How To Use Books To Promote Yourself & Your Business With Adam Witty

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about one of Dan Kennedy's favorite marketing tools, because in Dan's opinion, nothing beats books as a lead generation magnet. And because of that, today we're bringing on Adam Witty. Now, Adam helps clients get new clients, speaking opportunities, free publicity, and more with your book. Now it's not enough just to write a book. You need to make sure that you craft this book in order to make the optimum impact that your business requires. Dan Kennedy is the king of this, and over the years, Adam Woody has seen exactly how to make sure that you craft your book in order to give you the most impact for this amazing lead generation strategy. Let's listen in.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy, the legend. Of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril. They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by. Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. With your host, Dan Kennedy.

We have with us, and we'll be getting to fairly quickly, as our guest today, Adam Witty. Most of you should know Adam, but we'll get to a little introduction, and then we will be talking about how to use one of my favorite marketing and promotion tools, a book or books. And use it effectively to promote yourself, your products, your services, your business, or your cause. And now, Adam, thank you for being with us.

You're welcome, Dan. It's my pleasure.

I'm going to let you sort of do your own introduction as I usually do on these calls. Obviously, Betty of the Diamond members on the call know you from seeing you at GKIC conferences and so forth, but Advantage Media keeps getting bigger and more diverse and more of the 15,000-pound elephant, it seems, with each passing month. So I'll let you sort of quickly give them a sense of what the business is all about and how you and it got here. Without of course going all the way back to Adam in the womb.

I'll go back to 2005 and say that, you know, no kid grows up wanting to be a publisher and I fell into that camp. I did not grow up wanting to be a publisher and ended up really finding that I loved books. And I'm a voracious reader like you, Dan. I consume dozens and dozens of business books every year. I really believe that the right book in the right person's hand can change their life or change their business forever. In 2005, I was having lunch with a mentor of mine who is a motivational speaker. He had convinced me to take my 2 years of summer internship experience at a publishing house and go out and start a publishing company specifically working with business people. Traditional publishing, Random House, is falling by the wayside day by day, month by month. Self-publishing is the wild, wild west. Most self-published books, they look self-published. My mentor, Pat Williams, had said, "Adam, you can help these people create really great books." In 2005, that's what we started doing. Dan, in 2007, my life changed when I met you. And entered Planet Dan and full credit to where it belongs. The explosive growth that Advantage has experienced over the last 9 years, making the Inc. 500, 5000 list for 3 straight years now, increasing our revenue by 20, 30, 40, 50% year over year is much a credit to you and the accurate thinking that I learned from you and of course the marketing skills. Advantage today works with entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business leaders and professionals to help them write, publish, monetize, and market a book to grow their business. Advantage is not here to help you become a New York Times bestselling author. Our goal is to help you get new clients, to help you get speaking opportunities, to help you get free publicity and media as a result of your book, and to channel all of that into impacting the top line and the bottom line of your business. We're pretty good at what we do. We've published well over 500 CEOs and entrepreneurs. We've published probably 100 GKIC members, many prominent names that I'm sure everybody on the Diamond call would know and recognize. And specifically, we've really taken the frustration and the grunt out of the process with our Talk Your Book program, where we help busy entrepreneurs get a book written in less than a day by talking their book rather than writing their book, sitting down and typing. So, that is my very, very quick background. I am a great believer that every business professional, every entrepreneur can benefit by the power of authorship. Strategically done right, a book can change your life and the life of your business forever. That is my passion. That is the mission of Advantage. Having done it for 500 authors to date, our goal is to do it for very, very, very many more. It's a real honor, Dan, to be able to share some of the insights that I've gleaned and the experiences that we've had with the Diamond members today.

Great, thank you. I would just add the formula a little. The right book to the right audience in the right place at the right time is extremely powerful. I have a client, actually talked to him earlier today. Today is my phone day from 7 to 7. After which I lay on the ground and think there must be a better way to do this for an hour, and then I go have dinner. He just told me today he has several books actually, and they are all purposed just as you described. It's not really about— well, let's see, Oprah's gone, Katie Couric's gone, so it's not really about getting on the Today Show, and it's not really about about even making a best-selling list, although if that happens, that's fine. For him and for many of my clients, it is about using them as lead generation tools and as marketing tools. And still, in my experience, nothing beats a book as a lead generation magnet. He just— for one of them and in experimenting— is discovering that one works better than another. He just started to do— and he's a high-end wealth manager, wealth advisor. He just started to do market-by-market large newspaper ads, and carefully purchased, of course. And in one of the test markets, one of the earliest test markets, a couple of weeks ago. One ad offering the particular free book pulled nearly 30 prospects, and these have to be— I mean, the ad in the book is pretty targeted. They pretty much know coming in the door that they have to be sitting on several million or more in assets. Investable assets in need of a home and in need of assistance. And so the ad pulled nearly 30 prospects. They've all been communicated with. All but a few of them are qualified. Some of them are hotter than others. Several are turning into appointments immediately. Based on experience with comparable leads in the past, you know, we can project that that is going to be in the 10-to-1 ROI range, maybe a 15-to-1 ROI range. And when you compare it to what most wealth managers do with their advertising, most are advertising the service. The existence of the firm, if you will. And when you are now advertising useful information and positioned as the author of a book at the same time, things change. So I'm constantly pushing people that their lead generation ought to at least include, if not be centered around a book. And I'm sure you have similar case histories, which I'll jump back to in just a second, but I just wanted to sort of make a side observation. Um, have you noticed, um, much was made of, uh, in TV news broadcasts and so forth, of Hillary Clinton being at Costco with giant piles of books doing book signings.

I'll tell you what, that, that's the news of the week, isn't it?

Yeah. And you know, it's such a clever positioning if you— in her case, if you want to appeal to mainstream middle America suburban soccer moms rather than doing those signings at bookstores, you're at Costco wedged in between the 55-gallon drum of peanut butter and the 6 sweaters for $29.95 and whatever else they got going on. And of course, it also got a lot of media coverage because she was at Costco. That it probably would not have gotten had she been at the Barnes Noble down the street. I just thought it was brilliant.

Well, and you know, Dan, of course the underlying story is that writing and publishing a book is now a prerequisite for anyone that is even thinking about running for president.

Yeah, and people ought to take note of that. 'Cause that's not— I mean, it's been done for quite a while, but your point that it is now a requirement, a step that dare not be bypassed, I think people in business ought to take note of this, that it is that important in that arena, and so it might well be that important in your arena too. So let me just sort of get started with having you case history if you can and will talk about the, the right kind of book and the right way to use a book specifically for the lead generation.

Yeah, so, so that's probably the number one way to monetize a book. If you are a wealth manager, that's a great example, and the typical client to your firm over a lifetime is worth $50,000, you're going to have to sell roughly 50,000 copies of your book to make $50,000. Keeping in mind that the average book in its lifetime sells about 2,000 copies. So it's much wiser to use your book to attract one prospect that you turn into a $50,000 client than it is to go out and sell 50,000 copies of your book. So lead generation far and away is probably not only the most popular reason that a business owner, entrepreneur, professional should do a book, but it's probably also the easiest to execute. So regardless of profession, you're a dentist, you're a financial advisor, you're an attorney, you're a physical therapist, at the end of the day, you need to instill trust confidence, expertise amongst your prospect. There's nothing that can communicate that ACE formula, as I think you have called it before, as I call it, that authority, celebrity, expertise. There's nothing that conveys that better than a published book. I'm not talking about an eBook. I'm talking about a physical book that you can literally hand to someone across the table or put in a FedEx envelope and mail to them.

And hopefully I won't derail you, but I just want to emphasize that point for everybody. And I know that some people of younger ages will tend to perhaps shrug at it based on their own preferences. But the idea that there is reputation-building, authority-creating equivalence between a book and an eBook and a downloadable PDF and an audio or video presentation online or a website is a very false idea. The book that makes a thump when it lands on the desk or the table, and that appears in every way to be a quote, real, unquote book, and is in fact a real book, although engineered between its covers. Differently and for a specific purpose has, and I know you would agree, it has and continues to prove to have unique impact that no other piece of media matches.

Well, and to further your point, Dan, two-thirds of all books sold are physical books. And the growth of eBook sales has dramatically declined over the last 24 months.

Yeah, it leveled up and then leveled, didn't it?

It leveled. Yeah. And so every expert in the publishing industry is saying 10 years from now, at best, eBooks are still going to be less than half of the market.

Further, they're weighted to fiction, to entertainment.

That's exactly what I was going to say. Yeah. If you're a nonfiction author, in this case you're a business professional, and you are trying to bring someone to your way of thinking, the eBook is literally worthless. It's no different than a free report that you can download on a website. That is a commodity. Everybody does that. But taking the time, energy, spending the money to build and design and print a beautiful book that can rival the quality of a book you'd find on the front table at Barnes Noble, it's what few people are willing to do. But those that do that have a significant advantage over all of their competitors.

So looping back and narrowing to lead generation, you got an example or two for me of advantage authors in that game?

Yes. Let's take a friend of yours and I's, Charlie Martin, the dentist. Enrichment. Most medical practices, depending upon what state you live in, there are myriad regulations of what you can and can't do in your marketing and advertising. And certainly there are some people think that it's unsavory for medical professionals to market at all. So Charlie Martin's answer is he does not market his dental practice he markets his books. So Charlie runs radio ads, he runs print ads, he does a lot of online ads, Google AdWords, and instead of marketing the Richmond Smile Center, Charlie markets visit my website or call this number to request an autographed copy of my newest book., and then the person in his office gets the request, mails out a physical copy of the book that comes accompanied in a shock and awe package, and then there is a follow-up call, because of course in order to get the book, you've got to literally pull down your pants and give his office a bunch of information. But what we've got to remember is because consumers see books of value and because consumers peg a retail price of $20, $25, or $30 on a book, the hoops that people are willing to jump through to get a free book will make your head spin. So Charlie's office is able to collect a dramatic amount of prospective patient information. They mail the book. They mail the shock and awe package, and then a receptionist calls and follows up and attempts to schedule them for a free consultative visit at the Richmond Smile Center. So, Charlie doesn't market the practice because that's what probably most dentists do. He markets the books, and Charlie's done 5 books on 5 different niche topics in dentistry.

Yeah, by the way, that is my experience with, with people I get to do this. Once they see the results, they then don't stop with one book, uh, they go on and do another one and another one. You know, in, in, in healthcare, the first time that I was involved with this, the exact same strategy that you just described, other than the fact that Google AdWords didn't exist, was maybe 25 years ago. I worked with a cosmetic surgeon in Beverly Hills and even then it was and still is a legal requirement that if you move into or live in Beverly Hills, you have to go to a cosmetic surgeon at least once every 12 months or they evict you from the community. So there's a lot of them, but it is a very competitive field. And at the time, he had been very successful at using full-page ads. This is a well-known guy, by the way. His name is Dr. Bob Kotler, and he relatively recently— time passes quickly now— but was the sort of the elder doc in the reality show Dr. 90210. So Bob had been very successfully using large ads, full-page ads in the big, thick, glossy lifestyle magazine Los Angeles and in a smaller Beverly Hills-oriented publication. And over time, he went from being the only full-page advertiser in his profession to being one of two, being one of three, being one of six, being one of eight, and it almost looked like there was, you know, a catalog of cosmetic surgeon ads all clumped together in a magazine. And so our conversation was about what am I going to do about this? And we switched to instead of advertising the practice, to advertising his book, which as I recall was rather unimaginatively titled at the time, The Consumer's Guide to Cosmetic Surgery. And we got the ad response right back up to where it had been, where he'd been the only advertiser. And so, you know, this is not a new strategy, which I guess makes it all the more odd that you don't see more and more and more people embrace it. But it is still, as you pointed out, a pretty profound competitive advantage in most categories when you do it well. Do you have one more lead generation example?

I do. I'll give you a different industry and we'll go to a financial advisor. Brian Fricke, a GKIC member, Central Florida, and a typical client to him is worth $10,000 a year. Average client stays with him for 12.5 years. So $125,000 lifetime is what a customer is worth to his practice. So here's something that Brian does to generate leads. Through his existing clients. Brian's got about 100 clients, 120 clients, and each one of those clients, of course, has friends that probably have similar investable assets as them. But as you know, getting referrals can be difficult, and those that do refer, you've got to be careful what they are saying. Because oftentimes unknowingly they think they're helping you and they're really killing the sale. So Brian was kind of having a hard time reliably getting referrals from his existing client base. So he published his book with us. The title of the book is Worry-Free Retirement. And Brian sent a dozen copies of the book to each one of his clients. And with that, he said, he included a note and it said, you know, "Dear John, thank you so much for being a loyal client of ours. It's an honor for us to be able to help you manage your wealth. I wanted to send you a few copies of my newest book. The top copy is autographed for your personal collection. The remaining books I'd be honored if you'd pass along and give to any friends, colleagues, or family members that you think might benefit from the advice contained within. Sincerely, Brian. So these clients of his now start gifting copies of Brian's book to their friends. And the clients really don't have to make a pitch, they just say, "Oh, you should read this book." Well, of course, they read the book and they say, "Well, I want to get in touch with this guy." So Brian sent out the books and in the first year he generated 10 new clients as a result of the book. Well, you know, you may scoff and say, "Ugh, 10 clients, that's not much." But when you factor that a client's worth $125,000, that was a $1,250,000 return on mailing roughly 1,000 books.

Not to mention that those clients have all been taught in advance how to turn around and do the same thing. So the endless chain factor that most people are so poor at engineering into their business is a big part of this.

And the other thing is now you have 1,000 people in Central Florida that have a copy of his book either sitting on their coffee table or tucked away on their bookshelf. And when they have a financial worry or need, they reference that book. And so what Brian found is he initially sent out the book, he got 10 clients in the first year, but over the last 4 years, he's continued to have new clients trickle in as a result of that original mailing.

Well, I hope you succeeded at convincing him, and if he is listening and you have not, my advice is a new book every 3 months and repeat the process. I— you know, one of the mistakes, and it's not an irretrievable mistake, But one of the mistakes that people make is that they do one big book on a very broad topic. You just stated one, Worry-Free Retirement, right? And they put everything they know into that book. Then they have a promotional success like you just described. And now what? Whereas that's not irretrievable because you can follow it with thinner, smaller specialized topic books. But if somebody's starting from scratch, they might want to consider leaving the big everything I know book out of the equation altogether and planning on kicking out 2, 3, or 4 books a year. That are relatively micro-topic focused within their business category and their area of expertise because a strategy like the one you just described, A, it can be repeated. People who do it once will do it again. And when you make the topics micro-specific, Bill, your client, may be prompted to think of somebody for whom Topic C is very germane that he did not give Topic A or Topic B to. So it can expand the reach as well. It's a great example. So let me jump to content a little bit. Adam, and talk a little bit about how people get a book together, um, the thinking that should go on leading up to it, and, um, and then either as do-it-yourselfers or as Advantage clients, um how they can make this process not seem like a 10-year exercise in Shakespearean trauma.

Yeah, and that's what most people do, by the way. It literally is a 10-year project, and it sits on the should-do list rather than the done list. I am a believer, and Dan, I learned this from you, is that when constructing a book, you build the marketing plan for the book, you build the title, the subtitle for the book before you write a single word. And I'm a believer that just like building a dream house, you don't go hire a general contractor and say build. And then come back in 6 months and expect that there's going to be anything there. You first work with an architect to carefully create, collaborate, and build blueprints that you then take to your contractor. So even if you're your own contractor, even if you're going to write the book yourself, you have to first begin with the end in mind, as Covey liked to say.. And you need to strategically think through, who is my target audience? And what action do I want them to take as a result of reading the book or even picking the book up? What promise do I want to make to that reader that I can fulfill? And then, of course, scratch an itch in them to want to connect with me to some deeper degree. I believe you figure that out first. You title the book, you subtitle the book, you even write the promotional back cover copy, and then you outline the book. So if it's a 150-page book and there's 10 chapters in the book and each chapter is 15 pages, well, what are the titles of those 15 chapters? Getting those organized. Then strategically thinking through what you want the reader to do in each chapter. Is there a call to action in that chapter? There should be multiple calls to action in every chapter, certainly throughout the book. Dan, you provide great demonstration on how to do that. Because the one myth that most authors have is that everybody that buys their book or gets a copy of their book is going to read it. That could not be further from the truth. 8 out of 10 people that get your book will never read it.

Or they certainly won't read it continuously all the way through to the end.

Right. Most of them will only read the first chapter or they will, like you say, move around. The bottom line is most people will say, "Gee, if 8 out of 10 people aren't going to read my book, what's the point of doing it?" Well, books give authority to someone without you having to read the book to confirm that they're an authority. You just assume they're the authority because they wrote the book. And so I believe that for those that do read the book, you want to make sure strategically you're building a book that delivers upon a promise that you're making ultimately delivers an outcome that you want. And then just be comfortable knowing that a lot of the people that get your book won't read the whole thing. They'll skim through it. Some of them won't read it at all. But the persuasion, the softening of the beachhead that the book accomplishes can easily be done without the reader actually reading.

The other engineering tip that you didn't mention that I would give people is that I think also before you ever write or collaborate with a company like yours to talk it and get it written, you want to think through who— and if you're local, who in your community, if you're national, who in your industry— who you may well want to include in the book, feature in the book, sort of generously spotlight and promote in the book. There's a whole other strategy obviously for actually converting that to real estate that gets sold, but in a book being done primarily for promotion or for lead generation,— and that's beyond the purview and the time of this call anyway. But setting that aside and just thinking about not about money but about getting the book promoted after it's published, getting it distributed, getting it into other people's customer bases, lists, media, who may have people ideal as your clients. The quickest way to get somebody to give away 25 copies or to buy 250 copies and give them away or to mention the thing in their customer newsletter, etc., is for them to be prominently talked about within the pages of the book. So I think somebody has to really sit down and give a lot of thought to Who else has my customers? And is there a way that by including them in this book in one way or another that I can enhance the chances of getting them to put this book into the hands of those customers? And I think most authors do a do a poor job of this, in many cases don't think about it at all, and certainly don't sit down and sort of, you know, make that one of the outcomes that you work backwards from.

Well, and on that point too, Dan, thinking through the endorsements and the blurbs for the front cover or the back cover Thinking through strategically who is your target reader and what are the names of the people that hold high resonance with those folks and strategically going after them for endorsements of the book is a powerful tool and strategy as well. And you're absolutely right, having that list of centers of influence and featuring them in the book because now everybody that has been featured in your book, you have created a level of reciprocity with them that they now have a feeling of guilt that they have to repay, which means they're going to promote your book or talk about your book or recommend your book because you featured and promoted them in the book.

Adam, thank you very much. I think we had a productive call. I appreciate your time, and I'm sure everybody else does too. Thanks a lot, Adam, and goodbye everybody.

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