Strategy 1: Your new business card.
When you meet your new client, wouldn’t it be great if you present your new published book instead of a little business card?
The “author influence” is very powerful, and it can quickly brand you as an expert in your market. Think what would happen to that book after your initial meeting.
This prospective client could read some testimonials about you when they read your bio page. Or they might find an endorsement in your book that confirms that you are the ideal person they want to do business with.
Your book may even be sitting on their desk for several weeks, and every time they looked at it, they would be thinking about the author…the “expert”…who consulted with them about the problems they are dealing with. Now they see you as the solution. In short, a self-published book is a powerful promotional tool that will brand you as an “expert”, and land you quality clients as a result.
A published book will leave a better impression of you every single time. Having a book in your name on your resume has many advantages. A book will help you to build your career and gives you an unfair advantage over your competition. Having a book in your name also allows you to position yourself in your market.
People tend to give authors automatic respect because a book is a major achievement in most people’s perception. There is a cache about writing a book that makes you look more professional automatically. People look up to you; they respect you, and it gives you a natural sense of authority.
Put yourself in your client’s shoes. Let’s imagine that you’re scouting for the best candidate in a specific market. You come up with two potential businesses. One is a published author of a bestselling book and the other person you don’t know his story or experience. Which one would you choose? Having a book would give you a tremendous advantage over the competition. It’s a marketing investment that can enhance your career and boost your business.
Strategy 2: Stop selling your time.
Businesses and professionals that sell their services by the hour can easily get caught in a trap. You only have some much time and energy in a day. What if you could clone yourself?
One way to do that is package your knowledge and experience and turn your services into products. You can package your service into a product such as a book. Package your unique service offering, market it, and sell it as a deliverable – here’s what we do, here’s what you get, here’s what it costs. See, you can’t make more time, so once you are at full capacity, it’s nearly impossible to grow. But you can be smart and sell unlimited quantities of your product.
By having a book, you’re creating a passive income stream for yourself. Passive income fairly broadly as revenue you earn, even when you aren’t actively working. By contrast, active income is money that stops coming to you when you stop working.
With passive income, you would keep getting paid whether or not you do any meaningful work. You may do a lot of work up front to get the ball rolling, but eventually, you reach a point where the passive income stream gets activated. At this point, you can essentially stop working on this income stream if you desire, and more money will keep flowing to you through this stream regardless what you do or don’t do.
To create a book, that work needs to be done only once. Your message and ideas can be duplicated and shared with many people. You could potentially be generating earnings 30 years from now, for a piece of intellectual property you create today. Once the time clocks are removed from the equation, your revenue stream is unlimited.
Strategy 3: Teach and get more clients.
Most entrepreneurs are task oriented and believe in their service, but seldom are marketing experts. This is where most business owners tend to fail. You must know how to market your business, and apply the most effective marketing strategy to expand your client list.
Everyone knows you must educate if you want to build trust. However, teaching what you know how to do is an excellent way to earn trust and successfully close more deals.
Few things sell better than teaching. Teaching shouldn’t be just a part of your marketing; it should be included in your culture. Educate your people, clients, and your industry. When you become an education resource to your entire community, you’ll become the clear champion in your industry.
Don’t simply demonstrate your expertise. Show your people precisely how you do what you do.
People will realize that you have expertise in your field, and what you just described is more difficult than they imagined. Now it’s time for you to charge a premium for providing them the valuable piece of knowledge they are missing. So, what can you teach that will make your business more desirable, and interesting? Teaching is an excellent way to attract more clients to your door.
Most business owners are looking to build a group of raving fans that trust us. If you’re on the right track, you should have a loyal customer base, which is referring you new clients.
Strategy 4: Do people know your story?
“It’s hard not to like someone once you know their story.” People connect with stories that move them. Every business can tell a story that helps prospects and clients connect at a deeper level.
Your unique story can break through the crowd and connect with new markets. Once you uncover a story that helps people connect with your organization on a more personal level, you must use it and tell it as a key element of your brand. Your story can be used on web pages, in marketing collateral, and as a tool to recruit new people to your team.
Now, how do get that story for marketing your products and services? Think like a writer. Imagine that your business is a character in a novel. It’s your duty to build up and expose this character in the most impressive way possible.
Think about the things that draw you into a story. It’s usually a character that creates a dramatic impact through actions, desires and shared experiences. Great stories and characters usually come to life through the careful telling of seemingly small details.
Marketing for your business is all about getting your prospect to know, like, and trust you. Few things are more powerful in helping you accomplish this than your story. Your marketing kit should include a page that gives the reader a peek behind the shell at what you and your company are all about.
Tell your prospects why you started your company, why your service is your passion, how you overcame hardship, what your dreams are, who your heroes are.
This might seem to be a bit awkward as a marketing advice, but absolute sincerity towards what you’re doing can take you a long way to earn the trust of your clients. When people are doing business with a company, they want to connect at a deeper level. When they know what you stand for, they will respect you more.
Strategy 5: Lead generation is about being found.
Many businesses have trouble generating more revenue. Why? They aren’t getting enough paid clients. Why not? Because they don’t have time to do services AND effective marketing simultaneously.
It sounds so simple, but it isn’t always easy. The greatest way to generate more referrals is to be more referrable. The great way to generate more leads is to give your customers something to talk about.
One of the leverage points for book publishing is lead generation. Find a way to attract people who might be interested in your services. One way to do this is with advertising, but that can be risky and costly.
Traditional lead generation tactics, directory advertising, trade show participation, half page print ads are quickly losing appeal with businesses. There are two very good reasons for this decline 1) traditional methods are very expensive and 2) traditional methods are becoming less effective regarding lead generation.
Businesses must think differently about lead generation. Instead of finding your clients, it’s time to create ways of being found. People are facing problems, and they want solutions. People are looking for solutions, and trying new services have changed how they go about doing it.
So, to generate leads and be found, you must put yourself in the pathway of people who are learning about, asking about, and spending money in your industry. You must create an inviting presence or flow of information that leads people to your business.
The beauty of this approach is that once you master it, the leads you attract will be much higher value, much more qualified, and likely expecting to pay a premium because they have convinced themselves that you are the solution.
You’ve got to build up your inbound marketing engine, and start taking advantage of the power of information, networking, trust, relationships, and community to boost your client lead generation.
Strategy 6: Ebook reading is growing.
More people are reading eBooks than ever before. With the rising trend of tablets, smartphones, and digital content, eBook consumption is massively growing. The sales trend has shifted where Amazon sells more digital content than paperback books.
With digital content, there is no restocking or raw inventory, so you never have to worry about the extra costs of shipping and storing supplies. Digital content is inexpensive to duplicate and great for creating passive streams of income. The beauty of digital content is the ease of transforming the information into different media sources; such as audio and video to supercharge your business marketing.
Stand out from the crowd!
In an overcrowded, hypercompetitive world, the only way to make an impression on your prospect is to break through the noise. Your company could have a unique message or experience to tell, but the public just doesn’t know it. Once you know what you want to say, you must take deliberate action and send out your message to the masses. A book is an excellent long-term marketing and revenue tool that you can use for years to come!