Write a Booklet for Income and Impact

I am often asked how to decide what topic your booklet should be about. ??

To get started, ask yourself the following questions:

?? Who is my ideal customer?

?? What are their biggest pains? Needs? Desires?

?? How do I solve or fulfill those?

?? What do my customers love about working with me?

?? What are some common misconceptions or limiting beliefs my customers often have?

Once you answer those questions, you will have what you need to decide on not just one booklet topic but several. ??

Let's look at an example using me (and JETLAUNCH).

1?? Who is my ideal customer?

? Entrepreneurs like you who want to build their brand and business.

2?? What are their biggest pains? Needs? Desires?

? They want a marketing solution that is long-lasting and has multiple uses.

3?? How do I solve or fulfill those?

? We help you write, design, publish, and market a book or booklet.

4?? What do my customers love about working with me?

? We're super fast, we respond very quickly, and we're very nice.

5?? What are some common misconceptions or limiting beliefs my customers often have?

? The biggest misconception is that writing a booklet is difficult and expensive. The second is that you have nothing important to say.

This isn't a complete list, but it's simple and easy to grasp. From just these answers, I wrote the following booklets (with more being designed or written):

?? Write a Book That Massively Grows Your Brand and Your Business

?? Get Paid Upfront to Write Your Book

?? Use the Free + Shipping Model to Sell Thousands of Books

?? Use Amazon Ads to Sell Thousands of Books

Who is your ideal customer?

Your ideal customer:

?? Has the problem that you solve

?? Is willing to pay for that

That's it!

Sure, you can add other things like "isn't a jerk" or "shares your values" and those are important, but that can be built into the first one.

Let's look at my business as an example.

First, I have to determine what the ideal problem is that we solve. On a very broad level, we design books, so our customer is someone who needs a book designed.

However, book design is not an ideal problem. The ideal problem we solve is to publish a book or booklet that grows your brand or business.

That means that our ideal customer is someone who needs that, someone like an entrepreneur or coach or consultant or speaker.

If you've been in business for a while, you know who your best customers have been. Why have they been your best customers?

If you're just getting started or are planning to offer a new product or service, you'll have to put a little more thought into this.

Once you know who your ideal customer is, you can start looking for them and giving them value.

For us, we know that amateur fiction authors are not our ideal customers. Sure, we have done a lot of great fiction book design over the years, but fiction authors often don't fit our second criteria—willing to pay for our services.

It's not that we're very expensive, but our ideal customer understands that what they pay is an investment to build their brand and business.

(This article is an example of how I provide value to our ideal customer. ??)

Finally, be willing to increase your prices to attract your ideal customer. Your ideal customer sees and understands that the value you provide is worth the price you charge.

Price strongly affects perceived value. We've increased our prices severalfold over the years, and each time we've attracted better customers—customers who are great to work with.

And whenever I've given in to a customer's request for a lower price, that customer has been more demanding and difficult that someone who pays more.

The more a customer pays, the more they value your work. 

How do you solve your customer's biggest problems?

It would be great if we could actually solve our customer's biggest problems. If that were so, we'd be rich very quickly.

This question should actually be "What are the biggest problems my customer has—that I can solve?"

For example, my customers have all sorts of big problems, such as a terminally ill spouse or they're having trouble selling their house. Unfortunately, I can't solve 99% of my customers problems.

However, there is that 1% of their problems that not only can I solve, but I'm probably the best person to do that. If someone wants to create a booklet that can build their business (generate leads) and build their brand (position them as an expert), then I'm their huckleberry.

Answering this question will take some creativity and brainstorming power. Start by looking at what you already provide, and then list every problem that your product or service fixes.

Using myself as an example again, one of the things that JETLAUNCH provides is an Amazon Ad service. I could say that we help people who want to use Amazon Ads, and while that's technically correct, it's not going to help me sell that service. Sure, I could go on Upwork or Fiverr and post that we provide Amazon Ad services  and I might get a few people to hire us, but I haven't addressed any of the underlying problems that our Amazon Ad services actually solve.

So I dig deeper and start asking "why."

People who can benefit from Amazon Ads want to sell more books. Why?

So they can get more leads for their business. Why?

So their business can grow (or survive). Why?

So they can help people <fill in blank>.

Let's say that someone's business is helping people start a food truck business. I could say something like this:

"We help your customers start a successful food truck business by getting your valuable booklet into their hands."

Or if that someone is a CFP (certified financial planner), we might say:

"We help people with six-figure and higher incomes find the best CPA."

Be careful how you word this, however. I would never use the last statement. While it might be technically true if our Amazon Ads result in more people buying his booklet and then doing business with him, it still feels misleading and unethical. At the very least, I would write it as:

"We help people with six-figure and higher incomes find the best CPA by helping them find your booklet on Amazon."

I love the analysis of getting to the heart of how our service helps people, but I never want to be "mostly truthful," and I never want to do or say anything that causes someone to lose trust in me or my company.

Now it's your turn. How does what you sell help people? What problem are you solving? Keep asking "why" until you get to the heart of it. 

What do your customers love about you?

Have you asked?

Part of our process includes asking for that feedback.

Our project helpers follow a system and checklists. One of the last items on that checklist is to send a link to a form that asks for a testimonial and feedback.

One of the questions on that short form asks how willing they are to recommend us. That's known as the Net Promoter Score, and it's powerful.

Since we started using this question, we have received 10/10 every single time. (Yes, I'm totally bragging. ??)

However, that score isn't the focus of this post. Do you actually ask your customers what they loved about working with you?

We do.

There are several things we hear over and over again:

?? How fast we respond to emails

?? How friendly and helpful we are

?? How we go above and beyond

?? How professional our designs are

What I love about these comments is that the quality of our work is never the first thing they mention. How we treat them is much more important than the book design they paid for.

How about you as a customer? Would you rather get a great product or service and be treated coldly—or would you rather get a product that was merely decent and be treated great?

Most people want both, so we make sure that's what we deliver.

Find out what your customers love about you and then deliver even more of that. 

What are some common misconceptions your customers have?

Some of my customers' misconceptions are:

?? Writing a book takes a long time and a lot of work

?? I can't write a book until I'm an expert (like a Ph.D. or something)

?? It will take a long time to have my book designed and published

?? It costs too much money, and I'll never make my money back

?? I'll never sell my book except to friends and family

?? If I create a booklet, it won't be nearly as effective as a book

I plan to address these misconceptions in future articles, but I wanted to first get you thinking about misconceptions and how to use them wisely.

You see, most people think their customers (Authors: readers = customers) understand everything clearly. You think that you do such a great job of explaining what you do that there's no room for misconceptions.

We're human, which means we're often wrong. We're wrong when we think our customers understand everything. As customers ourselves, we're often wrong about what we "know" is true.

You want to make sure your customers understand how easy it is to do business with you.

You want to make sure they understand how much better their lives will be after working with you or buying that solution you provide.

Also, addressing those misconceptions gives you a chance to connect with your customers and potential customers. It shows them that you care enough to help them.

Figure out what your customers' misconceptions are and then record a series of videos addressing them. Post those videos all over (IG, FB, YT, your blog, etc.) and use this opportunity wisely. 

Create a list of potential booklet topics

You’ve gone through all of the previous exercises and have identified the biggest problems your customers have that you can solve. Now, let’s make a list of potential booklet topics based on those problems.

As always, I start with myself as an example. Here are a some of the problems that I or my company solve and the booklet topics that go with them:

Problem: I can’t afford to pay to have my booklet edited, designed, and published.

Booklet Title: Get Paid Upfront To Write Your Book

Problem: No one is buying my book on Amazon.

Booklet Title: Use Amazon Ads to Sell Thousands of Books

Problem: I don’t know how to use my book or booklet to build my business.

Booklet Title: Use the Free + Shipping Model to Sell Thousands of Books

Now, let’s try that with some other examples.

Problem: I don’t know how much money I’ll need saved up to retire comfortably.

Booklet Title: How Much Money You Need to Retire Comfortably

That one seemed too easy, so let’s try a harder one.

Problem: I’m a freelancer having trouble making enough money doing Facebook Ads.

Booklet Title: How Facebook Ads Can Easily Triple Your Bottom Line

Here’s the thing, once you’ve identified those problems you solve, creating a booklet (probably several booklets) is easy.

If you want help coming up with ideas, post a comment or send me a message and let’s figure it out together!