How Your Book Can Grow Your Business [17 Smart Ways]

LaptopLauraBlog [read me!], Book Writing, Make Money with Writing

how to use a book to grow your business

As an entrepreneur, writing a book isn’t the be-all end-all. The real magic happens when you use your book to grow your business in a big way. 🚀📚

At this point, if you’ve been following along, you’re totally schooled in the book-writing process…
• from how to write a great nonfiction book
• to all the book formatting work that has to be done
• to designing an eye-catching book cover without being a graphic designer
• to how to choose the right self-publishing platform for your book
• and even how to make your book hit #1 best seller on Amazon even without a big email list

But, surprisingly enough, the book-publishing process doesn’t actually end when you’ve, uh, published your book. Because why were you writing a book in the first place?

To stand out in your niche!

Your final step is to take all your hard work…and use your book to grow your business.

Best Selling Author Laura Petersen helps you use your book to grow your business.

You’ve written an entire book to prove you’re an expert in your niche–so now it’s time to make sure the whole world knows it, and that you get paid the rate an Author Expert truly deserves.

By the end of this definitive book-leveraging guide, you’ll have the tools to:

  • Take your business to the next level and get it ready for all the top-dollar clients you’re going to book
  • Appear on podcasts, TV interview segments, and industry journals as the expert
  • Land opportunities you never could have imagined (like speaking on a podcasting CRUISE!)

Use Your Book To Grow Your Business, Table of Contents | Laura Petersen, #1 Best Selling Author

17 Smart Ways To Use Your Book To Grow Your Business Table of Contents

Using Your Book To Grow Your Business – The Definitive Guide…here’s what we’re going to talk about:

Part 1: DEFINE and REFINE Your Brand!

  • You’ve written a book targeted towards one niche, but does your business actually serve that niche?
  • This section gives you a solid checklist to make sure your business matches your niche in every possible aspect–and also helps you overhaul your finances, so you’re starting things off on the right foot!

Part 2: BUILD Your Brand–Take Your Marketing To The Next Level

  • Once your business and your book are synced up, how do you get people to think of you as a bonafide EXPERT?
  • No sweat! This section gives you everything you need to know to advertise and build your expert status, and then further leverage it to book cool opportunities and–most importantly–grow your client base!

If you missed earlier definitive guides, click below to read them:

[BONUS: More in-depth author training here–FREE!]

Let’s get started!

Use Your Book To Grow Your Business, Part 1: Define Your Brand | Laura Petersen, #1 Best Selling Author

Part 1: DEFINE and REFINE Your Brand!

Step 1: Make sure your actual business matches the quality of your book.

1) Ensure that your services are focused.

If you’re running a business, the last thing you want is to be all over the place–trying to offer too many products or too many services for a too-wide market. And chances are, if you started your business before you wrote your book, you’ve got some tidying up to do, business-wise.

It happens to everyone; you start your business with one direction in mind, then end up taking on a bunch of different clients/projects to make ends meet, and then all of a sudden, your business has no target market, and your elevator pitch is vague and all-encompassing. “I coach…people?” “I write…blogs? And other stuff?”

But the thing with writing a non-fiction book? It’s gotta be laser-focused. And if you took the first blog in this series to heart, you most likely wrote your book around a very specific niche.

So now it’s time to keep up that momentum and slash and burn everything that doesn’t fit with your specific niche.

For example, if you’re an interior designer and you wrote a book focused just towards DIY-courses for high-end clients, you’ll want to get rid of offerings like:

  • Personal consulting services
  • Courses that teach clients how to design their home on a budget

Or if you’re an accountant who wrote a book on Taxes for Creative Freelancers, scrap any offerings like:

  • Tax packages for corner-office corporate employees
  • Expensive consultations designed for wealthy investors*

a book can help grow your business

If someone reads your book and then goes to your website, you want there to be zero cognitive dissonance. Whatever’s on your website needs to make sense with the new niche you’re targeting.

*Obviously, you’ll want to strike a balance between your bread-and-butter clients and your ideal clients. But when you spread yourself too thin, you give up a presence in your ideal niche.

2) Develop a working system for landing clients and completing projects.

If the systems you have in place to turn a site visitor into a client are inconsistent (or nonexistent), now is the perfect time to change that. You want every new client that comes your way to experience the same awesome product–yes, even if it’s a service.

If you haven’t done it already, set aside an hour, pour yourself a glass of wine, and grab some sticky notes and a pen. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • How does a client get in touch with you? (Email? Phone? A form on your website?)
  • What happens when a client first reaches out? (Do you email them back immediately with a template email that explains a little more about your business and prices? Do you schedule a Skype call?)
  • At what point do you communicate your work/life boundaries? Your prices? Your payment policies (100% upfront? 50% upfront? 33%?)?
  • How will you communicate with a client from that point forward? (Email only or primarily phone?)
  • Are there specific ways you can deal with a project going slightly off the rails? Are there ways you can circumvent common issues?
  • How do you wrap up a client interaction? How will you happily send them on their way?
  • Do you want to have a referral program in place?

Write your answers down on sticky notes and arrange the sticky notes until they form a complete beginning-to-end process of a client interaction–until you can see everything from acquisition to happy former customer.

Knowing this process will help you spot holes and potentially streamline some processes, so you can effortlessly deliver the same quality to every single client. Otherwise, you’ll feel like you’re balancing a bunch of spinning plates, with no real game plan.

Important: You might not know all the answers, especially if you’re totally changing tracts. But lay out a basic process, and if something isn’t working, adjust as you test it out.

To use your book to grow your business, make sure you have solid client processes in place.

3) Repackage your old services/ebooks/whatever under your new brand image

As you’re getting rid of elements of your business that don’t work at all with your new client niche, keep an eye out for things that maybe just need a little makeover.

Do you already offer a course, ebook, or service that’s close enough to your new client base, and just needs to be renamed?

For example, I personally had a section on my site called “Permission to Write a Book.” After I published my book about copywriting for podcasters, I switched it to “Permission to Write a Brand Building Book for Podcasters.” This helped further define my niche.

Or maybe you’re a social media marketer who’s been working with a bunch of different clients, but now you want to focus in on eco-friendly brands. As you look through your services, see where you can tweak your offerings to emphasize your eco-friendly positioning–whether it’s in the copy or the design!

4) Make sure your website emphasizes your new Author Expert status

Make sure your website emphasizes that you're an author expert, so you can use your book to grow your business!

Not only do you want to focus up your actual business offerings, but you also want to make sure that your website puts your expertise FRONT AND CENTER, sets you apart from the competition, and gives your new potential clients a logical place to land on.

The easiest way to accomplish ALL of that? Make sure to feature your book visually and in your copy! At minimum, your homepage should feature a picture of you with your book, and a couple blurbs from other reputable experts about how great your book is.

You should also reference your book in your bio (flaunt that you’re an author–especially if/when your book becomes a #1 Best Seller! 😉 ), and show off your new Author Expert status when you describe your services.

5) Get new business cards that position you as an author and/or expert

Already have business cards? Awesome! Do those business cards mention that you’re an author–or an expert in your field? No? Well, it’s time to get on that, then.

And once you have a printed version of the book, you can even incorporate a picture of you holding the book! Nothing says “author” like physical proof, right?

When you design your business cards, your book should be front and center.

Much like designing a book cover, there are ways to get a great-looking business card that don’t require you to be a professional designer. You can use:

Business Card DIY Services

Some great cheap services for business cards include:

You can pick a template from any of these services and fill in your information–or you can easily design your custom business card on Canva and use one of these services to print ‘em out!

Or, if you don’t want to design your business card yourself, hire a (cheap!) freelancer from Fiverr or UpWork. You can also what I did for my latest book cover, and hire three so you have some options. 🙂

use your book to grow your business

And a sneak peek at my next book! 😉

Step 2: Overhaul your finances

You can have a tightly-crafted business that makes you proud, but to be truly sustainable, it’s gotta make you money. And one of the reasons you wanted to establish your expertise was for a steep pay increase, right?

It won’t happen overnight (like most things, unfortunately :P), but here are a few ways to overhaul your finances and start using your book release to snowball into more money for you!

6) Charge more for your services across the board

For some people (guilty!) this might seem like the hardest part. It’s so hard for people–especially we women–to charge what they’re worth. But you need to raise your prices for two reasons:

  1. To demonstrate your worth/savviness to new clients. (If you’re undercharging, they won’t trust you!)
  2. To show your current clients that you know your value–and to weed out people that don’t agree!

If you're going to use your book to grow your business, you need to raise your rates!

To figure out how much you should be charging, look at other comparable people in your industry. What are they charging? Don’t try to beat them on price; now that you’re an expert in your field, people aren’t looking for a bargain freelancer. They want your expertise, and they’re willing to pay for it!

It might seem hard to raise prices with current clients, but trust me–there’s a step-by-step for everything.

Step 1: Give your current clients a heads-up.

This can be as simple as sending out an email to all your current clients. The message should communicate that you appreciate their business, that you will be raising your rates, and why this price increase is justified.

Don’t get overly flowery. Don’t beat around the bush. And especially don’t apologize. Instead, do your very best to present this price increase as a good thing.

After all, you’re not just hiking your prices willy-nilly–you’re also getting way more specific with the services you’re offering. Plus, you’re now an expert–you wrote the book on your particular niche, for-petes-sake!

That said, if you don’t want to blindside your clients, give them about a month’s notice. For example, “I will be raising my rates to $85/hr on March 1st.” These old clients have stuck with you, so do ‘em a solid and temporarily give them your old rates as a gift, at least for a couple weeks. It’s a nice way to say “Thank you!”

Step 2: Raise your rates on the date you specified.

So March 1st rolls around–what if one of your old clients wants you to start working on a new project under your old rate? It might be tempting to give them a break, but that’ll set the wrong tone.

actually think my work is worth the amount I’m asking you to pay.”

Set the date to raise your prices–then raise your prices. Easy!

Step 3: New clients pay your new rates.

If new clients contact you before March 1st, charge them your new rate. There’s no reason (loyalty, courtesy, etc.) to charge them your old rate. New clients are a blank slate, and they should be paying your new prices!

Raising your rates is a fantastic way to use your book to grow your business.

Look at how happy she is now that she’s getting more $$$ for her expertise!

7) Take advantage of your multiple revenue streams

Not only are your rates higher now, but you also have a host of new opportunities open to you, and a couple revenue streams that simply didn’t exist before; namely, book sales and speaking gigs.

Book Sales

Likely won’t make you boat-buying money (at least not at first!), but still a valid revenue stream and shouldn’t be ignored!

Event Appearances

Since you’re an expert, and now that you have a more tightly-focused (and demanding!) business, figure out how much your time is worth. If someone contacts you to speak at an event, they should be paying you.

Important Caveat: You will probably want to get a few “free” speaking gigs under your belt first so you can easily prove your value to future venues. Plus, in the early days of your book release, an unpaid speaking gig at a venue with a big audience in your niche might be worth it for the potential book sales.

But of course, I’ll cover all that a little further in Part 2: BUILD Your Brand.

8) Find out where you’re wasting money, and cut that out

We started Part 1 with a refocusing exercise, and we’re going to end it with one, too. But this time, instead of just looking at your business in the context of your book, you’re going to evaluate it financially.

What elements of your business are you currently wasting money on? Are there courses that nobody’s buying, but you have to pay to host? Are you offering free consultations to get clients in the door, and then finding you’re spending hours on people that never open their wallets?

Most importantly–do any of these parts of your business coincide with the parts that no longer make sense in the context of your book?

Open up a notebook (or a Word doc) and take a red pen to any part of your business that’s a financial suck. Moving forward, you want to be lean, mean, and rolling in green!

If you want to grow your business, cut out all the parts that aren't making you money.

Whew! We went deep there. Now let’s move on to more external ways of using your book as a marketing tool…

Use Your Book To Grow Your Business, Part 2: Build Your Brand | Laura Petersen, #1 Best Selling Author

Part 2: BUILD Your Brand–Take Your Marketing To The Next Level

This entire section is basically an introduction to all the opportunities that “expert status” can afford you. (Or, if you already have some idea, it’s a reminder!)

Now that you have a book and an airtight, book-relevant business, it’s time to dive into marketing this sucker.

Step 1: Advertise and build your “expert status”

9) TV news segments

You know how news shows typically bring in experts for a minute or two to give their perspective? Sometimes it’s a political expert, other times an economics professor, other times a litigator…but really, any expert can fit the bill depending on the story.

Peter Shankman has an excellent article on appearing on TV news segments as a Guest Expert, and I’ve summarized below:

  • Figure out which news programs you want to appear on.
  • Use Twitter and/or LinkedIn to find out who produces those programs.
  • DON’T REACH OUT DURING A CRISIS; when trying to break a story, producers tend to go for guests they already know. Instead, reach out on a slow news day.
  • Briefly introduce yourself with the following format:
  1. What kind of stories they can use you for, an example, and your area of expertise.
  2. Proof of your expertise (i.e. credentials).
  3. Details that advertise how convenient and easy you would be to work with (Are you comfortable on camera? Do you live near the studio? How soon could you get to the studio if needed?).
  4. A link to more information about you (probably your New and Improved Website).
  5. Contact information.
  • Once you’ve introduced yourself, keep an eye on the news. When a story breaks that fits into your niche, email the producer! Use this format:
  1. “I’m a convenient guest, and here are my (brief) credentials.”
  2. A quick summary of the opinion you’d share on-camera.
  3. Closing statement (if you can slip some more cred into this, do it!).
  • Have a high-quality JPEG of your book cover ready to email to the reporter if they ask for you. That way they can cut to it on-air!
  • If a producer calls for you, it’s now THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN YOUR LIFE. Get there immediately.
  • Thank the producer via email afterwards!

Click here to read the full article. And make sure you drill down to one (MAYBE two) areas of expertise–you don’t want to aim too broad. Keep things squarely in your niche, so you can build your rep with your potential clients.

10) Radio/podcast interviews

Appearing on a podcast is a great way to use your book to grow your business.

This SUMO article on being a guest on a podcast is FANTASTIC, and extremely comprehensive. But here’s the gist:

Podcast Interview Tip #1: Talk to friends of friends to build your early cred

But how do you get there? Start with friends–or friends-of-friends. If you live in a place like LA or NYC, chances are, you’ve run into someone with a podcast. But especially now that we’re all so digitally connected, think about your friends all over the country (or the world!).

Do you know anyone with a podcast that might vaguely relate to your area of expertise? For these early podcasts, the goal is mostly to build your list of appearances, and not necessarily to reach your niche every time.

That being said, you don’t want it to be a total mismatch–if you’re a lifestyle coach that helps people break their screen addictions, appearing on a video game review podcast is prrrrobably not the best call.

Podcast Interview Tip #2: Search for podcasts that your target niche is listening to

Makes sense, right? There’s no point in talking to the wind when you could be talking directly into the ears of your target customer. Some ways to find these magic podcasts:

  • Search some of your keywords in iTunes (i.e. “interior design,” “digital marketing,” “cake decorating”) and see which podcasts pop up.
  • Scroll through the “New and Noteworthy” podcasts! As the SUMO article notes, these are great for 2 reasons. One is that they’re new, and probably need guests–two is that if they’re in the “New and Noteworthy” section, they’re good at marketing.
  • Who’s in your niche, but maybe 5-10 years ahead of where you are? Type their name into iTunes and see which podcasts they’ve been on.
  • Which authors have written books in your niche? Find them on Amazon, then search those names in iTunes.

Record all of these in a list or a spreadsheet–whatever helps you keep them organized!

Podcast Interview Tip #3: Systematically pitch these podcasts

Once you have your golden list of podcasts, start pitching them! Start with the less-popular, because it’s more likely that they’ll be looking for guests, and happy to consider you.

As your list of podcast appearances gets longer, gradually work your way up to the more-popular podcasts–until you’re being interviewed by Marc Maron or Alec Baldwin (the dream!).

11) Articles in industry publications (and/or quotes in articles)

You can grow your business by writing in a publication aimed at your specific niche!

The key to getting published in an industry publication–or getting quoted in an article–is, like many other things on this list,>pitching, pitching, pitching.

Some pitching tips to keep in mind:

  1. Always make sure you look at the contributor’s guidelines for the publications you’re pitching. Most places that accept guest articles will have a page called “Write For Us” or “Submission Guidelines” or something similar. Look through and make sure you follow the rules–and that you’re actually a fit!–before you go to the trouble of pitching an article.
  2. As with podcasts, the more articles you have under your belt, the easier time you’ll have pitching bigger publications. Once you prove that you’re a writer who’s familiar enough with the process of pitching/writing/editing to get published multiple times, you’ll have a marginally easier time hearing back from the submission managers.

If you’re looking to get quoted, the key is–like getting a TV appearance–identifying your targets and building relationships with them, communicating your expert status in a way they care about.

You can also join HARO where journalists submit source requests for stories they’re working on. If someone posts a call for an expert in your field, respond to the call, and boom–a very possible quote!

As you build up TV guest appearances, podcast interviews and published articles, your expert status grows and grows.

And once you’ve got a solid group of these appearances under your belt, you can start to really use your leverage…

Step 2: Use your “expert status” to book…

12) Speaking gigs

If there’s any part of you that thinks, “Wait, a SPEAKING gig? I don’t know what I’m talking about–at least not enough to be a SPEAKER!” Well, you’ve known what you’re talking about enough to write a book and also get interviewed on TV, on podcasts, in articles… 😉 So you’ve got this!

And a speaking gig doesn’t have to be a TED Talk (though that would be amazing to work up to!). Keep tabs on small conferences in your geographical area that also fit into your niche.

Here’s how I tend to book speaking gigs:

As you use your book to grow your business, you can also find more opportunities like speaking gigs.

Speaking Gig Tip #1: Keep an eye out in advance.

For one, many places have open applications, but you need to plan in advance. For example, Podcast Movement (held in July/August) has applications with a deadline around the end of February.

So, look out in advance!

Speaking Gig Tip #2: Do your homework.

Assuming you are crystal clear on your targeted niche, now you know what events, conferences, audiences you want to get in front of.

  • Research them and their organizers.
  • Invite the organizers onto your podcast, video show, or offer to feature them and the event in a blog post (build a relationship by giving value first!).
  • Look at past years’ sessions and see what holes there are that YOU can fill.

An example on that last bullet point: Podcast Movement didn’t seem to have anything around Psychology applied to podcasters and podcasting! So, I applied to speak around that topic since it’s my love and passion and was accepted for 2018!

Others had already presented before about writing books. So, my psychology approach was a way to get in the door. Of course, I will mention about my own books and book writing products and services, so I will still get great leads and credibility out of it, even though my topic is a bit more ‘adjacent’ rather than direct.

Speaking Gig Tip #3: Give value first. (Volunteer!)

Offer to volunteer at an event one year, get to know the organizers, and then ask about becoming a speaker the next year. Not only does this help you give value first, but it helps you build your network–and so many opportunities come from the true relationships you build.

Also, if you can get a free speaking gig, especially when you’re first starting out, do it! People in the audience who run their own events or know others who do will often come up to you afterwards and maybe book you on another!

(Check out universities, co-working spaces, rotary clubs, chambers of commerce, etc. for free speaking gigs.)

If you volunteer at an event, it’s way more likely you’ll snag cool opportunities in the future!

Speaking Gig Tip #4: Use a psychology hack.

There’s this saying: “If you ask for money, you get advice. And if you ask for advice, you get money.” It’s usually related to entrepreneurs looking for funding for their businesses.

I like to rephrase that to: “If you ask for speaking gigs, you get advice. If you ask for advice, you get speaking gigs.” 😛

In my experience, it works better if I don’t straight-up ask business buddies for connections to speaking opportunities, but instead ask them for advice ON speaking on stage, or on where to find great speaking opportunities. Not only do those people give solid advice, but often, without my asking directly, they start introducing me to people who run events. Double win!

Speaking Gig Tip #5: Look into the National Speaker Association.
Look into the National Speaker Association. Personally, this is something I haven’t done yet, but will seriously consider as I continue to get more serious about speaking in the second half of 2018 and beyond!

Speaking Gig Tip #6: List that you’re a speaker in your LinkedIn bio.

Organizations often go to LinkedIn and search for speakers–so if you want them to find you, add “Speaker” to your LinkedIn bio! Plus, everyone has to know that you’re a speaker before they will consider you for opportunities.

13) Meetings (and potential projects!) with influencers

I remember talking to a friend of mine ages ago about fame. I asked him if he wanted to be famous, and he said, “Well…I want enough recognition so that I can do any project I want to do. I want to have enough of a presence that I can work with anyone.”

That stuck with me–and that’s exactly what you’ll get to do as you build up your expert “cred”.

If you see a Big Deal Person you want to work with, reach out to them in a (genuine! Heartfelt!) way and see if you can make a connection. As you become more known in your niche, Big Deal People will stop seeing requests like that as “fan letters” and start to see you as a peer.

Laura Petersen #1 Best Selling Author

Here I am at the Pat Flynn meetup, talking about–what else??–writing a book to establish your expertise in a niche!

These days, I’m in a monthly meetup with Pat Flynn, and making awesome content with Allison Melody of The Food Heals Podcast and Travis Chappell of Build Your Network<. And it doesn’t end there–I’ve worked a camera on the set of a TV show, walked the red carpet of movie premiered with Caleb and Matt Maddix, and wrote an article for Emmy award-winning producer Greg Rollett’s Thought Leader Magazine.

14) Cool opportunities (like speaking on a podcasting cruise!)

The more you pitch (and land) free press opportunities like the ones we talked about before–being a guest expert on news segments, getting blog articles published in industry journals, being interviewed on podcasts–you’re going to build your network.

And there are so many cool opportunities out there that you don’t even know exist right now, but you’ll end up landing through a friend of a friend of that podcast host you’ve kept in touch with.

For example, I got to speak on a CRUISE for podcasters–mostly because I showed the F up! Here’s how I landed that opportunity:

Podcast Cruise 2017 featuring Laura Petersen #1 Best Selling Author

1. Oct 2016: I went to a podcasting meetup.
Jared Easley and Dan Franks were there. I didn’t actually know who they were at the time, but said hello and thanks for putting on the meetup. I only realized afterwards that they FOUNDED Podcast Movement–which is the biggest podcasting conference in the world. Talk about lucky!

2. Later, I reached out to Jared and asked if they needed any help with their next Podcast Movement event.

The help was, of course, no strings attached–just giving value first! The event was happening in Anaheim, CA in August of 2017 and just an hour or two drive away.

3. Jared ended up telling me about the Podcast Cruise they were putting on in February of 2017.

It looked amazing, and I told him so! I went ahead and bought my tickets–either way, I knew I wanted to be there.

4. Later that month, still in Oct 2016, I wrote my first book, Copywriting for Podcasters.

I asked Jared if he would be willing to contribute a short blurb from his incredible perspective as one of my influencer features. He immediately said yes!

5. I launched my book successfully and he told me that I handled the launch really professionally and positively.

And not just because everything went off without a hitch–definitely not! There were a few flubs, but because I openly shared them for everyone to learn from, that added to my professionalism instead of making me look like an amateur. Jared was impressed and asked if I would like to present on the Cruise.

OMG YES!

6. The cruise was a great bonding experience with Jared, Dan, and about 30 other incredible podcasters.

It’s where I met Allison Melody, and where we became fast friends.

I am very certain that this contributed to helping me present at PM17 on the virtual ticket and PM18 as a live speaker. When you’re looking to book speaking gigs, it’s all about relationships, as well as proving yourself and–again–adding value first.

Booking a speaking gig on a podcasting cruise is one of the many benefits you could get when you use your book to grow your business!

Step 3: Grow your potential client base

15) Grow and manage your social media following

As you do more public appearances, take advantage of the free publicity by funneling it into your social media accounts.

Follow the podcast hosts, producers, etc. that you’re connecting with.

When your episode or article goes live, post about it and tag them! They may tag you back (which would be awesome), but at the very least, you’re building a good relationship with them on your end.

Celebrate and acknowledge that you’re doing objectively cool stuff.

Your followers will want to see a little bit behind-the-scenes of your interviews, articles, speaking gigs, and exciting projects with new business partners. That’s one of the big allures of social media–to kind of live vicariously through someone else! Post about the projects you’re doing.

You can have the coolest life ever behind closed doors, but if you don’t tell potential clients what you’re doing, they’ll never know that you 1) spent the last week jumping from speaking gig to speaking gig 2) just finished editing the first 5 episodes of your new YouTube series 3) are working on, like, four very exciting articles.

Use your book to grow your business by attending events in your niche and posting about it on social media.

Make sure your social media bios have a solid Call-To-Action.

Social media love is great, of course…but doesn’t have much of a dollar value on its own. If potential new clients are following you, you want to lead them gently into your sales funnel, so treat the “bio” section on your Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram page like your elevator pitch.

leverage your bestselling book by making sure your social media has a call to action along with it

Short, snappy; what you do and why you’re amazing. And then link to the ONE place you want people to start. This could be:

  • Your website
  • A registration page for a free e-course you’re planning
  • The latest place your article was published

In many cases, the link might take your visitors to some sort of landing page. Which brings me to point 16…

16) Design a solid landing page to catch your potential new clients

Aaaand we’ve come full circle. Now that you’ve grown your expert status with free press–and leveraged that expert status into even more free press–your potential client base is bigger than ever.

And where do you want all these potential clients to go? Well, right into your new-and-improved business, of course! Get a solid landing page in place so you can gently nudge new clients down your sales funnel.

If you drive new visitors to a targeted landing page, you can really use your book to grow your business.

UnBounce has a helpful article on the elements of a good landing page here. Summarized, the 5 most important elements you need to include in a landing page are:

  1. Your Unique Selling Proposition (What service are you offering, and why is it unlike anything anyone else is selling?)
  2. The “Hero Shot” (An image or a video that matches a visual with your product/service)
  3. Benefits of your offering (Be detailed–and, again, what makes your service unique?)
  4. Social proof (A review–ideally from one of the influencers you’ve recently connected with!)
  5. A single conversion goal (This is your Call To Action. Do you want to drive visitors to a sales page, or to your email list?)

And of course, one of the big goals of this landing page is to…

17) Build your email list

Build your audience for a new product launch down the road! As you start attracting more eyes with your other other appearances, you’ll have a natural bump in your email list signups–but to capitalize on that, and to hold on to new subscribers, keep these points in mind:

Make sure your email signup form is easy to find.

And put it in multiple places! Up at the top of your site, down below your blog posts, and in your sidebar. This isn’t annoying–you’re giving a random visitor the best possible chance of finding it, instead of scanning right past it.

Your signup form should be easy to fill out.

A visitor should be able to type in their name and their email address and be done with it. With every successive click, the number of people who will wind their way through your digital labyrinth exponentially decreases.

Make sure your email signup form is easy to find and fill out if you want to use your book to grow your business.

Email your list at least once a week.

It’s tempting to put together a monthly newsletter, but truthfully, your subscribers might forget who you are by the time your email shows up. To stay on the top of their minds, email them once a week.

It doesn’t have to be long, or even substantially new–you just created a whole book’s worth of content, remember? Repurpose small poignant sections into weekly newsletters!

Extra credit: Offer a free opt-in reward and include a picture of it.

First–what’s a big problem that your target audience is trying to solve?

Once you have that nailed down, do you have a solution for it?

Look at material that didn’t make it into your book and consider making a small e-book (I’m talking 4-6 pages) to entice people to sign up for your email list. And if you include a picture of the opt-in reward on the signup form, that’ll further increase your subscriber number!

Use Your Book To Grow Your Business, Final Thoughts: What We Covered | Laura Petersen, #1 Best Selling Author

Final Thoughts: What We Covered

Congrats on making it through! Here’s what we talked about…

17 Smart Ways To Use Your Book To Grow Your Business

  1. Ensure that your services are focused on your ideal niche.
  2. Develop a working system for landing clients and completing projects.
  3. Repackage your old services/ebooks/whatever under your new brand image.
  4. Make sure your website emphasizes your new Author Expert status.
  5. Get new business cards that position you as an author and/or expert.
  6. Charge more for your services across the board!
  7. Take advantage of your multiple revenue streams.
  8. Find out where you’re wasting money, and cut that out.
  9. Build your expert status on: TV news segments.
  10. Build your expert status on: Radio/podcast interviews.
  11. Build your expert status in: Articles in industry publications (and/or quotes in articles).
  12. Book speaking gigs.
  13. Land meetings (and potential projects!) with influencers.
  14. Find cool opportunities (like speaking on a podcasting cruise!).
  15. Grow and manage your social media following.
  16. Design a solid landing page to catch your potential new clients.
  17. Build your email list.

Great! What should you do now?

HOMEWORK:

Take 30 minutes and map out some podcasts, speaking gigs, trade publications, etc. in your niche. Once you have a general idea of dream places you’d like to appear, you’ll have the drive and energy to start tweaking your business and doing the work of pitching.

And CONGRATULATIONS–You’re a Best Selling Author! I’m so proud of you, and can’t wait for the world to see you as the expert you are. 🙂

Want More?

1. Awesome Facebook Community:
Best Selling Author Posse – Free. Tons of support & accountability through your journey!

2. FREE Training:
How to Write a Best-Selling Biz Book As a 1st-Time Author, In Under 8 Weeks, & $0 in Ads

I’m so excited for you!

LaptopLaura
Laura@ copythatpops .com (remove the spaces)