Table of contents:
- Leverage Your Existing Platform
- Batch Your Marketing Activities
- Delegate and Systematize
- Long-term Brand Building
After finally finishing writing your business book, you’re probably feeling a mixture of accomplishment and relief. You’re done!
But not really.
Your book is a marketing tool to be leveraged, which means that you’re now transitioning from the creation phase into what’s next — marketing and promotion.
If you’ve been working with a ghostwriter and/or publisher, you’ve probably already received advice regarding what you could be doing pre-publication to build your author platform and attract attention. And now that your book is soon to be released or is hitting bookstore shelves now, there is even more to be done.
Time is of the essence, too, since media outlets are typically only interested in new releases for a matter of days or weeks. You need to strike while your book is relevant, and the clock is ticking, unfortunately.
The challenge for CEOs, I don’t have to tell you, is a lack of time.
Even if you wanted to, you can’t devote full days to being interviewed about your book or posting on social media. You need marketing tactics that can be seamlessly integrated with your existing work activities. You want promotional strategies that will amplify your message with only an incremental increase to the length of time regular activities take.
Leverage Your Existing Platform
Fortunately, your biggest marketing asset already exists. It’s your professional platform. This consists of all the opportunities you’re regularly offered to share your expertise.
Yes, you’ve packaged your expertise in your forthcoming book, but even before that and certainly after it’s published, you have ways to position yourself within your industry as an expert.
Since you’re already making presentations, speaking at industry conferences, receiving awards, writing articles and blog posts, and being quoted in the media, all you need to do now is to weave in a mention of your book when you’re explaining something.
The mention of your book should not be a sales pitch, at all. Don’t come across like you’re trying too hard.
Instead, casually mention that you share more details regarding a specific strategy in your book, whatever the title is, if the audience wants to learn more; you don’t have enough time to explain it all, you tell them.
The key is to reference your book naturally, as an off-handed comment designed to be helpful, not pushy.
By the same token, use the material in your book as fodder for other forms of content. Whenever you can, take a concept from your book and expand on it, so you’re not starting from scratch when you go to write. You can take an example and add to it more context or more strategy and then share it as a LinkedIn article or blog post on your website.
Also, explore opportunities to be interviewed on podcasts where you can quickly cite examples from your book or concepts that listeners may want to learn more about. Don’t linger too long over what’s in your book, however. Instead, mention a lesson you want to share and then name-drop the title and move on.
Batch Your Marketing Activities
Just as you should always be looking to squeeze as much juice out of promotional opportunities like podcast appearances and speeches, also try to bundle or batch your marketing tasks so it doesn’t feel like you’re always marketing.
It’s always a good idea to plan out what you’ll accomplish next month marketing-wise. That means you’ll need to set aside an hour or two this month to look ahead to what’s coming up in terms of appearances, social media posts, and article opportunities, and commit to working on them.
Then set aside a block of time, maybe an afternoon mid-month, for example, to create new content. During this time, crank out some blog posts, write LinkedIn posts, outline a newsletter, or pitch an article or two to editors.
Try as much as you can to batch podcast appearances in close succession, so that you can get into interview mode for a day or a week, for example. This way, you know that you only need to be dressed up and prepped for questions during that timeframe.
If you send out a regular newsletter, you can work ahead on issues by relying on an established template. Try to get at least two issues teed up at a time.
The same for social media posts. Use social media schedulers to help you batch social media posts and not have to worry about it more than, say, once a week. This frees up mental space for new thinking and ideas.
When you find that you have to complete several similar types of activities, do all you can to get them done in quick succession for efficiency’s sake.
Delegate and Systematize
While you’ll want to be involved in scheduling and overseeing marketing activities, you don’t necessarily need to personally do everything. In fact, you shouldn’t.
There are people who are likely much more skilled at certain types of marketing tactics or certain tools. Pay them to do work that does not make the best use of your skills. This will likely include tasks like social media marketing and graphic design, for starters. You don’t have to be intimately involved in creating social media graphics.
You’ll also want to create templates and systems for tasks that you do regularly or materials that you regularly need. For example, if you’re always sending out a headshot, have those at the ready on Google Drive for anyone to download. Create a media kit for yourself and your book, complete with a Q&A for TV and podcast interviews as well as backgrounders on your topic and your career.
Then, keep track of your wins. Set up a system to monitor the impact of certain marketing activities on inquiries, sales, website traffic, social media follower counts, and anything else that is important to you. Here, too, you do not personally need to do this; these activities would likely not be the best use of your time.
Long-term Brand Building
Keep in mind that you probably didn’t just write your book to create a new income stream. You wrote your book for all of the long-term good it can do for you, your personal brand, and your business, if you manage one.
Your book exists to position you as a thought leader, which can help attract attention and open doors to consulting engagements, speaking invitations, potential career moves, and corporate board opportunities, among other things.
Use your book to build new relationships, whether with potential clients, potential referral sources, or media representatives, among others. Your book is an effective conversation starter, so use it for that and then nurture those new connections.
The key to success with book marketing is to weave marketing activities into your existing obligations. Do your best not to add lots of new tasks, which you don’t have time for, but to add complementary activities that build on what you’re already doing.
It’s much better to under-schedule and be consistent with your activities over time than to burst out of the gate with all of the promotional tools and then immediately stop them. Your book will soon be forgotten if that’s your approach.