This post will discuss practical ways to use your book once it’s complete. Quite a few people have asked this question when their book is complete or very near completion, they are hit with a sudden bout of anxiousness, and in this post, we are going to discuss two ways of going about it. If you want to listen to the podcast this post stems from, click here.
It is easy to get caught up in the mechanisms behind launching the book and forget the overall strategy to make invisible leads visible.
Book readings/book signings
With traditional book readings and signings, the purpose is often a pre-release strategy to gain public recognition for your work. It is also used to manipulate the system that is behind bestseller lists. Essentially, at its core, it is to get your book out there to as many people as possible.
For traditional books, this method works well and is the correct way of going about things. In our book model, where the focus is not on the book’s content but on its potential as a tool for lead generation and sparking conversation, the question is, how can we leverage this method toward identifying leads?
You must dial it down a little to make this method work for a lead generation book. You can host an event that is foundationally a book reading/book signing, but rather than discussing the book being the focus, you use the platform as an opportunity to start a conversation and initiate dialogue with people about the next step after reading the book. In this sense, the book actively does what it has been made to do. Make invisible leads visible.
trade fairs and conventions
Many clients have found that going to trade fairs and conventions surrounds their areas of expertise. Which is a great way of interacting with those of like minds.
It is important to realize that most of those at trade fairs and conventions are there to sell something, with the minority wanting to buy. When you take those statistics into consideration
It is best to adopt a giveaway mindset when approaching trade fairs and conventions. The purpose is to give books away at the fair to generate leads. Because it might be difficult in certain scenarios to collect personal information, it is possible to establish a call to action on your back cover that your potential lead can read in their own time.
Book launch Parties
As in the first example, the book launch party is a platform to start the conversation. People will naturally show up for a book launch party but might not come to an event that you explicitly state is for.
A customer appreciation event might be more beneficial to anyone reading this. So again, these two examples have been pretty physically based for the most part. So if you’ve got customers in the local area, if you’ve got partners that you work with, if you’ve got relationships or organizations that you work with that you can use the book as an excuse to bring people together, but then bring people together to add value to them and whether that value is an education opportunity to bring people together for a presentation. because that’s too kind of one way but bring people together for an educational opportunity.
Conclusion
The foundation of everything that we are trying to achieve here is engagement. By developing genuine connections over time, we hope to convert these connections into leads and paying customers. In the next blog post, we will continue with a few more practical book launch ideas; make sure to look out for it.
