How to Generate Leads For Your Business Using a Book Funnel

Book – Pretty sure you know what that is!

Funnel – Yes, just like the one you use to filter coffee, but this is an imaginary one through which you filter people instead of coffee. A marketing funnel is a metaphorical cone-shaped model that businesses use to turn leads into customers.

What about a book funnel? No? Okay, here it goes; A book funnel is a strategy where you use a book as an incentive(or a lead magnet, as all the marketers call it) to drive someone through your funnel to later upsell them on your actual product/service.

How Does the Book Funnel Help?

The idea here is to give a potential customer something valuable related to your business that they are looking for to solve a pain point/problem in their life.

Doing this helps build trust with a lead and create a positive association. Now you are more likely to see them convert as customers.

This method is very similar to what you see happening in malls and grocery stores, where you get to taste samples of a particular product before you buy it. The best part about a book funnel is that it is digital. So you can pretty much track everything. You also don’t necessarily have to give a physical book. It can be a digital ebook or in audio format.

It is also totally up to you whether you want to charge for the book or give it away for free. When you convince a lead to grab a book, you do two significant things. Capture their email in exchange for the book and trap them in your funnel. Okay, that sounds wrong, but you know what we mean!

At the end of the day, if they choose your book, they likely need or want what your business has to offer. 

You should also set a conversion metric/goal for your book funnel to know in the end whether it was successful or not. Here are some standard conversion metrics:

• The visitor subscribes to your mailing list.
• Becomes an engaged follower for you/your business on social.
• Purchases your product/service or opts in for your upsell.
• Chooses to schedule a consulting call with you.

Click here to read a book funnel case study.

Is it Suitable for my Business?

The first question that most business owners have is – “Will it work for my business?”

A funnel will work as long as you find out what people are searching for related to your business to solve their problems and how you can either reach them organically or advertise to them.

Honestly, there are very few businesses that a funnel might not be the most suitable option. But it will still work.

Here is a list of businesses/types of businesses that a book funnel will indeed work for:

• Any online business.
• Freelancers
• Coaches 
• SaaS Companies
• Public Speakers
• Entrepreneurs/Solopreneurs
• Physicians
• Digital Marketers
• Writers
• Designers
• Dentists
• Chiropractors
• Veterinarian

We could list down more, but we know you don’t have all day, so if you’re still doubtful whether your business can benefit from a book funnel, contact us, and we’ll be happy to clarify your doubts.

Identifying an Audience for Your Book

If you have already nailed down some marketing personas for your business, you pretty much have your audience for your book as well.

If not, then the best place to start is your existing customers. Ask them why they decided to choose you in the first place? Survey them and create a list of benefits you provide to your clients.

You could have a variety of reasons why people chose you. Once you have data, you’ll be able to gather insights into the type of people you serve. Their demographics and psychographics will become more apparent to you.

Segregate these people into categories to create marketing personas and weave your communication accordingly, in the book, and your efforts to market the book and your product or service.

How do I Write my Book?

Here are a few things to analyze when writing a book to help get leads for your business:

1. How does it help my potential customer?
2. Am I giving them beneficial information?
3. Does it promote my product/service?

It would be best to make sure that the book you write has information specific to solving a problem that your potential customer has to make their life better. If it contains any run-of-the-mill content, you could risk creating a negative impression about yourself/brand/business and lose the person’s interest.

Although your book must hint at your product/service, it should not outright tell the person to buy from you. Remember, you want to sell but not be a sell-out. 

Emphasize solving your reader’s problems and occasionally throw in bonus offers/free strategy calls/a mini-course that they can access through a link. It brings awareness and engagement to you, moving the lead closer to you and enhancing your relationship with them.

Once they are on your website, they can easily choose to interact with your products/service and decide to buy from you.

When it comes to the creation of your book, we’ve got that part covered. From helping you write, edit, design the book cover, and publish it. We help you in the entire process. Learn more about it over here.

Once you’ve written your book, you’ll need a landing page where people can get it. It can be on your website, or if you don’t have one, then you can use one of the free landing page builders:

1. Google Sites 
2. Carrd 
3. Mailchimp
4. KickoffLabs
5. Unbounce
6. Wix
7. Leadpages
8. Instapage
9. Landingi

How Do I Drive Traffic to my Book Funnel?

Once you have identified your audience, it is time to reach out to them or have them find you.

We’ll briefly touch upon the two primary ways you can drive traffic to your book funnel landing page:

1. Social Media Channels (Paid + Organic)
2. Search Engines (Paid + Organic)

Your target audience can be present anywhere on the internet, and it can be difficult to pinpoint where you’ll find them. A good start is to research successful competitors and see where they seem to focus their efforts.

First, you should definitely maintain your presence on both social channels and have a website/landing page, so you don’t miss out on an opportunity if an individual is looking for you on a particular channel.

Having an omnichannel presence will help you identify with a bit of trial and error where you seem to be getting a good response. Once you know that, you can start focusing your time on that channel.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are some of the most populated social media channels. 

Once you’ve identified which social channels will help you get the most amount of your target customer, you must start creating and posting content regularly and use them to create ads that will drive traffic to your profile.

If you’re an individual/freelancer/solopreneur, then a big part of driving traffic for your book will be the aspect of personal branding. In a world where brands are trying to be more human and are trying to become brands, having a regular output of content will do wonders for you.

It will drive sales for your book and create a pathway for future business opportunities. As long as you serve up content that will help your audience, they will show up for you.

SEARCH ENGINES:

A simple keyword research tool will help you analyze the demand for a particular search term that might lead to people finding your book and your business.

You can create a blog for organic traffic or run google ads to drive traffic to your book.

Building & Nurturing Your Email List Obtained Through Your Funnel

Once you’ve done the hard labor of writing your book, marketing it right, and showing up for those you serve, the result is going to be a list of people who are eager to know what you do and, of course, those precious email IDs.

A significant part of a funnel is capturing email IDs. They are digital gold for your business. You want to make sure that the transaction between people who buy your book is not just monetary. 

They must also exchange their email IDs for getting your book. That’s the whole point of a book funnel – to nurture them with further communication about your business.

Emails seem to be an old way of communication, but they still hold a personal yet slightly formal charm. 

The fact that people gave their email addresses and paid for your book means that it is highly likely that they will also be interested in your business.

You can now start using any email tool like Mailchimp to nurture these leads with weekly emails.

Email nurturing ideas for people who bought your book:

• Ask them for feedback about the book.
• Drive them to your social channels to stay up-to-date with your business.
• Updates about your business – Offers, new products/services, etc.
• Stories that genuinely tell who you are instead of always selling.

Ideally, you should be setting up automated email sequences for when someone buys your book. This will help you save lots of time and effort and help you optimize your funnel for maximum conversion.

Mistakes to Avoid while Creating your Book Funnel

Regardless of the type of business, here are some commonly made mistakes to avoid while crafting your book funnel:

1. Your book is not the sale. It is the lead generation tool that gets you a sale. Although you will earn from the book’s sale, remember that its purpose is to drive the lead towards your actual business to make them a recurring client.
2. The quality of your book will determine the quality of leads.

If you create a low-quality book, people will not stick around. Put in the time and effort required to publish a book that is drafted with good communication, editing, and design to show your professionalism.

1. Said this already, but can’t say it enough – Sell but don’t be a sell-out! 

Do not stuff the book with promotional material. People can see right through fluff content that holds no actionable value. Genuinely help the people you seek to serve with your expertise, and they shall ask for more in the form of your business.

CASE STUDY: Personal Fitness Coach

Let’s take the hypothetical case of a fitness coach named ‘Jim’ and see how a book funnel would work for him.

It’s May 2020, and the world is already two months into lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. Jim has been at his home for two months now. He is eager to continue his fitness services, but all the gyms are closed, and he cannot meet any of his clients because of the lockdown.

In this situation, Jim plans to pivot and start offering daily workout training sessions virtually and help people with personalized diet plans. 

Jim wants to expand his services to more than just people from his locality. To do this, he decides to create a book funnel with some of his marketing friends.

Here are the steps he follows:

STEP 1: Book Funnel Goal

Most people would assume that writing the book is the first step. But setting a goal for your book funnel comes first, which will positively influence the way you craft your book.

For Jim, his book funnel’s goal is to get clients to attend his virtual coaching sessions. So that is what will be considered as a final conversion/ end of the funnel.

STEP 2: Writing the Book

Many individuals find this step to be the most challenging, but writing a book does not have to be tough. It does not have to be lengthy or filled with complicated jargon. This book’s goal is not to be adored by book nerds but rather to provide fair value to your business’s potential customers.

Jim knows this, and so he decides to create a simple book according to the situation:

‘Pandemic Workout: 30 Days to a Better You!’

In this book, Jim charts out a 30-day plan for individuals with different physical exercises to be performed weekly at home. He takes help from a publishing service (like us) to write, edit and design his book.

An essential aspect of the book creation process is to add lead magnets within the book to drive your readers back to you for mini-upsells. 

Setting up these upsells in an organic manner where you don’t come off too salesy is the trick to get leads to start interacting with you.

Since Jim is providing a 30-day workout plan, Jim decides to embed four lead magnets at the end of each weeks workout plan:

STEP 3: Publishing Your Book

Now that Jim has finished writing his book, it is time for him to publish it. He can do various ways, but since it’s the lockdown and all services are shut, he decides to publish his work as an ebook. 

To know how to self-publish a book, click here. To understand how to self-publish an ebook, click here.

STEP 4: Distributing Your Book

The last step for Jim is to set up the distribution process for his book. There are many distribution channels (to know the various ways you can distribute and market your book, click here) that Jim can set up for his book. He has chosen to create a landing page where he would be driving traffic through social media ads.

He has decided to do this as he knows his target demographic and psychographic very well and is confident that he can effectively advertise through Facebook and Instagram ads. (You can refer back to the section of this article where we talk about driving traffic to your funnel).

STEP 5: The Lead Nurturing Phase

Jim has successfully run his campaign and has started seeing purchases for his book. Leads have also started opting in for the lead magnets, and Jim has set up all the right systems to nurture his leads. 

He started receiving conversions for his virtual fitness coaching and personalized diet plans after a consistent flow of communication to his leads which included:

• Email newsletters.
• Social media engagements.
• Content marketing strategies.
• And various A/B tests of offers.

This is where Jim’s book funnel ends.

If you are looking to plan a book funnel for your business, consider a free creative consultation with us to see how we can help you.