The 3 Things You Need for a Successful Book Funnel
It's time to uplevel your game.
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You’ve envisioned yourself as an author for your whole life.
You imagine yourself opening the box of the first printing of your beautifully designed book with your name on it, the smell of libraries and your childhood wafting around you. You feel the hardcover. Its soft texture slides over your fingers.
You’re also prepared for the wave of good fortune about to meet you, as you are now the author of a topic you have spent your entire working life mastering. You know that your book is a business card. You know your book is an employee that works for you 24/7.
You may have heard of the word “book.”
And you may be familiar with the word “funnel.”
But perhaps you’re not familiar with the term “book funnel”… until now.
The book funnel is born
The term “book funnel” was first coined by successful entrepreneur Russell Brunson. In fact, Russell Brunson is one of the foremost experts in online sales funnels, as he was one of the first entrepreneurs in the early 2000’s that embraced the Internet as a source of leads.
Russell made famous what are called “sales funnels,” i.e., web pages that help people move to the next step in their buying decision, one page at a time.
Truly, that is why we call it a “funnel” in the first place: at each step in the marketing and sales process, just a few select people decide to move forward.
In order to capture a certain percentage of the market, we need to cast the net widely. There are lot of people interested in solving the particular problem, but only a few will actually buy.
By capturing their attention, we may collect their contact information. By collecting their contact information, we may nurture them over the long-term to sell them a small offer. Once they trust us, they may realize that they want deeper and deeper help. As the offer gets more valuable, the price increases, and the number of people who buy the most valuable offers gets smaller and smaller. But as the offer gets more and more valuable, it is very possible that the sale gets easier and easier, and more and more profitable.
The #1 best way to keep attention
If you’ve been in online business for a while, you know that the ways to capture and nurture attention are as varied and multiplied as our imagination.
Not too long ago, podcasts were not popular. When I was in middle school, if you listened to a podcast, you were a little weird. Nowadays, podcasts are one of the most popular ways to capture and nurture attention. A podcast is an excellent way to cast a wide net and funnel people who are interested in solving their problems with you into a nurture sequence so that you can help them make a buying decision.
The method you use to capture and keep attention can depend on what you personally enjoy creating and consuming:
Podcasts
Blogs
Live stage events
Live online events
Instagram or LinkedIn posts
Youtube
Television shows
Books
The list is endless, and new ways of creating these nets of capturing and keeping attention are created and popularized constantly. Each has its own qualities. Its pros, and its cons.
One of the most important leverage points we talk about is the “shelf-life” of a piece of content, which corresponds to how often we create it. Certain forms of content, like Instagram posts, need to be created daily; other forms of content, like blogs or podcasts, are created weekly.
Others, like books and movies, are often created only once, and have enough weight that anytime someone consumes it, so much reverence, respect, and admiration is created by the consumer that the creator enjoys the social and financial byproducts of this admiration forever.
Napoleon Hill has an entire estate dedicated to his perpetual book sales. Robert Kiyosaki works very little now, because his book continues to sell his coaching programs on autopilot.
Someone who has never created content before may want to start with Instagram or blogs. But for someone who has created daily or weekly content for years, a single piece of content that will generate attention, leads, and customers for them for a lifetime can have a lot of value.
One of those pieces of content is a book.
Your book.
The #1 best way to capture and keep attention, especially in an authoritative way, is a business book. And it’s time you not just created a book, but fully leveraged it to grow your business and brand forever.
Amazing sh*t you can do with your book
Let’s talk about leverage.
We never want to work hard forever. We want to spend our time building systems that scale, such that they can create a flywheel that requires less and less work over time.
What would it mean to you if you book landed you a paid spot on Tony Robbins’ stage because someone on his team read your book and was so moved by it that they reached out to you personally?
What if you could secure a nomination for vice president of the United States because your book created a cultural movement?
What would it mean to you if you were casted as a Shark on Shark Tank because your book detailing your best advice was published last year? You would become a household name.
What would it mean to you if you could make $1 million+ from just a single $20 book? Because your readers are already your customers, and because people who have previously bought from you are 30% more likely to buy from you again, they gobble up all your offers because they joined your email list when they purchased your book?
What if you sold 10% more tickets to your in-person summit and sold 30% more spots to your online program all because your readers were so impressed with your authority?
What if you could justifiably increase your prices by 500%, or get booked at 80% of the events you applied for, just because you’re an author?
All of these instances are real. They are from entrepreneurs or leaders that you have heard of, I have worked with, or are clients of mine.
Don’t make these mistakes with your book
However, there are many entrepreneurs who are not prepared to fully-leverage their book, either. Many entrepreneurs create a book, but botch the book launch.
Many entrepreneurs launch their book, but never get more than 20 reviews, and their book dies in the Amazon graveyard.
Many entrepreneurs launch their book, but don’t have a coaching or consulting offer to enroll their smokin’ hot leads into, losing precious sales opportunities.
Many entrepreneurs are not prepared to drive readers of their book to their email list.
Many entrepreneurs don’t track the percentage of readers who sign up for their email list, and have no clue who didn’t convert, did convert, or came from their book, their podcast, or their Instagram.
When your book goes live, and tons of people start flocking to you because of your authority, your business must be prepared to handle the influx of leads, sales, and fulfillment. If not, your business can implode.
There are a lot of things to get right to fully leverage a book funnel.
But there are only 3 steps you need to focus on to get this right.
The 3 parts to a successful book funnel
Book
Book launch
Funnel pages
That’s it.
Why so many entrepreneurs fail
Here is what trips up so many of you:
You are used to writing LinkedIn or Facebook posts, or may not be used to writing at all, and so your book, in all its 30k-60k words, does not retain attention or provide educational structure for your readers in a way that maintains professionalism.
Typical traditional publishing deals can take 18-24 months to publish your book. If you decide to self-publish, this can take 6-8 months, but many entrepreneurs fall off the wagon unless they have someone to keep them accountable. If you do fall off the wagon, you may never recoup the costs you spent to create your book.
You’re likely too busy, scared, or overwhelmed to start or complete your book. You may wonder if your book will ever be “good enough.”
You’ve heard of many different book marketing strategies, but you’ve also heard horror stories of a book never seeing positive ROI. You don’t want to waste your time throwing spaghetti at the wall. You want a step-by-step, tried-and-true roadmap to know what to do to and when as you launch your book so that it actually moves the needle in your business.
The technical details of uploading your book to Amazon and optimizing your listing overwhelm you. You’ve heard that getting reviews for your book is really hard.
Once you launch your book, you don’t know how readers will turn into your customers. You just hope. You would love an expert to show you the details for how a reader turns into an email subscriber, who then turns into a customer, and you would love to track the conversion rates between each of these touchpoints, too.
You don’t know the 1,000 moving parts of a book launch and when to execute them in what order. You’re looking for a project manager, but you also need a book launch expert too.
How you can solve each of these problems
Don’t know how to write a good book: You may not know how to write an engaging, educational, and ROI-generating business book, but there are talented, effective ghostwriters whose only job is to interview entrepreneurs like you, transform your ideas into your book, and turn the book over to you. You will own all ideas, all information, and all rights to sell. The experienced ghostwriter is there to save you time, heartache, frustration, and money in the long run.
Traditional publishing takes too long: Entrepreneurs like Cathy Heller have complained about the long timeline traditional publishing houses use to release books. Self-publishing can shorten this timeline of traditional publishing (18-24 months) to 6-8 months, as you control every aspect of the project and launch (a 66% time savings). Self-publishing is simply the more agile, digitally-oriented version of traditional publishing, leveraging modern technologies like print-on-demand, digital marketing, and eBooks to accelerate distribution and promotion.
You’re afraid you won’t be good enough: Think back on your entrepreneurial career. When did your fear of being “good enough” stop you from blazing ahead? You pressed on despite that fear anyway. How many times have you silenced your imposter syndrome? Frankly, no one ever feels good enough. And as you know, you don’t need to feel “good enough” to start; you develop this feeling over time. You, as a human, are inherently worthy, and what you have contributed to this world cannot be kept behind closed doors. It is your responsibility to share your work and your methods as widely as you can. Your writing may need polishing, but that’s where the work of professional ghostwriters, editors, and proofreaders (all readily available) come into play to help you. We can help you craft your story into a compelling message that inspires people and helps them transform their lives.
You don’t want to throw spaghetti at the book-marketing-wall: There are tons of book marketing gimmicks out there, but in self-publishing, there really are only 2 things that really move the needle: an outstanding Amazon book listing and promoting your book as a guest expert (likely via podcasts, but this is known to work on blogs too). Focus on just these 2 things for 12 months, and I can assure you that you will sell more books, get more leads, and land more clients than you thought possible.
Uploading to Amazon and getting reviews overwhelm you: If these technical aspects overwhelm you, I recommend working with someone who is an expert in these areas. The first 30 days of an Amazon launch are critical, and botching this phase can send your book to the “Amazon graveyard,” where your book gets really hard to find on Amazon because it’s ranked so low. It took me 4 launches to get this right; if you have 1 book, you don’t want to mess it up. Also, getting 100 reviews during your launch can actually be easy.
Don’t know how readers turn into customers: Readers will find your online world if you give them an incentive to opt-into it. Nurture them over time so they can learn to like you, know you, and trust you via your email sequences, trainings, and events. A great way to bring physical book readers to your online world is to include a lead magnet or an online resources hub for readers that they need to enter their contact info into to get. Amy Porterfield did a great job with this using her book website. Build a website or landing pages where readers can interact with you so that they can enter your world, get nurtured with your sequences, and become paying customers. When you have these pages set up, be prepared to track conversion rates so that you can know how effective your pages, conversion copy, and funnels are working. This is the “funnel” part of the book funnel.
You don’t know the 1,000 moving parts of a book launch, and you’re too busy to keep track of it all: You will need a project manager for a professional book launch, and a book marketing expert. Luckily, you’re in the right place.
How you get a smokin’ hot book funnel easily and quickly:
It’s our mission to solve all the pain points associated with your dream of authoring and leveraging your life’s work through a book. To recap, here are the 3 parts of a book funnel:
Book
Book launch
Funnel pages
And we make it super easy and quick for you by:
Helping you ideate, structure, and write your book expertly and quickly. We have a team of ghostwriters, editors, and designers who will create your book, book cover, and promotional graphics so that it looks like something off the shelf of Barnes & Noble. No “self-published look” books here. Your reputation has too much at stake.
Helping you launch your book by creating a marketing plan that includes Amazon SEO, title/subtitle optimization, Amazon category optimization, book description writing, advance-reader-copy distribution, securing 100 book reviews in 30 days, and helping you pitch to, record, and leverage podcast guesting for your book launch.
Helping you build your funnel pages, websites, video sales letters, and other technical links so that you won’t have to lift a finger as a reader moves from reading your book to becoming your lifelong paying customer.
Typical book funnel builds with traditional publishers can take as long as 18-24 months (and, if you traditionally publish, you do not own the rights to sell your intellectual property, and you get about 15% of the revenue per book sold).
You get your book funnel in 6-8 months if you work with us. You will own every word, every idea, and keep 80-90% of all book sales.
Plus, if you work with us, you will be guaranteed #1 Amazon bestseller within 2 months of your book launch date, or we will work with you for free until you get it.
Simple as that.
If you’re ready to take action on growing your business with your book today, it’s time to talk with us. Schedule your free discovery call today. We can’t wait to hear about your dreams and the book that is on your heart.
Much love,
Renee