Table of contents:
- Why Books Outperform Other Marketing Channels
- Strategic Book Positioning
- Beyond Publication
- Measuring Success
Although the term “thought leadership” may be a tad overused at this point, the concept is as strong as ever.
Earning the role of thought leader in your industry or marketplace helps set you apart from your competition. Sure, competitors may have an active Instagram account or a huge number of followers on LinkedIn, but those numbers may not directly equate to professional admirers or champions.
Positioning yourself as a thought leader by authoring a book has more clout and more staying power. Once your book is published, it will forever be associated with your name. Your expertise will be reinforced anytime someone brings it up.
You “wrote the book on” whatever your topic is. That’s extremely hard to beat. And it certainly overpowers pure networking and “face time” at professional meetings.
Why Books Outperform Other Marketing Channels
Traditional marketing and business development activities tend to interrupt prospects while they’re engaged in other things. Cold calling and text messaging, especially, are proactive methods that break into people’s day unexpectedly, while other tactics like direct mail, email, social media posts, and networking events are less intrusive.
A book, however, is more reactive. It’s also more convenient.
Readers can pick it up when they want. That creates a very different relationship with you, as the book’s respected author. Instead of trying to sell them anything, you’re perceived as attempting to be of service or to educate through your book.
That’s a different dynamic altogether.
Your book gives you instant credibility and authority. This shortens the sales cycle for whatever you’re offering, because your book helps forge a level of immediate trust. With trust established, you may experience shorter sales cycles and less price sensitivity.
Your book is also extremely efficient. In typical networking and business development activities, you proactively work to meet new people, connect with prospects, and impress potential sources of referral. Some percentage of all those conversations may turn into a sales call, and a small percentage of those may result in sales.
Your book, however, gets you in front of people you may never actually meet face-to-face and prequalifies them as interested in your product or service even before you speak with them.
Strategic Book Positioning
The key to leveraging your book for business development is in your topic. If you use your book as a sales pitch surrounded by customer success stories, you’ll lose credibility. Everyone will be able to see that its purpose is selling.
But if you write a book that makes a significant or innovative contribution to your field — content that gets readers talking — you’ll be seen as a leader.
A good place to start in thinking about potential book topics is identifying major challenges your audience regularly faces. Are there large industry problems? Looming issues? Or underlying tensions that are impacting profitability? Writing about a potential solution, or a way to achieve a solution, helps demonstrate your expertise and industry leadership.
Providing a framework for diagnosing and then addressing problems helps build trust while reinforcing the depth of your industry knowledge. But there needs to be value offered within your book’s pages. If readers get to the end and feel like they’ve wasted time reading it, you will not have achieved the desired effect.
You want readers to feel more positively about you by the last page.
Beyond Publication
While being a published author elevates your personal brand and reputation on its own, leveraging your book to attract more positive attention helps your business development efforts.
Writers and reporters for media outlets prefer to quote published authors because they are viewed as more objective and better informed than other types of experts. Earned media quotes, a.k.a. publicity, help amplify your book’s message and increase your own visibility.
Since many speakers’ bureaus will only represent published authors, releasing your title will qualify you for paid speaking opportunities. Landing keynote presentations and conference talks reinforces your expert status.
Of course, one of the most effective uses of your book for business development is as a direct mail piece. Send it to your top prospects with your best wishes.
Measuring Success
Books can help open doors and start conversations, but they are typically not considered a fast turnaround tactic.
Mailing books out and bundling them with speaking gigs can initiate new business relationships, but it can be weeks or months before you even get down to talking serious business. On the other hand, business relationships that originate from your book have higher lifetime values, generate more referrals, and can grow over time. The pace of growing the relationship is slower, but the conversion rate is often higher.
Trust has become an essential factor in many business relationships, so the faster you can establish it, the shorter your sales cycle.
High-end customers value expertise and credentials, of which your book provides evidence.
Your book is your best business card.[/vc_column_text]