Powerful marketing tool

Your book can be your most powerful marketing tool

I’ve already talked about why writing a book is a great idea, as it creates the ultimate showcase for your expertise.

But to label a business book as the most powerful marketing tool you can have in your business, well, that’s a bold claim. What, more than my website, my social media presence, my speaking engagements, my videos?

Yes, more powerful than all of those. Why? Because of the unique power of books.

The artefact of a published book has special power as a marketing tool for you and your business. Books have a built-in authority to them: “You’ve written a book about it? You must know your subject extremely well.” This is a common reaction from prospective readers. People understand the amount of time and resources needed to write, get published and market a book. They immediately appreciate the depth of research, focus and detail which constitutes a completed book on any given topic. This halo effect is there to be exploited, but not abused.

The fact that your business topic, issue or experience warrants a whole book means in the prospective reader’s mind that you must have something worthwhile, interesting and original to say.

That’s a big responsibility.

Just as with any long-form piece of expression, such as a music album or a feature film, a book generates a certain level of expectation the first time it is read/listened to/watched. If that anticipation turns into a let-down (certain Star Wars movies and er, any Rolling Stones’ albums since the ‘70s, I’m looking at you), then any goodwill soon turns sour.

So, use the power of a book wisely. But if you can harness it, look where it could take you. If you’re a business speaker at seminars, exhibitions, networking events or on video, what could be a better way to capitalise on the interest generated than to make available a signed copy of your book, at the back of the room or in the post?

If you’re a business coach, what better way to signify that you can walk the walk and talk the talk than having a book in YOUR name rather than just citing the business gurus you admire?

If your business or your job demands a high level of detailed expertise, then a book where you lay that out in detail is the best advert/CV you can have: SEO, insurance, tax, photography, networking, health and safety; there are as many potential topics out there as there are businesses and services.

So, think about what you know and in which way you would like more people to discover your expertise. It could just be that writing a book is your next move.

What to write about

I’ve already talked about why you should write a business book and the need to work out your motivation for writing it.

Let’s now look in a bit more detail about what to write about.

We’ve already narrowed it down that it needs to be a showcase for your expertise. And that within that it needs to be an aspect of that which you are passionate about conveying to other people, as that will give you the ultimate motivation for writing it.

Narrow things down further by working out the purpose of your book. Is it a self-help manual? Is it a guide to all the information you need to acquire a particular business skill or technique? Is it a description of your idea for fixing some specific (or general) business issues? Is it a work-book for people to write in and test their own progress? Is it an autobiographical journey through your business experiences and what you’ve learned along the way?

What category of book will it fit into? Like it or not, Amazon is probably going to be the primary distribution route for your book. Amazon has a clearly defined set of categories in which all business books are placed. Amazon’s umbrella heading is Business, Finance & Law.

It’s instructive to go to this page and see how they present books in this section and which categories are then available within it. There are these headings, listed in alphabetical order:

• Accounting
• Biographies & Histories
• Careers
• E-Commerce
• Economics
• Law
• Management
• Personal Finance
• Professional Finance
• Reference & Education
• Sales & Marketing
• Small Business & Entrepreneurship

Keep drilling down under each of these headings and you find sub-headings. For example, in the area where I have worked on various books, Small Business & Entrepreneurship, you then find these sections:

• Accounting & Finance
• Business Plans
• Entrepreneurship
• Home-Based Businesses
• Law for Small Businesses
• Sales & Marketing
• Starting a Business

Your book needs to find a home in one (or more) of these sections, so take a look at the section where you would love your book to appear as a number one bestseller. Your book needs to find an audience and Amazon have been in the game of finding readers for every type of book for a long time. So, use their experience to help to focus your ideas to a point where you can start to come up with a title, a sub-title and a category for your book.

Creating these and then even visualising some sort of cover for your book is a great motivator to get you started.

Keep all that in mind as you develop the theme and framework for your Amazon bestseller.

What's your motivation for writing?

I’ve already talked about why writing a business book is a great idea, as it creates the ultimate showcase for your expertise.

OK, so what’s going to drive you to write it?

You want to get across “your expertise”, which can cover all sorts of areas. To help to drive you on to write a whole book it helps if you can develop a key idea around your area of expertise, to give it a theme and a focus.

It’s not essential that you come up with a Big Idea as your central motif for your book, as these are very hard to hit upon. And if you google it, you’ll probably find that someone else has already had that idea and talked about it.

What you do need to identify is your central motivation for writing your book.

Please don’t come up with “making money” as your number one point. Here’s the brutal truth - publishing a business book is very unlikely in itself to make you significant amounts of money, let alone make you rich. Writing ANY sort of book is unlikely to make your wealthy – the number of authors who make a living out of writing is vanishingly small. And in the relatively niche world of business books, the volumes you are likely to shift… well, put it this way, don’t plan your pension around your writing career.

The fact is, you’ll be doing well if you cover your costs and break even. But you will have been on an incredibly fulfilling journey during the writing process and you will end up with the most powerful marketing tool for the whole of your business: a published book.

So, that in itself can be your motivation. In another blog I talk about making the most of your book as a marketing tool.

However, that on its own probably won’t get you making all the sacrifices needed to squeeze in writing a book around all your other work and life commitments.

You need to WANT to write about something. There needs to be a burning reason why you want to get your ideas down on paper. You’ve got some important information, ideas, techniques, concepts, hints and tips, hacks, whatever, that you really want to share with people. Something you've not quite come across in any other book. For sure, your book can be influenced by other books you've read about your world and about your area of expertise. And you can quote other people's work, as long as this is always given a detailed and accurate attribution. The taint of plagiarism is the best way to kill any authority your book has, stone dead. Worse than that, you then acquire an unwanted reputation as an untrustworthy person - you're then in a far worse position than never having written your book in the first place. In extreme situations, you may even end up in court!

Your interpretation of someone else's ideas and methods - fine. Documenting your experiences as a business coach (for example) of putting other people's techniques into practice - also fine.

Identify the issue, cause or purpose that your book will have.  Even pin this up as a note near your PC, and use it as a constant reminder to keep you on track and keep you motivation.

Then start writing.