Jim: In this episode, we’re going to talk about one of the greatest marketing books ever written and what we can learn from it and apply to our own marketing.
The idea for this episode comes from one of my mentors, a gentleman who has had a huge influence on my life and my marketing. His name is Roy Williams. I heard this for the first time from him back in 2001, at a gathering where he asked a group of us what we thought the best marketing book ever written was. There were many answers, but none of us picked the one Roy had in mind.
Roy says one of the greatest marketing books ever written, and I agree, is Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. Yes, that is a marketing book.
What does Sam I Am know about persistence that most authors don’t?
We’re going to talk through two points that book makes that we can apply to our own marketing. The first is that Sam I Am is one of the greatest marketing men ever, because he is persistent, and persistence is something we don’t execute in marketing enough.
He markets his product to his potential buyer 16 times before he gets a yes. Here’s this guy, and he’s not even trying to sell green eggs and ham so much as say, just taste it. Would you like them? He closes the sale 16 times. Statistics tell us the average salesperson asks twice. So if we are selling our book, we feel like, well, I’m really going to press the issue and ask people to buy it twice. We are all salespeople, whether we want to admit it or not, and in our case we’re selling books.
Sam knew that the average sale is made when the customer is asked five times. If we apply that to our books, we need to promote via our newsletter, social media, and similar channels at least five times. Three to seven exposures is what it takes before someone will buy.
Here’s how that might look. A potential buyer sees a post on Facebook. You list your novel on a book club site. Their friend mentions it. You write an article and mention your novel in your byline. Someone sees a four or five-star review on Amazon. You tweet about it. There’s a review on Goodreads. They hear you on a radio interview or on someone’s blog. At that point, after three to seven exposures, they’re ready to buy.
It just doesn’t happen right away, and I know it’s hard. As an author, I’m preaching this message to myself: you have to consistently promote your book. Frequency sells, as we used to say back when I was selling radio advertising. One exposure is not going to do it. It’s great if you have the budget for a Super Bowl ad, but notice they don’t just run it once. They run those ads after the Super Bowl too.
In advertising there’s reach and there’s frequency. You would rather reach everyone in a small pond than just a few people in a large one. It comes back to getting that message out consistently and repeatedly. Thoughts on that, Thomas?
How do you promote frequently without becoming that person?
Thomas: How do you do that without coming across as obnoxious? We all know that person in a Facebook group whose only contribution is posting a link to their book. People just don’t want to see it. They’re like, please stop talking about this, the same way they feel about someone pushing a pyramid scheme.
Jim: That’s the second lesson Sam teaches us, and this is the key. Sam knows he can’t promote the same way with the same message again and again, because that does become a pain in the backside. So Sam came up with 16 different options, 16 new ways of thinking about Green Eggs and Ham. He presented his product differently each time. Would you like them in a box? Would you like them with a fox? Would you like them in a house? Would you like them with a mouse? Would you like them on a train? Would you like them here or there? He came back from a different angle each time, so it felt fresh and new to the potential buyer.
Thomas: What does that look like practically? What am I doing today that’s different from what I’m doing tomorrow?
Jim: You might create 16 different memes for your book. One time it’s a straight-out ad. The next time it’s photos of people reading your book in crazy places. Then quotes from the book. Then endorsements, not from other authors but from actual readers who loved it. You might reach out to your core readers and say, “Do me a favor. Record a quick video about what you liked about the book and I’ll put it on my Facebook page.” The next time you’re pulling out questions the book raises in people. The next time it’s trivia from the book. It’s just coming at it from a different angle every time, so it’s fresh and never the same thing hitting you over the head.
Thomas: Other than Facebook posts, which most people don’t see anyway, how else can we increase that frequency outside of social media?
Jim: Your newsletter list is powerful, and you can amplify it by giving your readers ideas on how to share with their friends. Why does something go viral? Because it’s entertaining, funny, provocative, or thought-provoking. Your biggest fans are those core readers who always respond when you send an email. You can create a small private team of those people and say, “New book coming out. Would you share this with your friends?” Give them something entertaining to pass along, and suddenly you have a team promoting you to their networks.
Thomas: Give me an example of how to make that entertaining, because I get a lot of these emails and most of them are very boring. Why should I share your book? What’s in it for me?
Jim: You have to go back to the content of the book and brainstorm how to make the subject genuinely entertaining. From my own books, I had a street magician character in one of the Wellspring novels, and I included him intentionally because every trick he performed in the story was something I could actually do, since I love sleight of hand. So I created a video demonstrating one of those tricks. If the trick blows you away, it’s easy to forward it with a note saying, “You’ve got to see this trick that’s actually in the book.” It’s unusual, it’s different, it’s entertaining, and it’s worth passing on.
Is there anyone left on Facebook to advertise to?
Thomas: One of the best ways to do this without being annoying is paid advertising. With Amazon Ads and Facebook Ads, people are used to seeing promotional content there, and frequency in advertising is received better than repeated social posts or emails. You can burn out your list if you send too many emails, but you can advertise a book for months on Facebook without people getting tired of it, especially if you’re rotating the images and the messaging. The key is making sure your cost of reader acquisition is covered by the profit from the book. That often means raising your price a dollar or two per copy, but it can be a very effective way to drive frequency.
Amazon is especially powerful because you’re reaching someone who is already in a mood to buy books, already browsing for something to read. When they repeatedly search for a phrase related to your book and your title keeps appearing, they think, “This book must be amazing,” and then they click to learn more.
Jim: One more thing Sam did was promote with passion. It’s obvious he believed in his product. As authors, we go through doubt. I just turned in my latest manuscript wondering whether it’s any good. But ultimately we have to decide: we poured our blood, sweat, and tears into this. We wrote and slaved over it for six to nine months to a year. We have to say, “I believe in this book, or I wouldn’t have done it.” We’re not promoting it to bring attention to ourselves. We’re promoting it because we genuinely believe it can help people, change their lives. Sam was saying, these green eggs and ham, you will really like them. He believed in his product with passion.
Believe in your books with passion.
What’s the right amount to talk about your book?
Thomas: Most people already believe in their books. Another way to
Jim: They believe in their books, but they can still be hesitant to say, “Oh my gosh, you’ve got to read this, I think it’ll change your life.”
Thomas: That’s true. Authors are different. Some need to tone it down. But I’ve known other people for six months and had no idea they wrote a book. There is a happy medium, and you probably know where you fall on that continuum. You owe it to your book to let people know about it.
A really easy way to boost frequency is to write a second book. Authors who write a book every month have a very natural frequency because there’s always something new worth talking about. Send out two or three emails for each release and you’re writing every month, that’s nearly an email every week. That’s the kind of frequency that makes people sit up and take notice.
That’s why authors writing at that pace are earning six figures or more. The books cross-promote each other, create energy, and build synergy where one plus one equals three. It’s much easier when books are coming out rapidly than when you have one book a year and have to find ways to talk about it all year. If you only have to talk about a book for a month, that’s a lot easier to sustain.
Mailbag
Thomas: We have a new segment called Mailbag, where we read your feedback to the show.
Danny Floyd wrote us a note saying he followed our advice, wrote a short story, and put it on BookFunnel. He gained about 40 subscribers when he used to get only one or two a month, roughly a 5,000% increase. He made a great cover, wrote an enticing blog post about the story, and added it to MyBookTable. He said, “Thanks for all of the great novel marketing advice. I’m telling everyone about you and I know of several who have signed up as a result.”
Thank you, Danny. If you’re putting what we talk about into practice, we’d love to hear from you.
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