3 Book Marketing Tips for Small Business Owners with Diana M. Needham
Branding with Friends | Episode 5
Featuring Expert Guest: Diana M. Needham of Business Book Partners
Watch or listen to the video interview below or scroll down to read the transcription.
Meet Diana M. Needham, Book Marketing Expert
Annie: My guest today here with us is the amazing Diana Needham of Business Book Partners. Diana Needham is the founder of Business Book Partners in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Founded in 2008 Business Book Partners provides book marketing, strategy, and self-publishing for successful entrepreneurs, small business owners, and speakers. Having helped more than 60 author entrepreneurs become Amazon best selling authors, Diana is your guide to create, launch, and leverage the best book to grow your business and authority. Diana, welcome to Branding with Friends.
Diana: Thank you so much for having me on Annie.
Annie: I'm so glad you're here! We go way back. We've learned a lot because Diana did definitely help me get my head around Permission To Try at the very beginning and help consult with me on my marketing plan.
I'm so glad to have you on to talk about your wheelhouse of book marketing and self-publishing. I know you're going to be sharing your top three tips for author entrepreneurs, business owners who are writing books on how they can go about writing, marketing and publishing their book. But as you guys know if you've been watching Branding with Friends, we're going to share those first two tips but stay till the very end to make sure you get that third tip today.
So with that being said Diana, as we're gearing up for you to share your first really true nugget of advice on this front. Tell me a little bit about your passion for marketing and self-publishing books. How did you get into this world in the first place?
Diana: Well it's just probably like everybody else that's listening and watching. It's been quite a journey. I had been working with small business owners on the marketing side for a long time. Once the first author showed up, who happened to be somebody whose book had been out for a year, she said, I'm really disappointed because this book didn't yield what I had hoped. Can you help me?
Through that whole process, I found out that I really love authors. I love people that have a big message they want to get it out in the world, and they want to make a difference. So once that first author showed up, I love them like that is my sole business right now. I only work with authors that have a big message. It's a nonfiction book they want to get it out. They want to help more people and they want to leverage the book to grow their business. They realized that the book is really a key marketing strategy.
Annie: You and I worked together last year to take your business, which was named after you, Diana M. Needham, and give you that message right to help you play to that passion. Now the practice is called Business Book Partners. You have a fresh new brand and a tagline, “grow your business with a book".” Bringing that to life, branding coming into our world, but you are the expert in this space. You've helped over 60. Is that the right number? What's the current number?
Diana: The current number is 65 because we did two this week.
Annie: Two this week, all right. And by the time you're watching this, it might be 70. It might even be 75. But Diana knows how to get this done. So if you're curious about Amazon bestsellers, she's going to be a great contact. We'll probably talk about that world today. But with this being your key expertise, Diana, what is the first thing that small business owners who are writing a book or working on their book right now what do they need to know?
#1 Action TIP
Define Your Strategy Before Writing the Book
Diana: Where I always start is figuring out the strategy. Because I'm a strategist at heart. So what does that mean, figuring out a strategy?
Well, the first question I ask people is, why are you writing this book? Because it's not a head answer. It's a heart answer. I know Annie, for you, there was a heart answer behind Permission To Try. Right? Sometimes people give me a head answer. Like, well, there's not very much information out about this or what is out there is confusing, that's all head answer. What I really dig for is what's in here. Why are you writing this book? Why is this message so important to you? Because that powerful why is not only what's going to carry you through this whole process and get you to the finish line. It also is your powerful story, something that you want to share with your audience.
I always start with the why and then we need to know the who. Who are we writing this book for? Very specifically. It's not a mass of faces. I always tell my clients that think about one person, see that one person. Tape their picture to your monitor if you need to. But you're writing to one person who has the problem that you're solving. That makes it so much easier when you think about writing just to one person. So who is it and then what's that big challenge that the book actually solves? Nonfiction books solve problems and that's why people buy them. So what is the biggest challenge?
Another key component here or strategy is what do I want to be known for? At the end of the day, this book will live on. It is part of the legacy that you're going to leave, so what do you want to be known for? Then the biggest part, and this is some place where a lot of people struggle, is when I ask them to think about, okay, imagine the book is done. You have it in your hand. It is a tangible thing. What is the result that you want? What is happening for you, the author, and what is happening in your business? This is a place that some folks struggle a lot with because they haven't really thought about what is the end goal.
What do I want to have happen? So in a lot of cases, I'm coaching and working with people to get that answer. For most of the people that I work with, they're writing this for their business. That means one of their primary goals is to attract clients. Another goal might be, I want to be a podcast guest. I want to be a sought after podcast guest. I want to be a motivational speaker. I want to get on bigger stages. I want...whatever it is that they want when we know that, and this is the way I work.
Then I work backward from that to say, okay, if that's our goal, while we're in the writing and the publishing and the launching process, we need to be doing all the right things. From a marketing perspective to know that we're going to get that result. One of the biggest mistakes I see is that people start writing. Because we do have this big message. But if we don't have a strategy, and we don't know who it is, and the result that we want, then we're sort of writing in the wind. Hoping that somehow the heavens open at the end. It's just not how it works. So that's my biggest number one tip is to really start with the strategy because once we know the answers to those questions, the writing of the book becomes so much easier.
Annie: It does and I'm glad that you share that and it's funny that you share that because this is part of sort of a mini-series within Branding with Friends, where we've just had Jodi Brandon of Jodi Brandon Editorial on, and I know you know, Jodi as well. She was my editor on the book, and she comes to this from a place of editing, you come to it from a place of the overall strategy, the publishing of it all, the marketing. Taking it into those next phases. Jodi's whole episode really dives into what Diana just shared with you guys, which is the strategy. You know, identifying your goals, and your audience, and your topic. There's so much rich in that episode, and I share examples from Permission To Try. What's great about having Diana here today, she's here to confirm that. But she's here to kind of turn it on its head and say why it matters more and to get into more of the details. After you set the strategy, what do you do next? Diana, I love that you said something about this is also about making decisions about what you want to be known for.
Annie: We've been talking a lot on Branding with Friends, and it comes up almost in every episode. You think it's not that we're not talking about branding, but that's what branding is. It's picking what you want to be known for. If you don't know that about your business, it's going to be really hard to do that in a book. Getting that stuff, right and focusing on that and I know that's one of your great strengths is working with business owners. The importance of the business brand, as well as sort of creating this author, entrepreneur brand. I'm really glad that you brought that up along the course of this. Something else that you brought up, that adds dimension to what Jodi has shared, is this notion of thinking about the end goal in mind, planning your marketing, the work, and even just the structure and content of the book to fit those goals. Not just for your visibility as a speaker, for example, but also the business you want to grow, the clients, you want to attract. That you have to be making decisions all the way through based on that strategy. So if you haven't defined it, and you're just writing it, this book may not do what you want it to do.
Diana: Then you may end up like the first author who showed up in my world where her book was out for a year. Why did that happen? Well, because someone said to her, Claire, you should write a book. And she'd been writing all these articles for this women's organization. So she literally took these blog articles, but it wasn't targeted enough. It's great information. But it wasn't really targeted to the person that she's here to help.
Annie: So we're thinking about that, and you've encouraged us to define our strategy. We're going to focus on three tips today, what would be the second tip that business owners need to know as they are working through their book process?
#2 ACTION TIP
Leverage Your Powerful, Compelling Story
Diana: I think one of the questions that a lot of people have when they think about writing a book is what could I possibly write about my topic? There are thousands of books out about branding, about marketing, and about publishing a book. There's all these books out there. What makes your book unique?
What makes this whole thing unique, is your story. Your compelling story. When we talked about strategy, one of the first questions I ask people is, what is your why? Whatever that is, that story behind it is what is going to draw people to you. It's what is going to keep people reading the book. So using your compelling story in the opening pulls people into your world.
Why does that matter? The thing that makes you different from everybody else is your story, your background, your experience, what you bring to the table. Sometimes I think we lose sight of the fact that when we sit across from a client, we bring the culmination of all of our training, all of our programs that we've taken, all of the coaching that we've been involved in, all the mastermind programs. All the things that we did that worked and all the things that I should never have done, all those mistakes. People are buying you.
Annie: People invest in people.
Diana: We kind of forget that people are buying you and what is going to resonate with your ideal client is your story, your background. If you've been through that experience of whatever it is you're solving in this book. They go, oh my gosh, she gets it. That's the reaction that you want to have. Leveraging your story is so powerful and so compelling. It's something that a lot of people have to work on, being vulnerable because you're sharing something and for the most part is personal.
Annie: Even if it's a business book, the vulnerability is part of what attracts people to you. It's part of what makes a book resonate, right?
Diana: Sometimes I have to work with clients to pull out what that is. Sometimes I ask it in this way, what was the pivotal moment when something happened to you or somebody that you cared about when you knew that this message was bigger than you? You had to get it out. Sometimes when I ask it that way, immediately something flashes. They see that moment and maybe they've never connected the dots before.
Annie: It's a lot of soul searching. I think one of the things that you do extraordinarily well is taking the emotional, helping people develop the spine of the book. Where they're going to go with it, how you're going to package up this message.
Can you talk to us a little bit, I know I'm going to get these questions about one of the biggest claims to fame you have which is helping people to become an Amazon bestseller. Keeping these things about strategy in mind and that you need to leverage a story that connects to your reader and your ideal reader. So with that in mind, what do you folks need to do to be working toward a goal of becoming an Amazon bestseller?
Diana: One of the key components besides having a compelling message is that it has to be, and you just mentioned it Annie, it has to be packaged the right way. So what does that mean? It means your book cover has to draw in your reader. It has to be eye catching. It has to speak to that. It is the very first thing that they see. You are not going to receive an Amazon bestseller designation with a cover that isn't professionally done. So you want a professional eye catching cover.
The interior design is also very important in that when we open a book, it's not by accident that the margins, and the headers, and the graphics, and everything is strategically placed all laid out and it’s perfect. It has to be well designed on the interior as well as the exterior.
Another key thing that you have to have in place to have a best selling book is you have to have a community. You have to have a community. Now that may be your email list. It might be your social media following, connections that you've gathered over time. You need a launch team.
Annie, I know you had quite an impressive launch team. You need a community that's going to buy the book. You also need a community that's going to help you market the book, come launch day. Because a bestseller campaign is an orchestrated, organized marketing exercise for a specific, in a specific window of time with the goal of sales volume, to get a bestseller designation. Because you're you're competing in essence against the other books that are in your category. You’ve got to know what's going on with the competition. You have to strategically decide about the categories and you need people to help you push the book out.
Annie: Yes, there are so many layers to all of that. But if you were listening to Diana, one of the biggest things she said, is it starts as early as the cover. You may be thinking, yeah, I'll sell it later. But the cover sets the tone for the whole thing and we make a lot of judgments. Most of us judge books by their cover before we pick them up. When you see it online, or you're going to see it in print, you have to think about what is the impression you’re going to make and you want to make sure that it’s a professional choice. Which is something Diana helps her clients do.
Something I had to go through and also not overlooking that interior layout piece. I know I studied the interior of books at Barnes and Noble. Picking the font sizes and all that stuff. It's a lot of work. If that's not your forte, it's something to invest in. But you don't realize that these things really equate to sales and sales frequency on your launch day and that can make you an Amazon bestseller.
I'm proud that with a lot of Diana's advice and a lot of the work that I put into the book, including having a launch team, I was able to become a bestseller in four different categories. The day the book launched and a hot new release in seven categories and they were good categories. They weren't for example, psychological horror of the mysticism Gothic age. The categories were careers, and job searching and the things that really related to my book. Diana knows what she's talking about, I know too.
I think that extends Diana to the question of branding. So when you work with clients, you're obviously working with business owners. How important do you think branding, in terms of how well they've branded their businesses and themselves? How important do you think that is, before they embark on the book process?
Diana: Oh, absolutely required. When we think about the cover and have the look and the feel of the book, it needs to be on brand.
In a lot of cases, when we're working on a book cover design for somebody, we're actually studying what's on their website. Not just the copy. We're looking at the fonts. We're looking at the colors we're looking at, you know, what is the feeling that this person, their business, what is the feeling that they want to present? What are they presenting to the world? So that the cover is congruent with that. Righ?
So all of that is so important from the very beginning is to make sure this is an asset for your business. It's an asset for your business. So the branding, the look that all of this needs to hang together in a cohesive way. Otherwise, you're going to confuse your market.
Annie: That's right. And that was something that really helped me when I went through the process. I used some of my brand fonts on my cover. Even though my book is actually not a business book. To connect it back to me and the work I was doing. It's not the same color palette, but there are some colors that connect to my speaking brand of me as an author and a speaker as Annie Franceschi not Greatest Story Creative. But the red on the on Try is Greatest Story Red, you know, there are ways in which that it made it easier. And I even built, and for those of you who are thinking of writing a book or you're getting close to marketing it, I'm sure Diana would agree, is if you have built out a color palette for your marketing. You know, so you can start to recognize the promotion. Pull colors from your cover, have them ready to go. Be creating graphics that connect them.
And you know, before I forget, you also mentioned the idea of the launch team. And you know, having a community. The community doesn't need to be enormous. It just has to be passionate. So I know many of you who are watching this may not have a very large community, I certainly don't have 10,000 people in my community either. It's fine.
But I had a fairly small community and still had 65 people on my launch team. And the simple version of how I did that was I put together a little sales page on my website. I told them that I'd be giving them the book for free and all I would need them to do some simple things once a week for four weeks. And all they had to commit to doing was read and review the book. Give an honest review not a, you know, positive review by any means. But everybody committed to it. Everybody, for the most part did what they said they were going to do.
And that's how I have 44, five start reviews. There's one four-star review in there, you can't win them all. But I have 44 five star reviews, and they're all fantastic. And all the impressions, I wanted a successful launch all of that, because I was willing to ask, and I allowed people to apply to be on the launch team. So people had to acknowledge that there was some sort of commitment in there.
But this is something Diana teaches. She helps people with a lot in terms of thinking really strategically about marketing. And we're going to get that to that before we finish the episode today. And I think, Diana, you've shared so much great content with us talking to us about how we start with a strategy and then how we want to leverage our story and even some really good nuggets of how early we have to start thinking about becoming an Amazon bestseller. If that's a goal, right for this book.
So we have that third and final tip, which I know is a really, really good one. So but we're going to save that until the very end, so hang on for just a second. If you have really enjoyed hearing from Diana, I want you to be able to connect with her. So Diana, how can our audience connect more with you after today's episode?
Don’t miss this special opportunity for “Branding with Friends” fans…
Join Diana’s Facebook Group: Build Your Business with a Book.
Diana: Well I set up a Facebook group specifically for entrepreneurs that have a big message that they want to get out. So they can go to Facebook and look for Build Your Business With a Book. That is my Facebook group that I have put together you can always go over to my website. We can connect there. You can find me on LinkedIn, you can find me on you know different places. But the Facebook group is the place to really I would encourage you to come, come be part of the conversation. If you're wondering how do I get started? What do I do with it?
I come on Facebook Live every week. And I was just talking this week on the Facebook Live about okay, so I've launched my book now what? Now what am I supposed to do? Because we invest so much energy getting the book all done, then getting the lunch done. And it's like, okay, what am I supposed to do now? So that was our discussion this week. So that's the kind of information people will find inside the Facebook group.
Annie: And I love that you're giving that access. And that's a complimentary group right now, right? Build Your Business With a Book. Well, guys, you want to act on that. And anywhere you might be watching or listening to this, you should be able to find the many links to connect with Diana, including this incredible Facebook community. I am in that community and I can tell you for sure that Diana pops in there a lot. She hosts great content. And it's a great way to get started if you want to continue the conversation with her or just be learning, right? Like that's why you're here today. So we're glad that you're listening to us. And Diana, thank you so much for sharing that with people who are watching and listening to Branding With Friends.
So you've already shared those two powerful tips with us. What would you say is your third and final word at least for today, on what business owners who want to become authors can do to maximize their book marketing and self-publishing path?
#3 Action Tip
Plan Out Your Book Marketing Strategies Early!
Diana: Well the third thing I would say and we've kind of touched on this is to start planning your marketing strategies early. And I do mean early. I mean, there are ways that you can actually monetize the book while you're writing it.
If you think about when you start writing the book and you when you tell people that you're writing a book, you could actually monetize that by paid speaking, by doing workshops, by hosting events. That also is a good way to get feedback.
So while you're in the process, you can actually leverage that content. Be out sharing that content, plan out your marketing strategies. Like I tell my clients on launch day, you better not be behind your computer. You better not be sitting behind your screen. You should be out speaking hosting your own book event, being a podcast guest. Like, get your podcast guest opportunities lined up so that they are released the same day as your book. And those are all strategic decisions.
So planning that all out early so that you're not like panicked, you know, the week before your book launches going, okay, where am I supposed to be? And what should I be doing? We want to be planning that out early in the process.
Another strategy that a lot of my clients are using is this whole idea of podcast guests opportunities. Yeah, where they're seeing that the book is coming. They're moving those people to a page on their websites to opt in to get information when the book is ready to launch. If they're not quite ready to announce the date yet.
They're always moving people to get on their email list. What does that tie back to? Build your community, right? And you can do a lot of things well in advance, and you want to be actively marketing this book well before it comes out.
Annie: Yes, I think that's such great advice and something that's really easy to overlook. Like you said you could get right up to launch day be like, okay, I'm ready to market it. And that's too late. It's way too late.
And to give you guys a sense, I tracked my time writing Permission To Try and the writing part took me about 100 hours over the course of I think eight months. And then the marketing part which I was blocked into for it was I started really the marketing in June and it came out in October, 200 hours. So I spent twice as long on marketing and the sort of finale logistics on publishing pieces as being a self-published author. It takes a lot of time. It really does. It was a lot of weekends. It was a lot of late nights. And Diana is 100% right on all of these things.
And as we talked about earlier in the episode, you know, Amazon bestsellers start with great covers, they start with intention, they start with goals. One of my biggest goals going into all of this was to get a Barnes and Noble book signing. And so I had to make specific choices about where I had the book printed, how my distribution work, how I was going to market that when that would timing might be good. I had to pitch Barnes and Noble on the idea. But that stuff had to happen months in advance for it to be perfectly lined up with my release date, right. So if there are things you want to accomplish or like a sold-out launch party. That takes time, it takes time to sell tickets and set that up in the first place. So you can't ever have too much time for marketing.
If I... when I do it again, when I'm working on book two, I will tell you, I may actually wait until the book is sort of ready before I set a release date and to give myself enough time to market it the way it really deserves to be marketed. Because this is your shot and the more attention you put behind it, the better and I think a great next step, if you are writing a book, would be to join Diana's community.
So Build Your Business With a Book. It's there on Facebook. Be sure to check it out. Diana, I'm so glad you were here to join us today and teach us so much in a short amount of time about what we can do to market publish and, of course, set our books up with the right strategy. Thank you so much for being here.
Diana: Yeah, thank you, Annie. It's been my delight to be here and I hope the information was helpful.
“Branding with Friends” Episode 5
Show Notes + Resources
Here are 3 key tips on how to use book marketing to grow your service business:
Define your strategy before writing your book
Leverage your powerful, compelling story
Plan out your book marketing strategies early
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To learn more about television publicity or to seek Diana’s help:
• Join Diana’s free Facebook group, Build Your Business with a Book
• Find Diana at businessbookpartners.com
• Find Diana at businessbookpartners.com
