly different way. So AdWords, a search based search, can be very specific to a particular need or want or desire. So let's say your book is on financial planning. The financial planning subject that you might have is retirement or Medicare planning or investment portfolio planning, those generic areas underneath that there'll be some specific questions that people have in mind. So you can run a suite of ads to target those individual questions. So a book on retirement. Now we tend to suggest people write a relatively specific book addressing one particular question, quite deep. But if you've got a book that's addressing retirement subjects, even if it's relatively tailored, there are words and questions and concerns that someone's going to have. There'll be four or five of those at least that are relevant to even a relatively tailored book. And you can run individual ads targeting each of those individual phrases. So let's say you write a book on buying an annuity. I think annuity is a UK word. When you retire there and you kind of take out your 401k, do you have to buy a different financial product that actually gives you the income?

Guest: I'm not there yet. What did you call it?

Stuart: An annuity.

Guest: Oh yeah.

Stuart: The same thing explains exist.

Guest: Right, right, yes, yes. I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said.

Stuart: I spent too much time in between the two countries and I forget which is which. So let's say the retirement. So I'll try and use the right language, but don't worry about it too much if it's the wrong one. So let's say your 401k, you're coming up to retirement, you need to buy a product that will deliver you the income or you're going to take a certain amount out as cash as a drawdown from that account. So those questions a book around your approach in retirement. So one of the early books that we did was what to do at 62, which was a retirement planning book. Because people get into that particular point, there were some decisions that they had to make that would impact their retirement at later life. So even a relatively targeted book targeting not a people retirement planning 30 years out, but people retirement planning at the point of coming to kind of crystallize their policy, there's three or four different issues all related to that. So how much drawdown should I take? Should I leave it in? Should I start claiming Social Security straight away or should I defer that? What type of annuity product should I get? Even with a relatively specific book, there's still four or five intent based problems that you could address. And having an ad addressing each of those individually, rather than just the generic get the retirement book is going to be more successful, all other things being equal, because you're addressing that individual need. So in a search based environment, in an adwords based environment, you can target those particular wants and desires because people are actually type or concerns and desires because people are actually typing them in. Unlike in a social media type channel or even a print advert where you can demographically target people. So Facebook, for example, you can highlight age, gender, region, economic status, other pages that they've liked, so interests. And in a print world, for example, you could choose to print the your advert in a financial magazine or a local homeowners association magazine, or a golf magazine. So you can still get some of that demographic targeting, but you can't necessarily be as specific as just targeting someone that's got a concern about buying the annuity versus the amount of drawdown that they want to take. So you need to advertise to those people in a slightly different, a different context of the questions they might be asking and then a layer on top of that as well. In the Facebook sense, for example, whether it's just a stream of information going past, people aren't necessarily there to be advertised to though obviously it happens a lot. So the nature in which you need to structure your ad is slightly different. So it needs to be more accessible, more friendly, more drawing people towards something that they might be interested or might be entertained by, rather than just a direct ad trying to cut straight to the chase. So that's a lot of words there. Again, it's difficult to go into, it's difficult to give enough details that people can kind of grab hold of and do something with. Versus we could be here three hours later and still going into all of the caveats and specifics. But I think the main thing to bear in mind is that context difference and the opportunity that you've got to leverage the one asset, the first book that you write, you can leverage that in a number of different ways. Even though we suggest writing a book that's really quite specific and we often get people coming in and wanting to write the kind of the manual that covers everything and then we have the conversation about dialing it in, specifically answering one question as deep and comprehensively as possible. But narrow, but deep rather than broad and shallow is the way to go. But even having written that book, there's still the opportunity to market it in a number of different ways. So in a search based environment, vary the language slightly to be as specific as possible.

Guest: Right?

Stuart: Because remember the job of work of the ad and we talk about jobs of work quite a bit and really breaking down each individual stage and understanding, it's like a, it's part of a process. It's not just a one thing and all of the everything's solved. So the job of the ad is to get someone interested enough to click on the button that takes them to the next page. Or if it's kind of directly in front of them in a print magazine, it needs to be interesting enough so that they type in the URL the next page. Then all that needs to be is compelling enough so that they fill in the name and address details. And I spoke about this with Dean on the show a couple of weeks ago where we were saying really it's just allowing them to complete the thought that they've already had. They've had a thought that something's interesting and they want the answer. The next page, the opt in page should really just be that. It should just be the same information. If people go to 90minutebook.com the kind of the opt in page that we have for the 90 minute book, then you'll see that ad copy is almost identical to some of the ad copy that we run in some of the social ads. If you go to email Mastery, then the email mastery ads that we ran in Success magazine looks almost identical to the landing page. The landing page is, is only there to allow them to enter the details and complete the thought that they've already had. Any additional information, any new information, and you run the risk of dissuading people because they'll follow through to that page and then think, oh, actually this new information, I've realized this isn't quite what I want. And then they won't Complete the thought. So each of those little stages, in fact, I'll put the Success magazine ad example, I'll put that in the show notes. So if people head over to 90 Minute Books.com podcast and it will be the first in the feed this week, I'll put that Success magazine example in there because it really is that example of here's an ad that actually we should probably talk briefly about that as well before we run out of time because that was a different approach again which was quite interesting. But as far as the kind of the ad itself goes, here's an ad that offers email mastery as a book that people can, can, can request to that talks about email. The landing page then is identical. It's just exactly the same text just with the place that they can put their name and address details. It really is not adding any additional information. So on jumping to another one which is slightly different again then. So we've talked so far about search intent being slightly different from social intent and the fact that even if you've got one book you can still tailor the language so that it' it's interesting to people. The Success magazine ad that we did for email mastery that was editorial advertorial, a one page ad in the magazine that looked as if it was editorial. It really gave some value. It was pretty short. I mean there's probably only 300 words in the article if that. But even so in that space it still gave them one useful technique. And then it says if you want to find out about more techniques then go and get the get a copy of the book. And that was phenomenally successful. Again, starting off by giving value builds that reciprocity. There's a no commitment or a very low commitment way for people to find out more. And the opt in rate was pretty astounding on that page. The job going back to jobs of work. The job of work of the ad is to catch their attention enough so that they think this is something that I want. The job of work of the landing page is just to give them an opportunity to fill in the name and email address details. And the job of work of the funnel of the ad and the book combined is to create a sense of reciprocity, give something of value and then start a conversation which is relevant to the outcome that you want. And obviously knowing what that outcome is before you start means that you can orchestrate the funnel too with that outcome in mind rather than I just want to write something and then magically some people will come to me and something will happen. Orchestrating it at each stage is going to lead to a much more successful outcome.

Guest: We're talking about advertising and spending the money and the clicks on the clicks and the searches and stuff and the money there. But what about the person who is on a low budget or very limited budget, but they still are looking to build that business, have some recommendations on how to go about doing that at very low cost or maybe gas, no cost.

Stuart: Shocking. The. The thing with.

Guest: Because everybody, I mean, that's one of the things I hear, oh, I've written this book and, you know, now I don't have a lot of resources, you know, because if it's a brand new business, there may not be, you know, financial. There may be maybe strapped. And so. And plus, everybody wants something for free. I mean always. So any recommendations you can give them?

Stuart: Yeah, definitely. And I think so. At the end of the day, things either take time or cost money. And there's an element of expertise that can kind of leverage both of those. But at the end of the day, time and money are the two resources that get stuff done. So if you come saying that you've got neither of those, well, that's not how the world works. If you haven't got one of those, then you have to contribute the other. But the great thing is that a lot of people are way more inclined to give up money than they are time. So if you do have time but don't have money, you can really do a lot of things that other people just aren't willing to do. Because at the end of the day, a lot of people are lazy and just want to throw money at a problem and hope that fixes it. Only having time means you need to be a little bit more creative. One of the best things I think people can do in this respect is start thinking about other people and what you can do for them. So we had the example a couple of shows ago. We were talking about James Sinclair and the Dogs Don't Cry book and leveraging other veterinarians to effectively get a book that ultimately talked about dog nutrition supplements out to those people. I really keep saying I need to check in with James and see that he is. That is still the approach he's using. As soon as I keep using it as the example, but it's such a good example. I don't want to hear that he's changed and is doing something else because I keep. I want to keep using it. So imagine that you were a. Oh, so let's take shockwave. So Shockwave for people that don't know is a, is going to immediately trip up on the details here, but it's a non invasive medical procedure that uses shockwave therapy to address a typically a tendon problem. So let's say you've got, got an Achilles tendinopathy or Achilles is hurting. It might be a buildup or an inflammation on the tendon itself and shockwave can be a way of reducing that because it kind of breaks down the cells or the tearing at the site in a non surgical way or non invasive way. And for some people it can be an alternative to surgery. So we're just writing a book at the moment with Paul Morrissey, who's an osteopath over here in the uk, a really quite a thought leader in the, in the shockwave community. He's been doing it for a lot longer than, than most other people and really it's just starting to get a lot of traction here. But the problem is that not that many people are aware of it and if they are aware of it because it's not done through the, it's not always done through the National Health Service, sometimes it can be a problem for people finding out about it. So he can do all of the face stuff and the AdWords stuff and all of that regular stuff with money. But the thing that you can also do with time is have the book and give the book to other practitioners in the area. Again, complementary, non competing, who don't offer that as a service but who have patients who would be prime candidates for it and it would actually get them out of a lot of pain. It might resolve problems that have been around for a long time, but they don't necessarily have a way of doing it or knowing about it. So Paul giving that book to them. So it might be a physiotherapist in the area, it might be another osteopath or a general practitioner, or it might be golf clubs or fitness professionals. All of these complementary but non competing businesses. Paul can give that book to them and say to those guys, I know you've got some, your clients, you want the best for your clients. There's this book that you can give to them which will give them value, it gives them some tips and pointers to kind of avoid surgery in the first place. And then if they decide that it's serious enough so that they need it, then shockwave might be the answer to them. So here's something that you can give them and offer value to, to them. I think we used an example in the show the week before Last. I forget when it was last. Sorry, it was last week. So I was talking about A, because as I was recording the Q and A shows, I was actually sat at Paul's. It was when we were recording the book. So I was sat in his office looking out over his nicely manicured lawn and there was a statue in the. Statue in the garden. So if you were a statue manufacturer or water feature manufacturer or maybe a swimming pool manufacturer, using landscapers or architects as a complementary, non competing business, you could write a book that talked about how to, how to get the most out of your yard all season long as a guide to some yard design. Give it to those complementary, non competing businesses as a value add for them. And then because there's an overlap in the audience, those people are naturally going to be not too far away from your target audience. So by leveraging other relationships, think about what you can do for them. As long as it's complementary and non competing, then there's a great opportunity for you to make them look good by allowing them to deliver more value to their customers. And really, it's kind of like this Trojan horse effect of the Trojan horse. The gift that you're giving them is a book that's got some knowledge, it's got some useful insights in it. But the kind of, the hidden element inside is the fact that you've got a sales message in there that compels people in a, in a non, in a classy way, don't throw it in the face too much, but in a classy way says to them, oh, and by the way, if you want this, then here's an option to kind of find out some more information. Now some of that we're coming up on time, as is often the case, but we should cover this in a future show. But some of it might be needing to manipulate the message in the book a little bit so it's less direct. Again, think about how the audience is receiving the book. And albeit you don't want to tailor one individual book to one person, but there might be two or three big groups of people who will receive it in different ways. And in that case it might be worthwhile having variations of the book that go into those different audiences because it serves a slightly different need. But I think for anyone that doesn't have cash lying ground to throw at a problem to try and fix it, thinking about how you can add value to someone else and really leverage this kind of complementary model is a great place to start. I mean some of the other, just quickly before we Wrap up. Some of the other things would be maybe finding out if one of those other organizations again where there's an audience crossover if they can't do it. So we've had a couple of people who have written books where they're basically interviewing other people, other complementary people in their business. So Chris Hill wrote a book called Engaged which is a good example. So Chris runs a luxury voluntourism business. So they help relatively high net worth families or people who want to spend a decent amount on a vacation but who want to get a voluntarism element. So you hear quite a lot about. There was an article in on one of the new sites the other day about I think it was a VC or company directors talking about kicking their kids out of the nest when they're 16 and, and telling them to go off and volunteer for the summer just so they get some grounding type effect. So Chris's company isn't quite that harsh with the kids but they'll go away on vacation. Yeah, they don't.

Guest: Nobody told me that was an answer.

Stuart: I think it used to be called military school but things have changed.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: So Chris's company will, whilst you've got a volunteering opportunity. So it might be doing some conservation work or, or some teaching or building a school or installing generators. An element of conservation. But on the downtime when you're not doing that, you can stay in five star accommodation and still have a nice vacation around the kind of local giving part. So the book that Chris wrote was actually with a company called I forgot what the company's name was. But he wrote the book with Peter that talked about how that company uses volunteering as part of their rewards program. So rather than taking the team to Vegas to drink for the week, they take them away for a week. And there's a big community building element of it. There's still a luxury element around it but it builds the company culture a lot more significantly than just a regular trip would be. So by leveraging that relationship by making someone else look good, by giving someone else the opportunity to say look at how good our company is by doing this voluntourism thing, he's unable to share that book with other peers in the group, in the industry rather and almost evidence by the fact that he's got the book on the other company talking about how good they are. Evidence. His solution, his hands up incentives, company benefits, making them look good and being there to kind of follow up and add support to the message that's coming across.

Guest: Okay, fantastic.

Stuart: We've blown past 30 minutes. This one went quite quick. We'll have to get you back on again.

Guest: I would love to. There's some great stuff there so think the audience will enjoy it.

Stuart: Fantastic. I think there's something that people can use and run with. So again thanks for your time. Everyone who comes through the system will get to speak to Betsy at some point. If anyone's got any questions for the podcast, just shoot us a message at Podcasty Minutebooks and we'll take it from here. If anyone's ready to get started on the book themselves, just shoot us a message out to hello at 90 Minute Books and Betsy or Susan will pick that up and get back to you straight away. We've got some exciting books coming down the track at the moment so I'm looking for forward to the opportunity to talk about those in in a month or two's time and share some more stories with people.

Guest: Absolutely.

Stuart: Fantastic.

Guest: Great. Thanks Stuart.

Stuart: Thanks Betsy. Speak soon. Bye Bye.