Using Business Books as a Marketing Tool – 4 easy steps

What is the best marketing tool?

The best multi-dimensional marketing tool to draw the attention of prospective customers to your self or your business is a book.

There are a host of marketing tools available in the market today, to market yourself or for small businesses, business to business marketing tool. But one of the most effective marketing tool is a business book. Business books will help you get leads and engage with promising clients, even as the world sleeps. Bots, social media ads that go live at pre-set times have made marketing far more effective than it was a couple of years back. However, the bottom line remains unchanged – grabbing the attention of a prospective customer before your competitor does.

What is the best marketing tool? A book is uniquely placed to start interesting conversations. These conversations can be adapted into a sale/pitch for your business/yourself. Ultimately, a book is all about high-quality content targeted at the customer. How does a book grab attention from the right prospects? How can you use your book as a marketing tool?

1. Writing a book makes the author an expert

Social media is rife with self-professed experts exhibiting excellent skills. Anybody can print visiting cards with esoteric positions. Not too long ago, merely having a college degree gave you the label of an expert. This was because under 10% of the population had a college degree.

The most reliable and exclusive symbol of being an authority on a subject today is to be a published author of a book. That is because of a couple of irrefutable conclusions that can be drawn about the author of a book:

1. You know what you are talking about. If you can write a book on a subject, people expect that you pretty much know most of what there is to know on the subject. You become an authority on it.
2. You are persistent and get things accomplished. As they say, everyone has a story in their mind or on their computer. However, thousands of these books never get written or completed or published. The fact that you turned it into a well-produced book says a lot about you.
3. You put it all out there to be judged. Having published the book, you have put your expertise out there for the world to judge you. And you are not afraid of their verdict on your knowledge.

Of course, you can use the books as a business to business tool if the book is well-written and produced. A shoddily produced book can have the opposite impact. People will read the book and make their judgment. To be judged as a credible expert, the book has to be of good quality. E.g., Faced with the prospect of engaging a business coach. You have 2 prospects in mind one who has written a book and the contents impress you and another business coach, with equal calibre but with no coaching books to his/her credentials. Even if you publish your notes as an eBook, you stand a better chance of getting noticed.

2. Writing a business book puts the spotlight on the author

It helps you stand out from the next competing candidate who has the same skill set as you, to help you bag a job, raise, etc. Whenever media seek a story on a subject, they go to the expert in the field. And how do they know who the expert is? They consider the author of a book on the subject as the most credible authority on the subject. A book not only gives media coverage but also enables the author to stand out from others in the field.

Staking out territory as an expert in a field early is essential. This is especially true for a hot new field. There is unprecedented media curiosity on a new subject and there are few or no acknowledged experts yet. In such niche subjects, even if only 1000 copies of the book are sold, the rub-off in terms of perceived expertise and authority is immense. Here too it is the book that is a marketing tool for small business. For a professional, publishing a print book will give you a better chance.

3. A Management book is the best marketing tools online

In online marketing, the key enabler is ‘search.’ The top two search engines are Google and YouTube. The next biggest is Amazon, especially for professionals searching for subject matter experts. Their search typically gravitates towards authors of books on the subject. The book exposes the author’s identity and expertise and readers can then reach out to the author to draw information from the author. A book, therefore, becomes a powerful marketing tool online to build the author’s personal brand. Also to attract customers for the author’s services and products. There could be many experts. Being an author of a book on the subject enables clients to cut through the clutter and reach out to him or her.

4. Nothing generates buzz like writing a business book

Beyond the confines of online marketing, the best marketing results come from word of mouth. If someone trustworthy recommends something, people give it a lot of credence. Anything that makes people talk about the business or service or the person behind the company is great marketing and a book is high up on this list. A book makes the author’s expertise tangible and allows readers to “own” it. When they talk about the book or quote from it, they say what the author wants to say. This is a powerful transmission of the author’s expertise.

This insight is constructive for authors who want to position the book most effectively. The author has to imagine what a person who has read the book says to another potential client about the book. To position the book also means the author imagines the reader giving a book review to another person in an elevator or at a cocktail party (most word of mouth transmission happens in such informal settings). What the author wants to be communicated in such a scenario is pretty much the book’s USP. If this is achieved, the book will be useful to a large group of people. They, in turn, will want to talk about it to others who want a similar problem solved. Having read the book, they get to become authorities in the subject.

When people become aware of the book or the author, they can read the book (and spread the word further afield – the power of networking), learn about the business, interact with it, and become customers.

Look around you and see how most well-known people have authored a book, ask your self the question how did writing a book contribute to their lives? What type of books have they written?