How many times have you found a book that left you wanting more? You go to a book store, you find a book with an eye-catching cover, and you buy it— only to stop reading after chapter 2. It can start to feel like a huge waste of your time, money, and patience.
This is a legitimate problem with books geared toward entrepreneurs and business owners. Maybe the content in the book de-railed and ended up miles away from where it started. Maybe it didn’t provide clear solutions to the problems discussed. Maybe it just wasn’t relevant to you. Whatever the reason, chances are you’ve found yourself disappointed in a book choice in the past.
If you are considering writing a book to promote your brand, process, or ideas, you’ll need to do everything you can to avoid writing a book that people can’t finish. After all, you’ll have to spend a lot of time and energy in creating the content. You want to see all that investment pay off with high book sales and new leads showing up on your doorstep!
So how can you avoid writing something bland, confusing, or downright boring? Follow these five steps before you start putting your ideas down onto paper.
As a business owner, your first step should always be to identify the primary audience you want to target. Otherwise, you will never have a true focus or direction for writing your book. The key thing to remember when thinking about your primary audience is picking the right audience. For many business owners, this is the hardest part.
When you started your business, you may have had an idea who your primary audience was. But, as you and your business evolved, you most likely have realized your primary audience was actually a different group of people altogether. This is common (and even a good thing) because it means that you’re highly in-tuned to who needs and benefits from your product—instead of making assumptions about who you think would be interested.
The group of people who buy your product/service is also your primary audience for your book. This is who you want to share your unique perspectives with. When I’m preparing to make a video, I picture a specific person: an individual member of my primary audience. By doing this, my thoughts and message flow more naturally and are more relevant.
This is a great exercise to follow when you’re jotting down ideas for your book as well. As you visualize who you’re really targeting, you can better focus your thoughts and deliver your unique message. Visualize that individual and write directly to them.
Your secondary audience is made up of people who receive collateral benefits from the message you’ve crafted for your primary audience: often folks who are on the periphery or interact with your primary audience.
In the case of ROI Online, our primary audience is made up of entrepreneurs who have proven their business model and achieved traction but have realized that they can’t do all of their marketing on their own. Our secondary audience is made up of marketing directors or people who have been tasked with resolving this problem for the entrepreneur.
Although your secondary audience might not be the ones calling your phone for a quote, they also benefit from your message. This audience is important because they are in the position to drive your primary audience to you. When you’re writing, keep that in mind. Your book’s purpose is to help these folks put into words, succinctly, why their boss should value the information that you’re presenting.
It’s essential to create detailed buyer personas of your primary and secondary audiences, and outline the decision paths of these groups. How did they feel about the problem you can help them solve? How are they transformed after taking advantage of your unique solution? If you don’t know the answers, no problem. You can find out by interviewing customers and answering the questions in these buyer persona templates.
Now that you have a decent idea of who your book is for, it’s time to take it a step further. Think more deeply about the pain point of your personas.
As an entrepreneur, your purpose is to solve a particular pain point for our primary audience. This is true whether you sell cars, insurance or business guidance. Without that mission, there is no business.
I’m sure you know that you’re not the only business out there trying to solve the pain points your product solves. Your competitors are targeting the same audiences with a generic pain point. So how do you set yourself apart? You must think deeply about your primary audience’s driving pain point—not only the generalities but the specific motivations and emotional needs of your prospective clients.
Let’s say you’re a personal trainer. What is your persona’s deeper need? They need to get in shape, obviously. Any personal trainer can focus on the basics of fixing that: strength training, cardio, stretching.
But there is a bigger pain point at play. How does this person feel about themselves? What emotional drive pushed them to seek you out? The specific pain point you’re actually resolving isn’t building muscle. It’s transforming the way they see themselves.
You need to understand and honor their unique pain point and offer a solution geared toward their specific struggle. That makes you unique. If they read your own story and know you’ve been in their shoes, they will connect with you emotionally and seek you out. Not only is this form of marketing more personal, but it’s also more effective. Wouldn’t you rather train with someone who helps you love the way you look and feel, as opposed to a trainer who just focuses on the numbers on a scale?
Before you send your draft off to an editor, you should have a clear understanding of the outcome you want this person to have after they read your book. This person has a pain point that must be resolved, and they need to see that there is a unique way to solve it. Your goal is to ensure that, if they lacked a unique solution to their problem, reading your book will give them the perspective they need to solve it.
They will then become empowered to make an improvement in their lives—something they were unable to do before because they were lacking a certain piece of knowledge that you have. Help them to see what success looks like when they apply the knowledge they have learned from you.
Have you ever read a book that provided powerful insights into a problem but didn’t actually tell you how to solve it? I know I have—more times than I can count.
You have identified your audience, you understand their pain points, and you know the outcome they’ll achieve once they adopt your solution. But you can’t stop there. You need to let them know how they can put your solution in action.
What do you expect the audience to do after they have related, connected, and changed their mindset because of what you’ve shared? What’s next? Help them see the next steps and challenge them to get started. For many businesses, this will be the same thing as the primary call-to-action on your website. Schedule a consultation. Request a quote. Sign up for a workshop. The next step you promote should be whatever action-item you need customers to take so you can start the sales process.
These five things are very important, and it is vital that you spend time thinking about them to gain clarity. By doing this, you can take this vision plan and apply it to your book writing project.
When it comes time to put pen to paper, this will be your map. It will help you communicate to those who may weigh in, people you collaborate with, or those you ask for advice. Not only that, but it will be crystal clear exactly to whom you are speaking and what unique solution you can provide for them.
Once your book is ready to hit shelves, it’s time for the real fun to begin. A strategic promotional campaign can help you spread awareness about your book, attract the attention of your primary and secondary audience, and nurture readers into paying customers.
Ready to transform your ideas into a book that drives prospects to your door? Let’s talk! Schedule a free strategy session, and we’ll walk through how to get the biggest return from your book.