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"Foreign."

Stuart: Welcome to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart here with Betsy. How's it going, Betsy?

Guest: Hey, it's great. Good morning, Stuart, or afternoon Stuart?

Stuart: Yes, we're just in the afternoon here, so not too bad. Got some Friday afternoon energy going on. I think this is the first show for a couple of weeks. The plan was we had a lot of travel coming up. I'll run through some of the, some of the things that we did over the last couple of weeks. Dean was across in the UK as part of the European tour, so good opportunity to catch up there. So I'll run into that. But a little bit more impactful on the schedule than anticipated. So apologies for not getting a show out for a little while, but we've got a quick catch up show today and then back on normal schedule from normal service resumes from next week. So how has it been in Orlando for Florida for the last couple of weeks?

Guest: Little. I'm sorry, say that again. Little warm. Everything's good here. It's warm here in Florida and busy, very busy the last couple of weeks.

Stuart: It's surprising, isn't it? There definitely seems to have been not much of a summer lull so far. People are moving through the process and I've seen a lot of updates come through for people tweaking further versions of their books.

Guest: Yes, absolutely. I think that's probably what I've been doing the last couple of weeks the most. A lot of reorders. So we're seeing a lot of use of the book, which is great big orders too. So people are definitely gearing up, you know, for some of their events, you know, late summer, early fall and a lot of big orders. So people are definitely using that. And I've asked a few questions like what are we doing? And that's what I'm getting back. Like are we just handing these out or do you have an event? And so, so what I'm seeing is a lot of industry specific conferences or conventions and things like that. So great to hear that. Great to see how they're being utilized.

Stuart: Yeah, like I say, it's nice to see them being used in real life. I think that we're in like we've mentioned at the beginning of middle now of July as we record. So anyone that's listening to this, there's definitely a pickup in the conference seasons across a lot of industries coming into September, October and as everyone gets back into the kind of new academic year after the summer break. So that was a great time for people to be thinking about that and whether you've written yet or whether you're thinking about it. If you look six months out on the calendar, four, five, six months out, I guess and see an event coming up, then really make that move to get something complete now, put you in a great position as that event comes up. I was just talking to or scheduling something with Rob Lyons who wrote the book towards the end of last year. So we were catching up in. Well, we postponed because they got hit by a snowstorm and we're literally just postponing now. So five rescheduling. Sorry. So five months go by in the blink of an eye. So definitely looking ahead on that calendar. Bill Walsh, who we've had some conversations with his guys, they do a lot of entrepreneur training and some seminar speaking. I was looking forward at his schedule because he was posting some fall stuff coming up and it really is the case. There's a lot of, a lot of those industry specific events are in that, that kind of Q3 time of the year. So great, great that people are planning for it now.

Guest: Absolutely.

Stuart: So over here, as I mentioned, we got into some travel over the summer, so demons across. A couple of weeks ago we had the breakthrough Blueprint event in London and Amsterdam. Anyone that's not listening along to the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast? I mentioned it a couple of times before, but that's a strong recommendation. The format of that and the breakthrough Blueprint events is really focused around the eight profit activators, which if anyone's listened to the shows before or has worked with us, you'll know that we talk quite a lot about profit activator number two and three. A way of getting invisible prospects to raise their hand and then educate and motivate people to make a decision to take the next step with you. So all of the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcasts revolve around working through the eight profit actuators on an individual basis, an individual business. So it's a great opportunity to listen along to realize case studies every week and I'd probably say maybe 1 in 3, 1 in 4. The conversation naturally evolves to someone using a book as a lead generation tool in those early stages. So that's definitely worth listening to. And likewise at the event, small group Mastermind events, about 10 people around the table, 10 businesses represented. And it was really great example of how different people are using those lead generation tools, whether it's a book or a guide or something else, but still that mechanism of getting people to raise their hand. So there's A couple of people from the UK and financial services sector who were talking about books. One was a consumer facing book more around pensions. So a guide to. It's really like that transitional what to do at 62, the state pension guidebook that, that specific type of transitional book where someone's coming to a point in their life and needing some information to move across. So that was one and then another one which was really quite interesting was a large hedge fund management company. It was actually slightly different from a hedge fund technically, but that's the easiest way to describe it. So very large invested portfolio. So you might think to yourself that okay, this type of technique is good for a small business or dealing with individual consumers, but this is talking about multi, multi millions of dollars in invested funds and large accredited or institutional investors. But still writing something that is engaging and introducing and starting the conversation applies at that level just as much as it does at the kind of small osteopath or physio practice trying to engage local people. So it's really quite interesting to listen to that. And then there were a couple of people there who had written books already and were using those as a, as a real life example. People might remember I'd mentioned Jamie Smart a couple of weeks ago who had already written some more traditional books and we shared, I think I shared a link in a previous show to their campaign results and then they'd written a 90 minute book around a scorecard process. So we were talking a lot more about how that funnel was working and got some leverage point of that to really develop it a bit more. So it was a great event to see people using books in real life talking about books as that opt in and the breadth of, the breadth of subjects. It really does just reinforce that it's applicable in pretty much any business. It's just finding that thing that resonates with the audience.

Guest: Right. I think those events are, I think about those events and I've been to some of the after events that Dean has done and that those relationships that are built during that time, they learn so much not just from Dean but from each other. You know and hearing that, how the book is used it really those are things that are so important. And yeah, we've had people on our, on the show and people hear that but I think that face to face in that small, you know, group setting, they really to dive into it a little bit more on a one on one is so helpful and it really puts that idea into people's head like I really can do this, I can do this book. I can write this book. And wow, I can see how it can be used, you know, because I think sometimes I get this a lot. And I've had it a lot recently from people saying, you know, I'm just a little guy. I'm just, I'm not a big business. I'm just a little guy and it's just me. And I don't really think I can do, you know, I don't think this book is what I should be doing. It's exactly what you should be doing, you know, and I say that a lot like the big, the big guy. They, you know, typically have the budget and they have the, the manpower to get their names out there and push, you know, to build their business that way. That small guy. This book is, you know, a relatively inexpensive investment. It's not, not a large investment of your financial, you know, means or your time. And so I, when I hear people say that, I'm like, you're, you're completely wrong. This is, we are, this is small business minded, you know, this is the way to go. So.

Stuart: And it's perfect. So let's dive into that a little bit. Actually. There's a couple of the things I've got on the list which I'll just briefly touch on before we get to the end. But let's expand that a bit because that I think is a really good point and particularly if you're hearing it a lot, kind of at the cold face of people saying it. So if the expectation or the concern is that, that what's going to be the concern, it's either that they don't have the expertise, don't have the time or budget, or don't think that it's achievable for someone in their position. So I think the benefits of people who are listening now maybe in that similar situation and seeing other people do things and worried about the. Not so much worried about their ability to do it, but thinking about what the outcome is then exactly as you said, the financial and the time commitment of this is very small compared with a lot of other options out there. Similar options out there. So we're not talking about months and months to write a book. We're talking about hours and hours. We're not talking about tens of thousands dollars worth of investment, we're talking about a couple of thousand dollars. So compared with a lot of other time or money commitments, this is a good use of that time. So that shouldn't be too much of a concern for people. The authority and I think some of the conversations I've had with people, even after they've written kind of, there's an underlying theme where this is perhaps the case, and this is on the coaching side of the business as well. Not just necessarily on the. On the book side of the business, but that. I don't want to say confidence, but that's the best word that's coming to mind, that confidence. They can write. Something that's engaging, is something that comes up a lot. And I think it's very easy for people to forget how much knowledge that they've got, even if they've only been in business for a year. I mean, potentially, even if they only just come out of school for something, you've still got a. Your experience is still unique in. In your world, regardless of age or experience, it's still the story. And if that story is compelling. I was watching a YouTube video last night, just Casey Neistat was doing a review on a particular video camera, a drone based came. He was just suggesting a video somewhere. So it kind of caught my attention. And one of the things that he said in that which really resonated was he was looking at a $5,000 Canon camera, a $2,000 Sony camera, $1,000, something else, and then going down to a little portable handheld thing and then to his iPhone. And he was saying there's a lot of scenarios where if you go into a place, for example, when he was boarding a plane, record something. He'd previously done that with this big Canon camera on a tripod doing recording, and this. The hostess of stewards would come up and say, so you can't film on board, no filming allowed. Whereas if he's there just recording on his iPhone, no one's ever stopped him because contextually it's. They see it as something different. So the point that he was making was the very best tool is the tool that gets the job done, because the story is the most important thing. And if the story is the most important thing, then the tool to enable that story is as important as the one that contextually allows you to get it done. So regardless of the mechanism by which you get something out there, if you have a compelling story, if you have something to share, then that kind of trumps everything else. It's like the podcast. I mean, this podcast here, we get a bit of echo, echo on the line from my end, just because of the way the recording, the equipment set up here from your end, sometimes because you're dialing in, the audio quality drops a little bit when the Phone line drops a little bit on the Mortise Whiskers podcast, everyone's dialing into that. So this isn't studio level recording, but because the message is compelling and there's some useful stuff for it and the overhead of doing anything else means that overhead is too great. The mechanism, the delivery mechanism is less important than the message that gets out there. And I think that it's is what people forget quite a lot. It's easy to think about the, the mechanism by which it gets done or the technology or which should I promote it on this platform or that platform? Or should it be this dimension of book or that dimension of book? But at the end of the day it's the communicating the message. So the message is that anyone can do this because you've got a story to tell and story to share. I think it's easy for people to forget that. So even if you've been in business for a year, those beginning stages, those customer experiences, the one to one interaction that you get with people, which again, you don't get so much once you get bigger. So I mean, to a certain degree that's an advantage. The interaction that you've got on the ground really gives you a great insight into writing something that resonates with customers who are coming in at that position because to a certain degree that they don't care how big you are. You're not trying to create a celebrity brand, you're not trying to promote for the sake of promoting. You're trying to inform and educate and compel people to take that next step.

Guest: Well, that's one that I get that, that is something we discuss a lot when people are coming on board and they'll say, do you think I have, do you think I can do this? And I said, or how do I prepare for this? And I said, it's all in your head. Like, we're not gonna over prepare for this. Don't write a whole, don't write a book just to record a book, you know, so. And we've had people send, you know, 19, 20 pages, just outlines. And I'll say, don't over. It's all there. You've just spent, you know, 10 or 12 minutes telling me what you want the book to be about. So you know your subject, you have that, you have something to share, you know, and people just, I mean, I have it all the time. They stop in their tracks and go, oh yeah, you're right. You know, I was able to. When you, when you know your field and when you're Comfortable, you know, in your field and you have that, that knowledge, you don't even have to have the confidence. I mean, you just, you can spew it out, you start talking about what you do on a day to day basis and, and it just, it creates itself, you know, and, and I've even had people come back and say like, you were so right. I'm so glad that I kind of tossed out my outline. I'm so glad I didn't have all those notes and stuff. So.

Stuart: Because I mean it gets, and it does get very difficult because if you overdo the outline and try and make it too much, try and write too much of it into the outline, then you do find yourself reading along and then because it's not complete, you get to the end of the short sentence that you've written and then you're left hanging. Whereas if you do a quality outline with bullet points and keep it kind of constrained to the subject so that each bullet is just the one word reminder of the talking point. And then you know that when you naturally kind of run out of energy on that sentence, it's time to move on to the next one. That's far easier for anyone to do than to try and as you say, overly draft the outline and then you find yourself half reading it, half getting, half using it as pointers. And it, it does get very, it's too much of a cognitive load, too much of an overhead. It's right, yeah. Makes it far too difficult. I think that small business versus big business and seeing other people advertising things and where do I get it out to? Again, looking at it from the small to medium sized business perspective, the other benefit is that your audience is probably more local than a larger brand anyway. So the pie that you're trying to win, the area that you're trying to influence is much smaller than a national brand or an online presence because you've kind of got a geographic constraint as well. So I think when people look at, we were just talking before we started recording and kid mentioned that, that people see the end result and forget about the work leading up to it. But that work is very context sensitive or context biased. So if you are a osteopath in a certain physical location, then you know that your audience is only within the 50,000 people, hundred thousand people within a 20 mile radius of your physical location. So comparing it to bigger advertising or bigger budgets, or trying to spread the word through campaigns on all these different social media platforms, you don't necessarily need to worry about all of that because You've got a very. Even if you took it back to the most basic and you printed off a whole load of leaflets saying, here's a free book talking about how to resolve five steps you can take to resolve back pain issues at home, print off some leaflets on the printer in the office and pay a local kid to deliver it to all of the homes in a 20 block radius over the next three weeks, then even that would be enough to drive a significant amount of business because everyone is locally on your doorstep. You don't need to worry about do I need this social media campaign or how do I advertising adwords in this platform or all of these other things. It's just a analysis paralysis. Almost worrying about things that aren't as important as just getting it done in the first place and dealing with those local people.

Guest: Absolutely. That's great. You started talking about ad campaigns a little bit, sort of. You want to head into that direction. I want to talk about that a little bit more.

Stuart: Oh yeah, yeah, good point. Because we did a Facebook test campaign a couple of weeks ago, so that had some quite interesting results. So give me a second just while I get the page up and then I can give people the exact numbers. So we talked a few shows ago. By running some simple Facebook leads gen ads to generate an interest, I'm going to try and stick some more comprehensive things in show notes. Some of these I've included before, so they won't be new for people. So what I'll include is a copy of the ad that we ran and then also a copy of the email Mastery ad that we ran on the coaching side of the business probably 18 months ago maybe. So that one was a print ad in Success magazine. So it's a little bit different. Different. And again, I mean, some people will hear that and say, oh well, obviously I can't run a print ad in Success magazine. That's well outside of my budget. But forget it, that's not important. Think about the kind of steps involved and not where those steps were executed. So even if you took this and ran it, as I say, just print it off on your printer in the office and run the campaign in your local church. It's the steps are important, not the where. So anyway, I'll include those. Point being that the aim of what we're trying to do in both of those campaigns and this one is this kind of concept of a minimum viable commitment, the smallest step that you can expect someone to take at this stage. So the email mastery campaign was to a cold audience in Print in Success magazine. The aim of them, the aim of the. What we did was to collect leads. So the advert or the advertorial. When Dean wrote it, his mindset was if people do nothing else, I want them to. I want anyone that read who reads this to get a lot of value from this particular advertorial piece in the magazine. So in the article it's probably only 250, 300 words. I think maybe there's a couple of tips mainly talking about the nine word email. And if someone did nothing else but just executed that, then they would get some value from it. The offer then at the end of the advertorial piece is to something along the lines, I don't have it in front of me, but something along the lines of if this was interesting, read about 11 other emails strategies and grab a free copy of Email Mastery. And there's a little cover shot of the book and the URL emailmastery.com when people land on that page, then the only thing they can do is leave their name and email address. The copy on that page is pretty similar to the ad copy in the magazine. The image is the same and there's just a simple name and email address. Why do we do it that way around? So the theory is that for someone to land on that landing page, they've read the article and they've had the thought that, yes, I want a copy of the book. So the landing page, all we want that one to do is collect the details and allow someone to finish the thought to complete the thought that they've already had. We're not trying to convince them by adding in extra words. We're not trying to add on video testimonials to say how great this book is and why they should grab a copy. Its entire job of work is to allow someone finish that thought. I mean, really, if the technology allowed it, we'd really want a little thumb scan, fingerprint recognition widget in the magazine so someone could just touch it and then that would connect in the background and it would magically deliver it to them and let us know that they were interested. But obviously that doesn't exist. So we want the minimum resistance step to allow them to complete it. So we see that quite a lot, people trying to take people from one step to the next and then overly convince them that this is the thing that they've already done. So they'll land on a landing page and there'll be a whole load of other convincing or compelling information on there, but they've already had the thought that they want it. So this is just to allow them to complete that thought. And then on the back of that the book is delivered and the leads captured and then they go into the funnel of their follow up. The reason I talked about that is because Facebook now has closed that gap a little bit by something called lead ads. It's a particular advert type in Facebook. So it's basically a form that if you're just looking to collect name and email address details, it will pull those details from someone's Facebook profile and when they click on yes, they want a copy of it, that lead is passed through to the, to the advertiser. So to us. So for the 90 Minute Book Facebook campaign we just ran a simple ad that we've tested a couple of times before. In fact, anyone that's on the has opted in already has probably seen one of the email follow up sequences talks about the results of an earlier Facebook campaign. So this one now uses a lead form ad whereas the previous one went off to a landing page. So this one is just a nice cover, a nice image of the book. So something graphically enticing and then some copy saying, can you really outline and publish a book in 90 minutes? Most people think it takes months of hard work, hours of writing and solitude to create a book. Discover how you can get your book outlined and written in as little as 90 minutes. And then there's this weekend, the 90 minute book, next weekend your book and a download button. So that copy, super straightforward. It's not trying to convince anyone of why they should do it. It's not running a whole load of scarcity or, or fear based things. It's just purely interest. We ran this ad to two groups. We split tests on two groups just to see what the response was. One is a group that we've advertised to before where we know there's, there's, there's like a good crossover of people who are interested in the subject of writing a book. And then another one was a, was a group where we know the book's been talked about and promoted in the past. So still relatively common traffic. Because these people don't necessarily know us. We'd specifically excluded anyone who had liked the 90 minute book page already. So just to try not to get too much repetition of people who already know us or whose leads we've already got probably. So again that's another, another option for people who are running these ads. Make sure you exclude some of these categories. There's also the option, although we didn't do it on this to upload a spreadsheet of leads and you could exclude those people or you can run what's known as a lookalike audience. So based on the profiles of the people who have opted into the list already, Facebook will create a lookalike group of people with similar interests. So you can really go pretty broad because the aim of this one was still relatively 90 minute book branded. Although it's offering a free book, there's still some connection to us and people wanting to write a lead generation type book. So we didn't want to go too broad because then the conversion rate drops. So we're trying to keep it relatively specific but showing it to people who hadn't necessarily seen us before. So the results were pretty cool. The lead ad, as I say, it just really makes it straightforward. So people don't need to enter any of their details. They can just click on the download button and then their lead is captured straight away and they're past the whatever they're you're offering to download their pass to that download page. So the results, we ran it over a weekend, started it on, it was over the July 4th weekend. So we ran it from I think late ish on the Saturday. By the time we got it up and ran through until the end of the July 4th weekend. Sorry, until the end of the July 4th, which this was Tuesday. So it ran for about three days. To the two groups we spent, let me just go up a level. So we spent in total just $112 and from that pulled 94 leads. So that's averaging a $20 per lead, which is really pretty impressive. Yeah, I mean it's really quite surprising. But then when we break it down even further, the first test group, the one that's slightly more known, we spent $60 there and got 74 leads from it. So that first group was just at 81 cent a lead. And the second group, they didn't convert quite so well. It was a colder audience. So we were expecting that somewhat. But that second group then spent $53 and got 20 leads. So that was $2.65. So you can see as a, as a test we're going to put a little bit more effort now into that first group until the conversion rate starts falling off. But converting leads for $0.81 is, is pretty special. The follow up campaign is then just the regular follow up campaign. So the initial cookie, the initial book is delivered, then there's a follow up question asking about, oh, sorry. Then we give the Previous Facebook campaign details. And then we ask the question of what type of business someone's into. You start that engagement. And we've already seen a ramp up in the last week of people responding to that. So again, a little bit difficult running through the specifics of a campaign on a audio podcast because there's a lot of jumping around if people aren't necessarily familiar with it.

Guest: But I think there's a lot, enough information, impressive information for people to really kind of dig into it themselves, you know, for the small amount of money that was spent. The potential leads, you know, the potential business out of that is pretty great. At a 94 leads, you know, I mean, even converting one of those, you know.

Stuart: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the. Well, I think. And the other thing as well, I really wanted to get across when we were doing this was just giving the example of how simple it is in the last couple of shows that I'd mentioned these Facebook lead campaigns because we're starting to use them more and more now because it does remove that extra step of having someone type in their name and email address. So it is a little bit more straightforward. And then you've got all of the demographic power of Facebook advertising, which is super helpful. But what I really wanted to get across to people was the simplicity of it. So I really kept this as basic as we could possibly keep it. So the image that we used on the Facebook ad is an image that we provide people as part of their 90 minute book. So it's just a nice little image. The proportions of it are a pretty average social media size image. It really just focuses on the COVID of the book against the background. So super simple image. The words in the ad copy kept specifically to the words that we've used before. Didn't try and tailor it and tweak it anymore. This really was just done for speed. And just to benchmark something with no. With no dialing in. I mean, if you wanted to tweak this over time, we'd maybe include the name of the group that we were targeting or tweak the word slightly so that it was a little bit more specific to those people. But again, this was just to benchmark it and show how simple and straightforward it can be. The follow up sequence that we put people into afterwards, exactly the same as a follow up sequence we use already. So all of these steps, each one of them you can tweak and tailor and make more targeted over time. But just to get something up there in the first place for anyone that's listening to this, to use this as your first campaign, just to quickly get something out there, super straightforward. There's a load of Facebook lead ads, something that's relatively new. So there's quite a lot of information out there on just Google around for lead ads and how to set them up. Facebook's interface, it's a bit of a pain in the neck sometimes, so it's not always the most straightforward, but it's certainly not rocket science. I don't have a problem with one thing. Oh. So the only thing that's a real pain, so this is a takeaway, is that you can't edit the lead form pages. So once it's set up, once you hit submit, the only thing you can do is then duplicate it and change it to something else. So I was tweaking around with the words and I think I changed the image once and then every time I wanted to change something had to recreate the form. So that's a bit of a pain if anyone's thinking about this. Try and have those things together, together up front. So the copy that you want on there, the title that you want on there and the image that you want on there, work on those offline and then stick them into the lead ad. But apart from that, relatively straightforward. The ads seem to get a pretty good, a good view rate, a good response rate. The Optima was pretty good. Again, we were sending these to audiences which weren't very close but we were certainly aware of who we are. So think about that when you're sending it out there. But really this is something that everyone should try straight away. Certainly everyone that's got a book written already, I'd really suggest doing that over this next weekend coming up. This show is going to go up on Saturday so hopefully people will listen to it over the the weekend. So during the week just grab an image, grab draft some headline copy that's compelling, try not to be too convincing, probably don't use fear based tactics, that type of thing. Remember this is going into Facebook which is a relatively friendly environment, so make it as compelling as possible rather than trying to be convincing. But I really think this is something that people can get up next weekend and for the sake of 100 or a couple of hundred dollars can really get start getting some data back.

Guest: That's great. That's great information for sure. Yeah.

Stuart: And hopefully be useful for people as well. I mean as we've said before, it's great to see people out there using their books in the physical environment to audiences where they're Perhaps already known, but as a way of engaging with unknown audiences, I think this is one of the better techniques that are around at the moment.

Guest: I agree. I agree. So pretty successful. That's awesome.

Stuart: Fantastic. Well, we are just heading past half an hour, so I'm going to draw a line under it here for this week and we'll be back next week. As I say, I'm going to stick a couple of these images into the show notes. So if people head over to the show notes and I've just suddenly realized I'm off the swing of which episode we're on. So I'll, I'll give you the URL in a second when I, when I found it. But if people do have any questions or any Q and A type things you want us follow up with, anything that we've touched on over the past couple of shows or anything that's holding you back from getting started, then just shoot us an email either to support at 90 Minute Books if you just want to ask a question, or to podcast at 90 Minute Books if you want us to talk about something particular on the show. So this episode is episode 30, so head over to 90minutebooks.com podcast and this episode 30, I just, I just went onto the website as I was looking for that and Last episode was 29 as well, which we talked a lot about Facebook. So if this is the first episode you're listening to, you want to think or hear some more Facebook ideas, then listen to the last show, episode 29 as well. And that's. We use four or five different types of examples there. So there's a lot more information there on how you can use Facebook. But hopefully the results of this campaign will keep you posted as well. We're going to tweak these over time, start running them to different groups. We'll use that first group as the benchmark and then just split test against those going forward. So we've always got a nice comparison and then really should be able to provide some useful information as we get back to people as we get this

Guest: more and more dialled in, I think so. That's awesome.

Stuart: Perfect. Okay, guys, I had on the list as well to talk about scorecard books this time, but I'm going to do that next next time. That's a slightly different type of book. So for, for people who are interested in more of the, not necessarily the lead generation at the first step, but using books to educate and motivate people. Then either next year or the show after, we'll talk about some school card books. And that's a great example example there. So should be a good next show.

Guest: Okay. There you go. Okay, thanks so much.

Stuart: Perfect. Cheers. Betsy, I will speak to you next week.

Guest: Very good. Sounds good. Take care.