Back Cover Call to Action

Stuart: Foreign. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the book More show. The well, I'd like to say the weekly show about everything publishing your book, but we haven't been quite weekly recently so I get on a new schedule. So this is the first of first the ones come. So pleasure is always to be joined by Betsy Vaughan. But Betsy, how are you doing?

Guest: I'm great. Stuart, how are you?

Stuart: Very good, thank you. Very good. Today I thought we would talk about something that's come up in quite a few conversations I've had with authors recently where we've been helping people dial in the job of work of the book, really help people dial in their call to action. So there's lots of products out there which will help people create books ranging from the really kind of do it yourself end of things kind of educational programs guiding people towards what they might want to what they might need to do in order to structure it. There's even programs like what's it called Narrow, the Write a book in a month program which is more aimed at fiction and short stories. But still there's that commitment to getting something written right up to products like Book in a Box which really go deep into taking a. Taking a good amount of content and really aiming for that New York Times best sellers market. So these days people have got a lot of options out there for the 90 minute book. We're really focused on helping people create something that does achieve say single job of work. It's best suited to help people identify invisible leads and from all of your potential audience out there, get those who are most likely to be engaged with your message or your product or service to raise their hand by offering them something of value that starts a conversation in a relatively low commitment way, gets them to opt in and request a copy of the book. So in the realtor world we use the example of imagine you could fly over your local town and have special X ray specs on and as you fly over all of the houses where people are talking, having a conversation about selling are highlighted as you fly over and kind of heat map would identify help you identify those invisible prospects. And a book is a great way of doing that because it allows people to request something relevant and useful, gives value, starts the conversation. But that's only the first part. Once you've identified them, you really need to orchestrate the conversation, orchestrate the journey and guide people to that next step. So starting with the end in mind your ideal prospect, once they've requested a copy of the book, they've read it. What do you want them to do next. So I had quite a few conversations recently with people trying to dial that in because what we tend to find, and you were saying just the other day, it, this conversation comes up quite a lot with the people that you speak to is the call to action is quite often, well, give us a call and we'll schedule a meeting. Which in itself isn't, isn't terrible. At least you're giving someone something to do. But that can be seen as quite a barrier. Someone has to be relatively motivated in order to take that step. There are two scenarios that spring to mind where this is particularly relevant, or two different scenarios rather, you need to consider when you're thinking about how best to define the call to action, which, which really is the, the back cover copy. And that is the path where people have already opted in. So people have requested a copy of the book either physically or digitally from you. But you know who those people are and the job of work at the back cover copy is then to encourage them, to compel them to take the next step. And the other path which is more valid for some people than others is in the physical book sense. So this is where you don't necessarily have the person's contact details before they're reading the book. So you don't have a way of having a conversation with them. They've just got a copy of the book either from Amazon is the easy one to think about because you don't get the lead details from Amazon, people are just requesting the book. But even when you're not selling a book on Amazon, we talk quite a lot and we'll do another show about orchestrating referrals through complementary non competing businesses. So this might be organizations or church groups or schools or opportunities that you've got to add value to their audience by giving people the book. But you're not necessarily or almost certainly not collecting the lead details from those third party sources. So in those situations someone will have a copy of the book, but you don't necessarily know who that person is. So what can you do to elicit their details out of them to get their contact details in order to start the conversation?

Guest: Right, so how do they do that? Tell us about that.

Stuart: So we've had lots of feedback of various different ways of people are doing it. And some people do in that third party scenario they do collect details. So if it's a known third party, if it's a, a friendly business that you work with, sometimes you can get those details passed across. Sometimes in a, in a Conference type environment or an expo type environment like a show, then where tickets are being purchased, sometimes the organizers will pass on the lead details of all the contacts anyway. So some scenarios you will have it, but it's a great idea to assume that you don't. And then any that you do are a benefit if you get this broader group. But if you can write a call to action, if you can structure a call to action that makes it easy for people to opt in in a non committal way, then it's a greater likelihood of someone taking that step because you get people further at the top of the funnel. If you think of the funnel in terms of very, very browsy type people at the top, people who are just early stage investigators narrowing down the funnel to those people who are more specifically looking for a piece of information than people who are specifically looking for information from you, and then people who are specifically looking for information about you relative to a specific product heading down towards the sales page and then obviously customers popping out of the bottom. The earlier you can capture people in that funnel and the, the better the conversation, you can start engaging them and start educating them down that process, the more likely it is that as they start sifting and sourcing themselves, they'll end up at the point where they get to a sales page where they're far more committed than person B who would just come to that sales page from a organic web search or a PPC advert or something where there isn't that relationship built up. So I think I seem to have said all of those sentences in one breath. Let me take a drink of this coffee and I will give you a couple of examples that have come up recently.

Guest: Yes, please. Because you know, I have people real fast. I have people say to me, and I don't want to quote that it was Dean Jackson, it was one of the people who said it before, but people say that you should be able to look at the back of the book, should be able to draw that call to action without reading the book and grab those leads, have people interested without someone ever opening your book. What are your thoughts on that whole idea? I mean, do you agree with that?

Stuart: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's a great point. I keep meaning to. I found I must have been early last year, if not a little before, found an article from a publishing company talking about read rates of books. So it was talking about fiction rather than non fiction. It was talking about the disastrously small number of actual read rates compared to the number of books purchased. And that was for fiction. So this is people who actively want to be entertained. The amount of book that they actually read is relatively tiny. So there's really not that much expectation that people will read all of the information that you put in the book. The unfortunate honest truth. I mean, I just need to turn around in the office here and look at the shelf full of books which I think I've said before, for every single one of them at the point of purchase, I had 100% intense and even excitement about reading. But if you actually looked at the amount of them that I've read, I can see sticking out the top of them lots and lots of bookmarkers or scraps of paper only about a chapter or two in. Because with the best intentions I just haven't got around to it. I think the benefit of, and this is part of the psychology of using a book as a lead generation tool. There is an authority and a leverage and all of the good things you get from being a recognized author comes from the fact that someone has something in their hand or even electronically to a certain degree, but has something that has all of the aura of a published book. That is a credibility and an encouragement piece in its own right. So Dean said before, and we've said on the show a couple of times that the page that's 100% read is the front cover. And it's the front cover that grabs people's attention in the first place. That's the thing that compels people to fill in their and email address details. That's why I think in the last show or maybe the one before we were talking about the. The heading, the title and the. The heading.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: Really being best positioned to give the promise of a solution. So I forget the examples that we use, but a book tale of the. Well, I use Luba as example. So that's an easy one for people to. To think, to conceptualize. So Lieber's book the Adult Acne Cure talks about or the Call to Action is a lead towards a device that uses blue and red, blue and red light and galvanic waves to. To address acne. But the book is called the Adult Acne Cure. It absolutely nails the target audience. If you're an adult with acne that steps out to you, it's not just the acne cure, it's the Adult Acne Cure. It's not the. The User's Guide to Red and Blue Light to Solve Skin Conditions that talks about the process. The title doesn't develop the process. The title promises the solution. So Front cover promising a solution, touching hot buttons. Someone opts into that because they're projecting to their future self of wanting that outcome. It's not that they're projecting, wanting more information about a process. Weight loss books tend to focus on the solution, the results rather than the process. Whereas technical fitness books focus on the process because often that audience, it's an education based audience they're looking for, they want to deep dive on the process itself more so than the outcome. So anyway, risk of going into a whole separate show about titles. So the front cover is the page, it's 100% red in the physical world. The back cover is then the next most read page because people will pick it up and turn it over and read the back. Slightly different in the digital world of course, because it's not displayed in quite the same way. Then the next most read page is quite often the table of contents because people want the synopsis, the overview of what the, what the content will reveal to them. So that's why a lot of the table of contents that we focus on with people are really highlighting questions or guiding people through start to finish the problem, the problem statement, the solution and the next step. So when you look down a 90 minute book table of contents, it's not so much random statements of what the, of what's in this, the chapter itself. It's not so much a clever, witty line about partly revealing what might be in there. Because unlike a fiction book, the objective here is really to get someone from the front cover to the back and the back is the call to action and the content in between. The front and back cover needs to lead someone on that journey, give them the confidence that you're the right person to answer their question and a very clear next step so they can get that problem fixed. A fiction book is the product, is the book itself. You want someone to engage in the product, you want them to engage in the, the words on the page. Where these types of books that we're talking about, you just want someone to get to the back and the content is just the, the evidence to support that decision. So table of contents is the next most important thing. And again that looked at in isolation should really guide people towards the outcome that at the end, again start with the end in mind. And the back cover then is as you said, someone reading it without reading the content should have enough of a, enough of a motivation, enough certainty presented to them that if you think of them completing an action from starting their journey, thinking about the problem that they're trying to solve, seeing the thing that you're presenting and agreeing that that takes them further down that journey, that helps them make their boat go faster, it helps them resolve their problem. So a compelling title to a back cover that is then reconfirming their belief, giving them more certainty, more credibility, more authority, that the call to action, the step that they can take will take them even further towards success, towards resolution, then the back cover should stand alone, exactly as you said, to guide people to those steps for all of the audience that aren't going to bother really reading the book. So there's always a bit of a debate about how the back cover is obviously constrained by space. From a design perspective, you want to make it relatively straightforward and easy for people to understand. So it is very. It's really a copywriter's task to dial that message in. But you're absolutely right. Thinking about it in terms of. Are the words on this page compelling enough to allow people to take the next step? That's. That's quite an important consideration.

Guest: So when we see. Sorry, when we see, you know, when people. We look at the back covers and I don't have any of our books right in front of me at the moment, but, you know, usually there's that. If you're kind of. Let's say I've written a book about opening a dentist practice or what have you, and I say, here, go, here's my. Email me for questions. That is just not. That's just not enough. I see emails a lot. So some other options are, you know, putting their website on. I think we've talked about things. Take this assessment, those things. Can you elaborate on some other options that are better than just putting the website or just putting their email or sometimes phone number? I mean, you know, most people are not going to. I think today most people are not going to pick up the phone just based on something they see on the back cover. You know, I think it's.

Stuart: And it's a great point, isn't it? And it goes to the. The relationship cost. You've got so many credits that you can build up with someone

Guest: in.

Stuart: Or rather a better way of saying it perhaps is in someone's mind, they've got a threshold before they're willing to take the step of. Of contacting you directly. And if you're not able to pass that threshold, then they're unlikely to take that step. Now, that threshold in their mind will by a number of parameters. It's going to be in part how much competition there is out there. If you're the only game in town, then you've got a huge advantage because if they want the outcome then choice, if someone's in a massive amount of pain and this is a quick and easy solution, then their threshold will be, will be reduced because they've got no choice but that. So what we're saying is the most motivated people will take that step, but the whole rest of the audience, the whole rest of the, the people who are reading it or engaging with it and who aren't quite at that point yet are unlikely to take that step. So sometimes, I mean the, as we talk to people, the answer is always, it depends because there's, there's a million and one elements that come into it that can vary it. So there's never one answer. So I think it's always worth including an email address and a phone number on there for people who are the hottest, for those who do want to make it. But the point that you're making there is that you shouldn't have it as the only option. If it's the only option, then it will by its very nature exclude everyone that hasn't mentally passed that threshold of what they're willing to do. Because at the end of the day, particularly these days, it takes a lot for someone to pick up a phone and make a call. Because absolutely we're so email based or text based or form based. It's really, it really seems to be the last thing that people want to do generally is make contact with other human beings.

Guest: But that is so true. You know, I even have clients who will say just shoot me a text, you know, to answer that question. Well, that question could be, you know, 8 inches long in a text message if I'm going to send it to

Stuart: you, you know what I was just going to say. And with the best will in the world, we even fall foul of it internally. So we're a distributed company, we're spread out all over country. Well in fact all over the, all over the world because I'm the UK at the moment and it's so easy to get. We've got some great communication tools internally with Trello and Slack as well as email just to make sure that there is this fantastic communications. But I would say that probably 99, well, maybe not quite 97% of all of our communications are on, are on one of the text based services. So Slack or Trello or something else. And it's very easy just to get into that routine of, of 20 messages back and forth when actually one phone call would have Right. Would have solved it. As you can tell by these.

Guest: We have this fear like with phone calls that it's either going to take up too much time, you know, and, and yeah, sometimes they do even, you know, like having a call with a client today that really was probably a 47 second conversation. And it was, you know, I was on the phone for 35 minutes, which was, which was fine from my standpoint. But even he was like, wow, gosh, we've been on the phone way too long, you know, kind of thing. And I thought,

Stuart: yeah, and time goes fast. I think that, yeah, yeah, like you said, I think that's the challenge with, with expecting people to make phone calls is it's quite often seen as an open ended commitment for both parties and that can be resistance and increasingly so now where there are other options. So if you're only relying on people making a phone call, then it really is cutting out some of the audience. So a couple of the examples then that spring to mind of ways where you can perhaps better structure the back cover copy. So just to recap, again we said there's two jobs of work really for the back cover copy. The first one is for someone who you're in a conversation with already. They've opted in so you know who they are. You need the back cover copy to be compelling enough to make, help them take the next step. And the second scenario is all of those people who you don't know who they are. So how can you capture those leads and start that conversation with them to encourage them to take the next step? So the example I'm going to use is Jim Hacking, who's an immigration lawyer. We've been working pretty closely with him. For people who haven't been listening to the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast. Jim was actually on the first episode of that. That actually is another podcast I recommend people listen to. So if you go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com and Dean, each week we go take one person and sort of deep dive on their business for an hour, really looking for the opportunities to, to leverage. And there's, there's quite a few book authors in there who have, who have done a deep dive on how to use the book in their business. So head over to MoreCheeselessWhiskers.com if you haven't listened to that one. So Jim, I've been working pretty closely with Jim over the last couple of weeks. We've done some separate one on one stuff. Here's latest book. So he's one was done last year, I think, which was based on H1B1 visas and students then staying in the US as they need to change status. And this one that we're writing now is about bringing spouses into the US So where someone has a partner overseas, what is the process in order to bring them across? Jim's been doing this for, I think he's been doing it, I was going to say for 20 years, but it might not be so I don't want to unfairly age him, but they've got a great amount of experience, particularly with this and, and more specifically immigration from Muslim countries. So we were niching down in a separate piece of work, niching down to how best to help that community. So back cover copy for the spouse visa book could be in this book or work with us and we'll go through our three step processes. We collect all your information, then we have one of our professionals assess it and contact you and do a proper onboarding. And then we walk you through the process, we hold your hand for the actual immigration process itself and do all the education you might need to make sure you're best prepared. So give us a call and we'll get you started. So that was where we started from. And that in and of itself wouldn't be terrible, at least there's clearly laying out what the process is and giving an opportunity for the hottest of prospects to reach out on a phone call or an email. But it doesn't serve the job of engaging people who aren't the hottest yet. Although we've captured the leads already and for the physical copies, it doesn't do the job of encouraging people to give us their details to start a conversation with, apart from, as we say, the hottest ones that actually want to take action now. So where we've come to in the. In the current version, and we're just finalizing this at the moment, so it may change before we finish. But at the moment we've got three steps on the back. So the back cover will be a quick overview of what we in the book restating the problem. Bringing spouse into the country can be a daunting prospect. There are hundreds of, or there are not hundreds, but there are many forms, all of them seemingly designed to catch you out. Without the rights, the right help and support, you can find yourself in a situation where you're adding years to the process, all because of a small administrative mistake, the three steps. So that really kind of highlights to anyone not reading the book, just reading the back, that, yes, this is a problem that they might have. There is something they need to be concerned about. So what do they need to do in order to mitigate that for it not to happen to them? So the three steps we've got at the moment are, number one, head over to our website and watch the videos we've got, specifically walking you through the process. Number two, download a copy of our onboarding questionnaire and we'll play with the names on this. But download a copy of our onboarding questionnaire which takes you through, walks you through, step by step, all of the documents, documents you'll need to submit the process. And step three is then for the fastest possible start, get in touch and we do a 20 minute consultation with you just to let you know if you might run into any particular problems or anything you might need to specifically watch out for.

Guest: That's great. I think those are just, those are very engaging people and they'll do those things, you know, those are catching, you know, and that's a. I might use that as an example with some people when having conversations. Conversations coming up.

Stuart: Yeah, I think so. And I think we're gonna, once we've, we're sort of in the process, we're probably still a couple of weeks away from getting this all finalized, but once we do, we're definitely going to get Jim to do a case study because we'll track this one quite closely because it's, it's really a pretty nice niche target market that's easy for other people to understand. I think it's going to get great results from it because there's definitely a big, a big need out there. And if nothing else, with the administrative changes now we're on the. Well with Thursday 19th January as we record, so the president changes tomorrow with that administration, there's going to be a lot of, probably going to be a lot of questions or I don't want to say concerns necessarily, but things are definitely going to change and it's going to raise all those questions. So just from a timing point of view, having this piece of information out there for people who are going to be concerned and worried and emotional, the next 12 months are a really good time for, for Jim to be doing this and providing really valuable information out into the market. So let's just. We're heading to the half hour. So my voice is getting a little bit croaky and conscious of, of people's time as they're listening to this. So I just want to recap quickly and look at these three call to actions. These three Steps against the original, the original problem that we were trying to, trying to solve for. So two things for people who have opted in, we've got their details already, we can start a conversation with them. What does this call to action do for that first group of people? But it does two things. One, it offers them a number of things of additional value. The first one, go and watch the videos on our site. They don't need to do anything else. There's no opt in, they just need to go and watch it. And Jim's actually got a couple of hundred videos they've done over the years on all, all of this stuff. So it's a huge resource of additional information that's just going to add value on top of value. The second one, request a copy of our onboarding package that'll walk you through all of the details that you need to know. That's a second opt in. So although we've captured the details already as they opt in to request this additional information with no extra input from Jim in terms of time or effort or his staff, it's going to have highlight those people who are the hottest prospects. It's going to highlight those that aren't quite yet ready to phone, but they're much hotter than the ones that have just requested some information and then not yet done anything else. So it's a way of sifting and sorting people. And then the third option, obviously for the quickest start, get in Touch, that gives the impression that there is a slow track and a fast track to do this. And the fast track option is to, to get in touch directly. And as we've said, there'll be some people who do that straight away. Some people, it's not quite their time yet. So that gives us an opportunity of sifting and sorting to a certain degree. That first group, people where you've already got their contact details, you can already have a conversation with them in parallel. But it's going to highlight those ones that are hotter and then that hotter group, you can either send them a separate autoresponder campaign that kind of delivers more valuable information or really tries to compel them, educate them towards making that call basically. So that's the first group. For the second group, the group of people who will get the book. And we're certainly in that scenario talking about using referral partners. We've got a whole strategy around the existing clients that they've got and helping, helping that relationship. And again, that first episode of More Cheese Last Whiskers really goes deep into that. So anyone that's got an existing group of customers already should listen to that episode. So people are going to end up with a copy of the book where they haven't yet opted in. So Jim doesn't know who they are. That second step, the request a copy of the onboarding package is a nice minimum viable commitment to allow people to opt in, to raise their hand to make those invisible prospects visible without giving them, without making the only option that they've got call us. Because as we've said before, only the small subset of people who are absolutely ready to go now will take that step. So it allows Jim to, with no prior contact, identify a whole new set of people who are potential customers and start educating and motivating those guys over time towards that outcome of making the call.

Guest: Great. So perfect.

Stuart: How is that? Yeah, it's surprising, isn't? 30 minutes goes pretty quickly if people want to head over to the show notes. So this is going to be on as always. We put this up on the 90 Minute Book website. So if you head over to 90Books.com forward/podcasts or head to the site and then on the navigation at the top is the podcast link. We'll put the show notes up there. There'll be a transcript so people can dial back through and think of the examples. And I'll also put up just a quick breakdown of option A and option B in terms of this version, option B where you give them the options that kind of tick the box of a minimal configurable commitment to move people forwards. I'll put the examples there so you can head over to the website as I say 90minutebooks.com podcast and, and take a copy, take a look at that and then think for yourselves what might be the best way of presenting something on the back cover that will allow people to either raise their hand and identify themselves as a hotter prospect, or for those where you don't have their lead details because they've got a copy of the book from somewhere else, allow them to opt in at a relatively minimal viable commitment step of requesting something valuable and then you can start the step of educating and motivating people towards that ultimate outcome of giving you a call.

Guest: Great. Well, this was very informative and I think very useful to those who are thinking about working on their book.

Stuart: Well, we will wrap up there unless you've got anything else. Anything else spring to mind? No, as we close.

Guest: I don't think so, no.

Stuart: Cool. Well, let's wrap then. Anyone listening? If you've got any questions, obviously we're we'll we're more than happy to answer them. So shoot a message to podcast at 90 Minute Books or even support at 90 Minute Books and we'll make sure they route through to us and we'll be able to answer the questions on future podcasts. We've got a couple more great shows coming up with some real life examples of people using their books in the real world. The last episode we published with Kevin Craig, if you haven't had a chance to listen to that yet again, strongly recommend you go and listen to that because Kevin's had some quite phenomenal and unexpected results. Created a whole coaching business based on Right on.

Guest: It really is phenomenal. I've had lots of conversations with people who are looking sort of the same mentality and Kevin wasn't looking for that when he came on. I don't want to talk too much about it, but it's been a big selling point to people who are really excited and they've been listening to the podcast and they're excited because of what it can potentially do. I personally love the podcast with the real studies with real people telling us how they're using the book and what it's done for them. Those are some of my favorites, so I'm looking forward to the ones coming up.

Stuart: Fantastic. Well, thanks everyone. Thanks Betsy. We will catching you next time.

Guest: Great. Thanks, Stuart.

Stuart: Sam.