Mar

Branding Your Business With A Book

By emily

One of the best ways to immediately propel yourself to "expert status" in your niche or industry is to write a book.

These days, EVERYONE is writing e-books online, and it’s still a great strategy.

Even better is writing a hard copy of a book that you can sell or give away to clients and prospects. A physical product like this, even if it’s small and self-published says that you are serious about what you’re doing and you’re willing to invest in it.

Likewise, a book that you’ve written has a lot of staying power. Imagine sending a ton of product literature to a client. That’s going to be tucked away into a filing cabinet – or worse – thrown into the "round file."

To the contrary, people have a very hard time throwing away a book and it’s likely to remain on their bookshelf for years, a permanent reminder of you and your services.

Books catch the reader’s imagination.

Let’s face it, product specs, factual descriptions and statistics can tell a story, but not in the way that elegant prose does. People are fascinated by stories.

Consider creating a book about your prototypical client and how he faces concerns, researches his options, and comes to benefit from a product or service like the ones you offer.

"How To" Manuals, Case Studies and Short Tips are also great book ideas.

Books Are A Profit Center

If you have ever had the opportunity to speak in front of an audience, whether you got paid or not, you probably left money on the table if you didn’t offer your audience a way to get another "piece" of you through selling a book in the back of the room. A book, even a little one that sells for $10, is a great way to pick up some extra profit and figure out who really benefited from your talk. At the least, you could give out a book in exchange for each audience member’s filling out a review form of the speech, or a contact information so you can follow up with him or her.

Another great idea, if your speech is being booked through an event planner is to offer your book as a "bonus item" for your audience, and give the event planner a great "wholesale" price on the book if they order one for each audience member.

Books Help You Build Your List

Aside from all the other great benefits of writing a book to market your products and services, the last one I’m going to share is probably one of the most important. Use your book as a list-building mechanism because everyone who has a copy of your book is a great prospect.

How can you use your book to build an opt-in list of some kind?

If you sell your book, make sure your order form collects a name, phone number, email and mailing address.
Mention your website landing page frequently in your book, and give people a reason to visit – such as a free report, software, forms to fill out, etc.
Include a "tear-out" contact form that readers can email or fax to you to request an item of value such as a free consultation with you.
Make sure the book includes an upsell and all your contact information. This can be a small ad in the front and back of the book, a catalog of your other products, or even a long sales letter in the appendix

Since books stay around forever and can get passed around by friends, using a combination of these ideas makes a lot of sense as you build your list and your business! Books are a smart way to market!