7 Critical Steps to Creating a Book Launch Page That Converts

This is episode 10 of Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Welcome to Author Audience, where I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's time to let your light shine. Today I'm rolling out the red carpet and inviting you to join me as I share all about book Launch pages. My name is Shelley Hitz and I'm the owner of authoraudienceacademy.com I live in Colorado Springs, Colorado and this past weekend my husband and I took the day and drove to the mountains. It was powerful. There is power in unplugging. I didn't check my Facebook on social media for a day and a half. Now I can get pretty addicted to Facebook and realized I need to be spending my time in other things because I'm super busy. But it is so powerful and I feel refreshed and renewed. Today, after a day completely unplugged, it's time for this week's Center Stage Spotlight Training. This is where I share training and strategies to help you grow your business or ministry through writing and publishing books, marketing online, and creating products and services to sell on the back end. I have so much to teach you that's not just about books, but books are powerful. Today's podcast is episode 10 titled Seven Critical Steps to Creating a Book Launch Page that Converts. Now I get tons of questions about book launch pages and it can get kind of technical and a bit confusing, but I want to give you the nuts and bolts in this podcast on creating a powerful book launch page. If you'd like all the links and the resources that I'm sharing, you can get those on my show notes@authoraudience.com.

That'S the number 10 because we're going to be covering a ton of information and you may want this checklist for your future book launches. I know this is going to bring you one step closer to getting your book to your audience and so I'm really excited to share this training with you. Be prepared to shine. So before we get into the seven critical steps to creating a book launch page that converts, I want to first first talk to you about where will you host your book launch. This past month in the Take action workshop in authoraudienceacademy.com I shared the five W's of planning a book launch and we went into depth and I helped everyone really take action steps to planning their book launch. It's in the members area and you get instant access to it when you sign up to program. One of the things I talked about is one of the W's is where, where will you host your book launch? First of all, I recommend you have a dedicated launch page for your book. Now I know we're all in different places in our business, we all have different resources. So this could be something as simple as a dedicated blog post for your book launch. It could also be a book landing page and that's really what I recommend. This book landing page could be a page on your site. Now I've done this for many book launches. Simply used a page on my site that's already set up for my book. And then I add some elements that I'm going to talk about later for the book launch. Then I update it, I change it back to an evergreen page after the book launch. Well then that page has gotten shared, it's gotten likes, it's gotten all that social proof and I continue to use it after the launch. One of the things I'm experimenting and using right now on my website, shellyhits.com is the my Booktable plugin. It's a plugin that creates book pages for me. So that's something you could look into as well. I love, absolutely love using leadpages to create my landing pages. Leadpages does so much. I'm so thankful that I took the leap and invested in LeadPages last year. I use it every, every single day in my business to grow my email list and to sell my products and my books. It is incredible. I use it for webinars, I use it for sales pages, I use it for landing pages, I use it for opt in pages. So many things, so powerful. If you're interested in checking it out, my affiliate link is shellyhits.com leadpages. You will not be disappointed. Another resource for you to check out it's free to get started is Book launch Pages. You can check this out@shellyhits.com booklaunchpages I have not used this tool myself, but it is something else you can get started with and it's free to get started, so that's really good. However, the free version does not allow you to add an email list, which is something I highly recommend that you're building a list of customers and we'll talk about that in a minute. And then another plugin I just learned about that you can check out is Launchpad plugin. You can find it at shellyhits.com launchpad I have not used this plugin either, but it's something that is free to get started with and so something else that you can try. The other option for hosting your book launch is simply to direct people to your Amazon book sales page. That is probably the easiest way to get started, but it's also an option and if you do that, I recommend using a smart URL to direct your customers to the specific countries. So a smart URL you can go to smarturl.it and get started. That way you can direct them to the different Amazon bookstores for the different countries, depending where they're accessing the Internet from. And if you'd like a tutorial for smart URL, you'll find it in the show notes@authoraudience.com 10 the number 10 okay, let's get into these seven critical steps that you need to have a book launch page that converts. We all want our book launch page to convert, right? We want to sell more books. So the first component is a headline. You need to draw them in and create a headline that is catchy, that shares benefits and that will really get them to continue to scroll down. If you're a yearly member of Author Audience Academy, then I had a developer create a tool. It's called Tidal Wave Tool and I recommend you go into your members area and use the Tidal Wave tool to help you come up with a really catchy headline. The second component for a book launch page that converts is your book cover and description. Now it's absolutely necessary that you already have a catchy book cover and that you have really spent time writing your description. But for your book cover I love using 3D covers or you can use your cover like in an image of an iPad or a Kindle. Things like that really help it pop instead of just having the 2D image. I personally use and recommend Ecover Authority and I love that tool so much I actually purchased rights to that software Again for my yearly members of Author Audience Academy. I knew I wanted you guys to have these tools, but there's a lot of different ways to create these images and I will put a couple resources in the show notes for you guys to check out. The third thing that I recommend including on your book launch landing page is a call to action. That is just a basic thing that every sales page should have. So your call to action could be Click here to buy on Amazon I like to have images or buttons when possible and you can have different call to actions. Click here to claim your launch only bonus and then in parentheses, valued at $37 or whatever it is. So you can have different calls to action, but you need to have a call to action on that page. The fourth thing is an opt in for the bonus gifts. So you want to give them a reason to buy now during your book launch. What I recommend doing is having a special bonus or a special offer that they can only get for the few days of your book book launch. I usually Recommend making it 2 or 3 days. And so how you can automate this is by using your email provider to set up an autoresponder. I do this all the time and what I do is simply add an extra field for their Amazon receipt number so that way they enter that in and then they can get access to those free gifts. The fifth thing to have on your book landing page is a timer to create urgency and scarcity. So, so there's something psychological when you have and you see those timers ticking down that you realize you have to buy now or this offer is going to end. So it's really, really smart and strategic to have a countdown timer on your page. I also recommend having one in your email if you're sending an email out to your list, which I highly recommend, even if it's a small list, to have that countdown timer in your email as well as on your website page. And I will give links to a couple resources for timers in the show notes. The sixth thing I recommend having is, you know, powerful endorsements or reviews. So your most powerful endorsements or your most powerful reviews, post those on your book landing page. Now you have to be careful with Amazon. You can post a snippet from a review, but I wouldn't copy and paste an entire review from their site as technically Amazon does own those reviews from their site. But that's powerful. It's social proof. And use the ones that show people that have had the biggest life change or the biggest results, that sort of thing. Or the biggest players in your niche that have endorsed your book, put those on your page. And then the seventh thing I recommend having on your book launch page that converts are share buttons, share buttons so that people can share on their social media sites. Maybe you're having a discounted price or you're having a special gift during that time and they want their friends to not miss out on the deal either. If I go to a store and I see an amazing deal, I'll tell my friends because I want them to cash in on that deal too. So it's the same thing. People are going to Be more interested in sharing your book launch page when there's a reason to share it, so don't forget to put the share buttons on there. So a quick recap. The seven things to include on your book launch page is a headline, a catchy headline that will draw them in your book cover and description. And if possible use 3D images or mock ups that can show your book in an iPad or a Kindle or something like that. Make sure you have a call to action and you may actually have two or three calls to action on your book launch page. Create an opt in for your bonus gifts so you'll have an email provider to automate this process. Or at the very least you can have them simply forward their receipt to you and then you can copy and paste their bonus into an email for them. I love canned responses for that. You know what, I will also put a link to a tutorial on canned responses for you in the show Notes. Number five is a timer to create urgency and scarcity. Number six is powerful endorsements and reviews and number seven are share buttons. So we've covered a ton of information. Take a deep breath.

Don't feel overwhelmed. This is just simply a blueprint for you. It doesn't mean you have to do every single thing. These are just simply the steps that I recommend that you implement. Now if you use a tool like Leadpages or book launch pages, they will have a lot of these things written out and created for you. You don't have to come up with it from scratch when you use tools like that. And so I hope you've gotten a lot of value out of this episode and that you put it to action. Speaking of action, are you ready for this week's take Action tip? My take action tip for you this week is to sit down and decide where will you host your book launch page. So so will it be on a specific landing page? Will it be on a blog post a page on your site? Or will you use a landing page tool like LeadPages? Or will you simply use your Amazon sales page to just direct all your traffic there, write it down what you're going to do and then get started on creating those different elements and putting the different things in place to so that you can have a book launch page that converts. Also make sure to get the show notes and all the resources from today's episode because there's tons of links and resources that I just couldn't share on this podcast that I really want you to have. So make sure to go to authoraudience.com 10. That's the number 10. That way you can get all of the resources from today's podcast Podcast before we end, I want to give you a backstage pass in this week's Godly Gains segment, which is all about keeping Christ at the center of all we do now. I know the excitement of a book launch and the details that go into it and it is so easy to simply get caught up in the moment, to get caught up in the details and sometimes stressed out about the day details. However, I want to share Matthew 6:33 34 with you. It says, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow or do not worry about your book launch for tomorrow. Your book launch will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. And so we have enough to think about today and yes, we need to plan. Yes, we need to take those steps. Yes, we need to start working on the book launch. But I encourage you to seek first the kingdom of God and then everything will be added to you. I'm not saying that and we'll necessarily have X amount of sales or you'll have all of this earthly success, but God will reward you when you put him first, even in these details of your book launch.

It's my hope and my goal that these episodes are bringing you one step closer to being able to shine and reach more people with your message. I'm so excited to hear about your book launch launch successes. Please let me know. I'd love to hear from you. I believe in you and know that you will do what it takes one step at a time. I'd love for you to join me on my next webinar. You can sign up@authoraudience.com webinar we can spend some time together and feel free to ask whatever questions you want at the end at the Q and A. I love spending that time with you and so definitely check it out and sign up@authoraudience.com webinar don't miss next week's episode, which is all about getting booked on podcasts. I have an expert interview series where I interview Carrie Green and we're going to talk about how you can get exposure for your books on podcasts. This is a really key strategy that I recommend you try and use during your book launches. So so make sure to catch the next episode and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.