The Importance of Setting Up Your Author Audience Funnel

This is episode 27 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 another episode of Author Audience where I'm on a mission to help you reach 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 the importance of having an Author Audience Funnel. Now, you may not even know what an Author Audience funnel is yet because I created it specifically for authoraudienceacademy.com don't worry, I'm going to share everything about it here soon. First, I wanted to share some feedback from one of my Academy reward winners, Lucille Zimmerman. She's a member in Author Audience Academy and she said I belong to a self publishing group on Facebook and found it to be overwhelming. I deleted myself from the group because I found Shelley's program to be straightforward and easy to follow. I didn't just learn the basics, I learned intricate details about how to market my Kindle book and have it stand out on Amazon. Awesome Lucille, so excited that you had joined us and I love helping my members get results and succeed. So I believe you have a God given message to share with the world. The question is, are you ready to shine? 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'm not just about books, but so much more. I'm here to help you connect with your audience in the best way possible, whatever that may be. And so that's why this episode and this training is so important, because it helps you develop a strategy and look at the big picture. This is episode 27 titled the Importance of setting up your Author audience funnel. Most authors that I talk to don't really tend to think in the big picture when they publish a book. And in regards to marketing now, if you're an entrepreneur, then you do tend to think in these terms. You know about sales funnels and you know about the whole process of sales. But if you're a typical author, what I tend to find is that most authors just want that quick fix. They want that easy answer, the easy way of being able to sell more books. I teach a comprehensive strategy that helps you get long lasting success. I'm for those quick wins too. But to really have long term success with your books, I really believe you need to think bigger. And that's where the Author Audience Funnel comes in. I know this is going to bring you one step closer to getting your message to more people. So be prepared to shine. The Author Audience Funnel is something that I created for authoraudienceacademy.com now when you think of a typical sales funnel, think about the shape of a funnel. When you're using it for cooking or whatever you're using it for maybe changing the oil in your car or adding more oil to your vehicle. A funnel is bigger at the top and then it's smaller at the bottom. So a typical sales funnel starts with your tends to start with your email list and a free offer that you get people on your email list. However, when I created the Author Audience Funnel, I was realizing a lot of people were coming to me through my books because I have perma free books on Amazon. Because I've optimized for keywords and because I was having promotions and selling books, a lot of people were actually finding me through my books first and then coming in to my email list. Now it could flip flop. So it's going to happen both ways. You know, some people visitors will find you on Amazon. They'll search for you. And I teach that process in depth in Author Audience Academy on how to optimize your categories, your book title and all of that so you can be found on Amazon. So some people will find you that way. Some people will find you on social media and other ways and sign up for your email list. But for the sake of this training, I'm going to say that you have your biggest group of visitors and people finding you on Amazon. If you don't have a perma free book on Amazon yet, definitely consider this strategy. My book self publishing books 101 is free all the time on Amazon. The way that you get this done is you publish it through another platform. I use Smashwords. And then you publish it for free everywhere else on the ibook store Barnes and Noble. And then you let Amazon know that the book is a lower price somewhere else. Amazon loves to be the lowest price. That is their goal. And so when they find out your book is at a lower price somewhere else, many times they will price match, which means they'll price match your book to free on Amazon. I, I get around 1,000 new downloads every month to Self Publishing Books 101 on Amazon. It's optimized for the keyword self publishing books and I talk a Lot more about this in a training in authoraudienceacademy.com but I want you to think about this as a way for people to find you on Amazon. When a book is free, it's easy for them to download and then in your book as part of your author audience funnel. You need to have a call to action in the beginning of your book and at the end of your book to sign up to your email list. This should be a related offer, something that adds to what you've taught them in that book and then that gets them into your funnel. When they read your book, they download it. If it's perma free, they got it for free on Amazon. They probably found it by searching on Amazon, one of the largest search engines in the world. Then they get on your email list and that's where the magic happens. Now sometimes your visitors, like I said, will find you through a Google search. They'll find you on social media, they'll find you through your speaking engagements and other things and they'll get on your email list first. That is fine. But what I teach is to use Amazon to the best of your ability to drive as much traffic as you can to your email email list. In fact, one of my author audience academy members, Jennifer Waddle, said once she took my advice and added her free gift to her email list in the front of her book, her subscribers doubled. This is powerful and it's a great way to build your list as an author and to continue to funnel people into your business. And so once they're, you know, once they have your book and once they sign up to your email list, then the next step is for them to make additional purchases from you. So that may be your other books, it could be other digital products that you sell from your site. It could be one on one coaching, it could be speaking, it could be mastermind groups, a paid mastermind group. It could be so many different things. But what I want you to think about right now, do you have a book published? If not, then the first step is to decide what it is you're going to publish your book about.

Think about, what are people looking for? What problem can you solve? How can you help people? You know that in a way that they'll be searching for those keywords for that answer on Amazon. Now there are sometimes books that are just passion books and I totally get that. I have books like that too. If you've already written your book, I want to ask you, do you have a free gift that people can get when they sign up to your email list. I guess I should ask, do you have an email subscriber list? If not, don't walk but run to get get one of those set up. You can get started for free on mailchimp, but I really recommend starting with a service that you can have autoresponders. And currently mailchimp is only free when you send out broadcasts. So I recommend something like getresponse, Aweber. And Traffic Wave is actually a decent option. It allows both autoresponders and broadcast. I do use that for some of my lists and it's one price. So I will provide all the links to these in the show notes. So you have your book, you have your email subscriber list, you have a free gift that you're giving away. And right now I have a lot of gifts that I'm giving away. One of my goals before the end of 2015 ended was to print out my list of offers, free offers that I have that can get people onto my email list. And right now for authorshellehits.com, i have 11 different free gifts, 11 different free offers, and those continue to grow. Now that doesn't count. Every single episode on my podcast I have a transcript that you can download as a free gift. So it doesn't even count that if it counted that it would be way higher. But 11 main different ways that people can get on my email list. Now don't feel overwhelmed and think you have to do 11 right away. I've been coaching authors since 2010 and so over the last five years I've developed different things and I will continue to develop new offers that people can subscribe to my email list and get into my author audience funnel. So then once they're on your email list, they sign up either they found you through your book and and they signed up through that call to action you have in the front or the back of your book, or they found you some other way, someone recommended you, they found you through a Google search on social media at an event, something like that. Now they're on your email list. Now it's time to nurture that relationship. And I recommend having at least seven autoresponder emails set up. Now you don't have to have this set up, but autoresponder emails are where you do the work one time and then it continues to work for you 24, 7 automatically, or like I like to say, automagically, it sends out these emails whether or not you are sending any broadcast, if you get sick, if something happens, any new person that signs up to your list will continue to get these emails. Now, there's a ton of different ways you can do this and I share in detail exactly step by step how I recommend that you do this along with some swipe files of emails I've used in authoraudienceacademy.com but I want you to think about it, you know, setting aside a couple days to write out these emails, once you have them scheduled in your email provider, it will go out automatically. I recommend not just having offers and places, you know, emails about buy my stuff, but build a relationship. So tell a story that is motivational or inspirational related to them. In one of my emails I've told the story when I was young and I dropped my baton and that was the time the newspaper took my picture for the whole town to see. The only time I dropped my baton. And I talk about how it drove me to be so driven to succeed, to not let anyone see my flaws. And yet that's not realistic this side of heaven. So I talk about that and I talk about how it relates to us as authors. And it's just an inspirational motivational type email, really no pitch or offer. So think about how you can add maybe an inspirational or motivational email and then think about a resource. So people should think about you when they want resources on your topic. So send them a resource email. Email. One that I send out is 40 plus tools that I use almost every day and it's a list of tools that I actually use that in my business. And then I also send out an email about 100 plus places to advertise Christian books since my audience is primarily Christian, whether it's, you know, authors, speakers, entrepreneurs, pastors, ministry leaders, that will really resonate with some of my audience and then they'll see me as a resource for that type of information. So you can send out different types of emails, but make sure within that first seven emails that you also send out an email about your next product, your next offer, what is the next step they can take with you? So if they have purchased your book or if they have come onto your email list and got your free offer, what is a logical next step? I recommend having a small product. And this month's Take action workshop in authoraudienceacademy.com is all about taking you through the steps of having a small digital product, something that you can sell for 7, 10, 17, $27, probably up to $50. So $47, you know, whatever you want to charge for that, have some sort of small product, that's the next step for them to go with you. That is key because when you are able to have other offers, then you're able to increase your income, but you're also able to add more value to your subscribers. You have more to offer them now. Don't feel overwhelmed. This takes time to set up your author Audience Funnel, but if you have a strategy, if you have some ideas of what you want to start including in your funnel, then you can just keep adding them one by one by one. If you're ready to create a small product and add that to your funnel, join us@authoraudienceacademy.com because I will be going through the process step by step of how to do this here in our Take Action Workshop for January. It's time for our Take Action tip. So this week I went into depth about the Author Audience Funnel and I want you to write out what could be your process. So you have visitors and where would those visitors be coming from? You have your book where they can find you on Amazon, you have your free gift where they're signing up to your email subscriber list and then you have other products. And so write out the process of how that might look for you and your business. And I look forward to hearing what you do and.

What you come up with. If you have any questions on this or want to share what you came up with for for your funnel, just go to authoraudience.com 27 and leave me a comment there. I'd love to hear from you. And I know that the process is sometimes hard to wrap your mind around, but I am positive that once you really get this solidified into your mind that you will see success. I remember Wayne Davies, one of my Author Audience Academy members, he was saying, oh, I get it. So the goal is not necessarily to just sell books on Amazon, but it's also to drive traffic and to get people to sign up for my email list. And he started a Perma free book. He published a Perma free book on Amazon and his email list has grown. And so it was so neat to see that light bulb go off in his mind because I see so many authors getting stuck in thinking that the only way they can benefit from their books is by selling them. Because. But you can also drive people from Amazon from a Perma free book to your email list and then offer them other products. And that's what I want to teach in this month's Take Action Workshop.

Before we end, I want to give you a backstage pass in this week's Godly gain segment, which is all about keeping Christ at the center of all we do. In the end, I truly believe it's not about me, but it's about him and bringing glory to Him. The scripture that I chose for today comes from Galatians 6, 7, 8. It says, do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh, will of the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the spirit, will of the spirit reap everlasting life. And this is the whole concept of whatever a man sows, he will also reap. You know, you hear this talked about a lot in our culture, you reap what you sow. And I think about that in our author audience funnel, in our business, in our publishing of books, many times, we're not willing to put in the hard work of sowing so that we can reap more sales, more income, more impact, getting our message to more people. I'm not gonna lie. It's hard work setting up an author audience funnel. It's hard work setting up the entire process, but it is worth it. It's worth it because you will reap from what you sow, from those actions, from those things that you put in place. Now, you may have to change it, you may have to adapt it if you find after several months it's not working. And that's where I would love to help you. I do coaching daily in the forums@authoraudienceacademy.com and we can brainstorm and talk about what's not working and how to change it and or how to try something different. I recently changed one of my offers and I talked about it on a recent Periscope training. You can catch my replays at Catch Me shellyhits, but I talked about not being afraid to change something that's not working. I changed an offer. It went from converting at less than half a percent, if that, to converting at over 4%. Awesome. You know, numbers don't lie. And so it does take work, it does take effort, and it will take being willing to adapt and change over time. But I'm excited to see what you do as you really take hold of this idea of building your author audience funnel. It's my hope and my goal that these episodes are bringing you one step closer to the being able to shine and reach more people with your message. We are more than overcomers, and I am excited to see the results that you get as you implement this strategy. Of having an author audience funnel. If you've been getting value from this podcast and would be willing to just take 30 seconds, I would so appreciate you leaving a review on itunes. It helps get the message to more people, it helps with rankings and visibility. And really it's just a matter of reciprocation. You have gotten from me and now you can give back to me in this way by simply posting a review. It literally takes 30 seconds. I just did this recently for four or five of my favorite podcasts. I realized I'd never left them a review. And just like authors love reviews on Amazon. They they're like gold to us authors. It's so important too for podcasters to have those reviews as well. So I'd appreciate if you just take that 30 seconds, post a review, and if you send me a screenshot of your review, I'll give you my $47 course procrastination to publication for free. Simply send me an email@contactellehits.com and I'll send you this gift. Thank you so much for joining me in this episode and spending this time with me. I hope that you got tons of value from this 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.