Effective Book Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
Nancy L. Erickson
White-glove service to write, publish, distribute & market your book worldwide to share your vision, elevate your status & create a lasting legacy | Elite Status & Legacy Book Consultant | Stonebrook Publishing Owner
Business owners have many unique advantages when entering the publishing world. Your extensive knowledge of your industry will enable you to write an in-depth nonfiction book that provides significant value to readers. Since you have an established customer base, you won’t have to build an audience from scratch. You can also use many of the marketing strategies you already have in place for your business, such as LinkedIn networking and email newsletters, to promote your book.?
Leveraging your existing marketing assets will enable you to save time and build more buzz around your book launch. Below we’ll explore several marketing strategies that play to your strengths as a successful entrepreneur.?
Develop and Validate Your Book Idea
As a business owner, you understand that market validation and product testing are essential parts of the marketing process. After all, if consumers aren’t interested in your product, you’ll have a hard time selling it no matter how many Facebook ads you run. Here are some tips to help you develop and validate a book idea that will hook your existing followers.?
Gain Audience Insights
Gaining insight into your audience’s content preferences and pain points before you start writing will improve your manuscript. Tools like SparkToro allow you to view detailed follower data just by entering your website’s URL. You’ll be able to see demographic information, which blogs and social media platforms your followers frequent, what keywords they search for, and more. SparkToro can even analyze conversations related to your niche that are taking place online, enabling you to identify popular questions and topics that might be worth exploring in your book.
Poll Your Followers?
You can also go directly to the source and survey your followers to find out what they want to read. Social media polls are a great way to quickly gather information about your audience’s interests, current challenges, and content needs. Once you come up with a few book or chapter ideas, you can run them by your audience to see which ones resonate with them the most. Some of your followers may even be willing to beta read your writing and provide valuable feedback that will improve your manuscript.
Mine Past Blog Content for Ideas?
If you have a blog for your business, it’s likely full of potential book and chapter ideas. Set aside some time to review the posts in your blog’s archive and take note of any patterns you find throughout your content. Are there certain ideas that you keep returning to or topics that seem particularly popular with your audience? These areas of interest could be good jumping off points as you begin the writing process.?
As you reread your posts, you may also see areas for improvement, such as concepts that could be expanded upon or updated. Consider revamping these blog topics in your book to provide value to your audience and save time. Repurposing existing content is usually easier than starting from scratch, allowing you to get your book out faster. Once your book is published, you can also link to its Amazon page at the bottom of related blog posts, giving people who want to learn more an additional resource.?
Top of Mind by John Hall is a great example of this strategy in action. Over the years, John wrote many thought leadership articles on content marketing to promote his digital advertising agency. Those posts served as the basis of his aforementioned book, which teaches companies how to grow their customer base through content marketing. It has over 150 reviews on Amazon and received a 4.4-star rating overall. By adapting thought leadership articles that resonated with readers into a more detailed, full-length book, John was able to further establish his brand authority.
Consider Sharing Your Personal Story?
If you’re not sold on the idea of repurposing your blog content into a book, there are plenty of other avenues to explore. Consider unique ways to translate your experiences into a compelling story that will draw in your audience. For example, since your customer base is invested in your brand and success, they may be interested in reading a memoir about your entrepreneurial journey. You could also turn the wisdom you’ve gained from your years in business into a self-help book to inspire others.?
Create a Landing Page for Your Book
Businesses need to cultivate a strong online presence to help customers discover them, and books are no different. One of the easiest ways to start building your book’s digital footprint is to create a dedicated landing page for it on your company’s website. Featuring your book on an established site that receives steady traffic will help get more eyes on your work. Additionally, capitalizing on the SEO strategy and domain authority you’ve already built for your business will bolster your new writing career.?
Your landing page should encapsulate your core message and explain how your book will help readers. Be sure to include a brief overview of your credentials and experience to show that you’re qualified to write about your chosen topic. Adding a few reviews of your book can also help you build social proof and convince readers to pick up a copy. Don’t forget to insert a link to purchase your book once it’s published.?
Many authors struggle to craft a persuasive landing page and might need assistance from a copywriter or book coach. After all, it’s difficult to distill a full-length book into a short, compelling synopsis, so consider getting some help with this step.?
Diversify Your Product Offerings?
Most businesses don’t just sell one product—they diversify their offerings to increase their earnings and appeal to different customer segments. Even if you only have one book, you can still create an additional revenue stream by releasing a second edition at a higher price point. Adding bonus content like worksheets and extra chapters will entice readers to upgrade to the more expensive version, boosting your average order value.?
You can also offer discounts for repeat or bulk orders to encourage customers to add more copies to their cart. Down the line, consider adapting your manuscript into different formats, such as a video course or workbook. In our book coaching programs, we teach authors how to create additional info products from their book, helping them generate more revenue.?
Leverage LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the world’s largest online professional network, making it an ideal place to market a nonfiction title. You’ve probably gained numerous connections over the years through your business activities. Here are some ways to leverage your LinkedIn presence to drive book sales.?
Optimize Your Profile?
Updating your LinkedIn profile with details about your new writing venture will help readers discover your work. First, make sure to mention your book in the “about” section of your profile and include a link to the landing page. You can also add your book’s title to the “publications” section and update your headline to reflect the fact that you’re a published author.
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Another great way to highlight your book on your LinkedIn profile is to design a custom banner featuring your book. Include details like:?
Lastly, take advantage of the “featured” section of your profile, which allows you to showcase your work. Upload a few of your book’s most impactful pages to give followers a sneak preview of your writing.?
Take Advantage of Marketing Tools
LinkedIn has a range of marketing tools you can use for book promotion, including LinkedIn Live and audio events. These features allow you to invite your followers to a live podcast or video event and engage with them in new ways. You could host a virtual launch party, Q&A session, or an interview with another industry leader to create buzz around your book.?
The newsletter tool is another useful feature to be aware of. It allows you to create a newsletter and invite all of your followers and connections to subscribe. Whenever you send a message out, your subscribers will be notified via LinkedIn and email, increasing the chances that they’ll read your content.?
Make sure to strike a balance between promoting your book and providing value to your subscribers. Keep readers engaged by sharing a quick tip, an inspiring quote, recent industry news, or answers to frequently asked questions.?
Join LinkedIn Groups?
You’re probably a member of several LinkedIn groups related to your industry. But If you haven’t participated in group discussions in a while, now is a great time to ramp up your interactions and join additional groups. Interacting with peers in industry-related forums can help you gain connections and increase your overall visibility on LinkedIn. It’s also a good idea to join groups for writers to foster connections with other authors. Here are a few groups for nonfiction authors that may be worth joining:?
Post and Engage?
Lastly, don’t forget to create image and text posts to promote your book to your followers leading up to the official launch. Many professionals use LinkedIn as a space to highlight their accomplishments, so feel free to make an announcement post about your publishing achievement. You can also share inspiring quotes from your book, early reviews, and behind-the-scenes photos of the writing process to get followers excited about your upcoming release.?
LinkedIn is a social platform, so it’s a good idea to engage with other people’s posts as well. Regularly liking, sharing, and commenting on content you enjoy will help you form new professional connections.
Collaborate with Other Entrepreneurs?
It’s important to mobilize both your online and in-person network to promote your book.? If you own a small business, you probably already have connections in your community. Reach out to those individuals and ask if they’d be willing to give you a review or quick social media shout-out. See if any of the local business owners you know will sell your book in their stores or allow you to host an author talk for their customers.?
Forming partnerships with other entrepreneurs can also be an effective marketing technique. To promote his book The 4-Hour Body, Tim Ferriss teamed up with other entrepreneurs. Through these partnerships, he was able to offer readers who placed bulk book orders a variety of bonus content, including apparel and a course from popular finance influencer Ramit Sethi. This strategy helped Tim generate more than 15,000 pre-orders.?
If you want to harness the power of collaboration, one way to join forces with another business owner is to create a bundle that includes both of your products. To make the offer more enticing, consider discounting the bundle slightly to make it cheaper than buying each product separately. You could also agree to cross-promote each other on social media or offer a joint coupon code that works on both of your ecommerce stores. However, make sure to work with entrepreneurs in a similar niche to ensure that customers who enjoy their offerings will also be interested in your book.?
Use Existing Marketing Assets
You’re probably well-versed in social media marketing and have built a solid strategy. Whether your company is present on Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok, leveraging your existing social media platforms can help ensure a successful book launch.?
It’s best to tailor your book promotion plan to fit your current marketing strategy and skill set. If you’re a video marketing expert, creating a book trailer will be easy since you already have the camera equipment and editing software you need. Plus, your audience may be more likely to watch your trailer because they know they enjoy your other video content.?
Playing to your strengths rather than experimenting with lots of untested strategies could increase the effectiveness of your book marketing campaign. Here are some more ways to leverage your existing marketing assets to promote your book:?
The wide variety of book marketing strategies out there can get overwhelming. Instead of trying to do it all, focus on the advertising techniques you’re good at. As a business owner, you already have many of the skills necessary to sell books effectively. Hone in on your talents and book sales are sure to follow.
Create a Positive Feedback Loop for Your Business?
Writing a book will create a powerful positive feedback loop for your business. The audience, marketing strategies, and content base you’ve already developed will make it easier to devise a winning book idea and move copies. As your book gains steam and success, new customers will discover your writing and business organically. Becoming an author will also establish you as a thought leader, a title that will benefit both your business and writing career.?
However, you may wonder how you’ll fit writing a book into your jam-packed schedule. In our book coaching programs, we teach authors how to follow our proven book writing process to increase efficiency. You’ll learn how to write without ruts by creating a BookMAP that contains all the important points and insights you want to include in your book. Crafting a detailed outline before you start working on your manuscript ensures that you never waste time wondering what to write next, enabling you to finish your book in just one year.?
Contact us to learn more about how we help authors optimize the book writing and publishing process, allowing them to get their book out into the world faster.