As you know, I use all of my short, helpful books (shooks) as one of the primary means to attract interest from business owners who want to write a book to promote themselves and their business. As part of this system, interested book readers can schedule a call with me to discuss their book ideas and see if working together makes sense. When someone schedules a call, I receive an automated email with their details and answers to a few questions I ask on the scheduling form.
Recently, I received a call request from a woman named Amanda that made me smile for a few different reasons—one of which I am going to use as an important reminder for all of us. Take a few seconds and read through her “other questions and comments” response because what she did here is smart in my opinion.
She wanted me to know where she stands on things so that neither of us would be wasting time on a call to see if working together makes sense.
Regardless of your personal political views, Amanda’s no-nonsense and completely transparent comments are exactly the type of response you want your book and book marketing efforts to generate.
A book is an excellent example of marketing media where it makes complete sense to put your stake in the ground and let readers know exactly what your beliefs and philosophies are and who you ideally serve.
If you’ve read any of my shooks, you know I am equally up-front at the very beginning of each with a chapter titled, Who Should Read This Book? I use this chapter to quickly identify who I wrote my book for and who should (and should not) invest the time to read it. You may have noticed I did something similar right here on this page (did you notice it?).
This “encourage some, discourage others” approach reminds me of the fascination I had as a child with magnets. I could literally play with magnets for hours and be amazed at how they can PULL or PUSH other magnets way depending on their orientation.
Your marketing should do the same thing.
No matter what you may think, you are not in business to serve everybody. In reality, you are in business to ideally serve a select group who want what you have to offer and align with your “perfect customer” criteria. In other words, your marketing should PUSH away those people you are not meant to serve and PULL your ideal customers towards you.
Aside from the fact that life is too short to deal with people you don’t want to deal with, this efficiency allows you to do everything you can to help the people you can best help with your products and services, while not wasting efforts and resources on those individuals your products and services are not a good fit for.
If you are creating a book (or any other important marketing media for that matter), I want to challenge you to keep this magnet metaphor in mind and do your best to encourage (and pull) your ideal prosects towards you with clear and focused language, ideas, benefits and solutions that will resonate with them. Let me know how it goes! And yes, Amanda is now a new client!
