Julie Broad (founder of Book Launchers) explains how authors should design and place Calls to Action (CTAs) to grow an email list and author platform rather than relying on readers to look them up. She defines CTAs, why a plain website or passive placement won’t work, and gives five high-impact CTA placements: (1) early pages of the book (first page after copyright), (2) the back-of-book page, (3) inside-the-book placements (chapter ends or middle), (4) website opt-ins/landing pages, and (5) CTAs on interviews. She recommends using ConvertKit (moving toward the name Kit) for building landing pages and opt-ins, emphasizes promising a clear benefit, sticking to one CTA per message, and testing different CTAs and landing pages. Julie shares a concrete metric (50% conversion on her “seven steps” landing page) and suggests using tools like ChatGPT to brainstorm stronger CTA wording.
Questions this video answers
ConvertKit (notes that it will change its name to Kit soon).
50% conversion rate.
Chapters
Wouldn't it be nice if you could write a book and publish it and then sit back and watch the magical things happen as a result of your hard work? I wish your author business was going to build like that, but for most of us it will not. You have to work to get your book working for you. The good news is that if you've set up your book and your platform with clear CTA's calls to action over time you will find your book business is growing and so is your platform. If you aren't sure what the heck I'm talking about or you are but you think your CTAs need some work, I've got good news. This video is for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the Book Broad author and founder of Book Launchers, a self publishing services company that helps nonfiction authors write, publish and promote their book to grow a brand and a business around it. Putting your website in your book is not a call to action. Your book isn't a call to action either. What is a Call to Action, or CTA as I will call it from here on out? Well, it's something that invites people to take a specific action. The goal is to get someone to, well, click through, sign up, book a call, or buy something. You'll find CTAs as buttons or links on landing pages in PS messages in a newsletter, paid ads, social media posts, or when it comes to your book, specific items that you place to throughout your book and possibly at the back of your book that is designed to get your audience to connect with you. Why do you do it in a variety of places? And why is a website not enough? Well, let's be real. Humans in general are a little lazy. While it's nice to believe that people are going to look you up and see if they can hire you, that's so rarely the case. We also are rather inundated with emails and information, so we really don't want more information. We just want things to happen. So you have to compel people to take action. And to do that you usually have to offer them a solution to a problem they face right now. And that solution should be good enough that they would have paid for it. But they don't have to. Now. Sometimes your CTA is a purchase, but as far as your author life goes, CTAs in your book you're usually asking them to get on your email newsletter list. All right, so let's first talk about where you'll use them and then we'll talk about what to do and say cool. Okay, in case you're still confused about what a CTA exactly is, well, here's one Want all the details on why you're building an author platform and how to use it? Once you do, I've got the book for you. And yes, you can buy it wherever books are sold, but you can also head over to selfpromoteandsucceed.com audio and download the audio version of Self Promote and Succeed for free. Go ahead, I'll wait for you. That was a cta. I do them on most of my videos because, well, I love it when you subscribe to this channel and comment. Hint hint. YouTube doesn't give me your contact information, so we can't build a relationship as easily. Should YouTube decide not to show my videos to you one day, or worse, delete my account, I've lost contact with you. That's why I include CTAs in all my videos. When it comes to your book or interviews you do to promote your book, you you're not going to get contact information any other way unless you're selling your book direct, which is something we talk a lot about here. So definitely subscribe to the channel and get our newsletters. You've got all the goods on that, but here are some examples of what you might be saying people should do to get on our newsletter. Subscribe, Join Sign up to get high value problem solving with a lead magnet. You might suggest they get it, download it, access it, or if you want them to be on a wait list, you'll get them to join it. Of course, if we're looking for purchases, it's purchase, buy, claim or claim your spot. So so hopefully you're figuring this out. You use a Call to action wherever you want your audience to take a step forward with you as an author. There are many places where you'll use a CTA, but let's cover five really common and important ones. 1. Inside your book first page after the copyright, you can kick it off with a thank you for buying my book and to support your journey here you can download this worksheet, workbook or in the case of my books, I recently added the offer to download the corresponding audio version of the book for free. Why, you ask? Well, you opt into the newsletter when you get the audiobook, so now we can be friends. I created a specific page for each book so I can track the results of this. We just recently made this change, so I'll definitely be laying this out step by step for you. If it's got some positive results the beautiful thing about putting the CTA on the early pages of your book is that it will appear in the Look Inside previews. So someone may not buy your book, but they might join your email list. 2. The back of your book We've talked about this before as a single page that can add thousands of dollars to your bottom line or hundreds of book sales to your sales numbers. Here's an example of what this could look like. For some, this might be a Buy my book in bulk or hire me to speak or join my course or get this free thing to get on my newsletter. The third place inside your book. Whether it's directing your reader to a specific page to download extra material for the book, or joining a community you've created, or even sending you an email directly, which isn't my first choice, but that works for some people. The goal of the Inside the Book CTA is to get you connected with the reader because you probably don't already have their contact information and you'll insert this in the middle of chapters sometimes or at the end of a chapter. Number four on your website, also called an opt in, which you're using to get email addresses. We've talked a lot about that here, so I'll make sure you've got videos on that at the end. Number five on every interview you do when someone says where can they learn more? Or where can they connect with you and have a place to send them? My go to for years has been visit book launchers.com the number seven steps to download a workbook. That is the seven steps to write a book that's set up to sell. And when you download that book, you'll also get my email address and website information so we can connect. Okay, so what do you need to do for an effective cta, especially one that's geared towards you collecting email addresses? Well, our recommended service for this is ConvertKit and they're changing their name to be Kit here pretty soon, but for now you can just VisitBook book launchers.com convert and that will take you to their info page. I love ConvertKit because they make this so easy and the software was built by an author that wanted a better solution for platform building than the options on the market. So it's really built for you and it makes the next thing I'm about to mention really easy to build Landing pages. A landing page is a place to collect email signups, and it's always a standalone page that you direct traffic to when you visit the pages. I've mentioned the book launches.com, seven steps or self promoteandsucceed.com audio. You end up on a landing page. You might also hear these called squeeze pages because I guess they squeeze the email address out of you. An opt in form is also something designed to collect signups like for your email newsletter, but it sits on your website, on the page or comes in as a pop up. Just a couple of tips for you to have more success with your CTAs. Your CTA should promise a benefit. It never works to say, or almost never works to say. Get my newsletter or visit my website or download this free chapter. Those are weak CTAs and your stats are going to be sad. Oh so sad for that. Why this is so important. Well, here's an example. That seven Steps page I sent you to check out the stats on this. It has 50% conversion. So 50% of the people who hit this page that have converted. And look at those numbers. It's not a bad amount of people who've joined my list in the last year or so. All right, second tip for you is to stick to one CTA per communication as much as possible. Let's be real. Sometimes it's hard, like here on YouTube. I've told you to join this list. Sometimes I say like this video. Subscribe to the channel, turn the notifications on, comment the day a video is released. Download my free audiobook. But the reality is the more things you ask someone to do the the less likely they are to do any of them. So as much as possible, stick to one clear and compelling CTA. 3. Test your CTAs. I have had many different options and tested many different versions of each page. If you don't test, you won't know. It won't be perfect the first time, and sometimes the simplest page will win. But you won't know until you start trying things and set up different pages and track what's working and isn't. For example, if you're doing a lot of podcast interviews, you can set up a CTA just for podcasts. That way you'll know if podcasts are working to grow your platform versus the CTA in your book inside your book. It's not ideal to change it up a lot, but if it's not working at all and you've sold books, it's worth it to go back and make some edits to your CTA that's inside of your book. You can change what's being offered, how it's being offered, or even in your book where you have the placements. If you do, use ConvertKit, which by the way is free to start out. So you can access a bunch of amazing resources to get started. Like these landing pages samples. They're already built. You just have to add images and change the text so it makes it really easy for you to just get started and testing things. They also have an entire training course so you can become a newsletter ninja in no time. So definitely check them out. Last tip if you're feeling uninspired as you try to craft something cooler than get my free chapter or get my newsletter, pop into my favorite brainstorming buddy and chat with Chatty. Yeah, I'm talking chatgpt. Just take a look at this quick example that I did with my friend Chatty. So just as an example, I'll pop into ChatGPT and say, Hey, I need to rework my CTA for this workbook that's called the seven Steps to Write a Book that is set up to sell. What would you change the CTA to be in order to stop someone from scrolling and make them feel like they need to get this to write their nonfiction book? This is what Chatty suggested. It's a really, really great list. The call to action could be ready to share your expertise. Grab the blueprint to nonfiction success now. Unlock the secret formula to writing a best selling nonfiction book. Download now. Don't just write a book, write a book that sells. Get the guide. These are great. I think Chatty did a great job. And so if you're uninspired and feeling like get my free chapter is the best you can do, go into ChatGPT and it will help you come up with a much better CTA for your download. These CTAs are designed to create urgency and appeal to the desire for success in potential authors. So yeah, what are you waiting for? Turn your ideas into a best selling nonfiction book right now. Head to book launchers.com seven steps and get it going. And this is the video YouTube thinks you should watch next. And this one right here is an entire playlist on building your author platform which is full of amazing stuff. So head on over. Say hi when you get there. I'm waiting.
