Chris Benetti: From Pages to Profits, Mastering Book Marketing

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. Well, you guys, this is exciting. So many people in the do the Thing community are wanting to write a book, and some have already written a book. And guess what? We have someone who helps market books, because what happens when you want to write a book and you write a book and then you publish it, and if no one buys it, no one's going to get to read it. So it's really important to be able to think of that step. So I'm so excited to talk to my next guest about what he does, how he got into it, how he helps people. So I am welcoming Chris to the show. Hi, Chris.

Hey, Stacy. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thanks so much for coming. It's perfect timing for you to be here.

I know when the universe asks, the guide shows up, you know?

Yeah. It's so cool and it's so true how that works that way. That's really incredible. So I'd love to talk to you about how you're doing, what you're doing, where did it come from, and maybe more about just all of the good stuff there.

Yeah. So at the moment, we are running smartwater Media. We've been running this agency for two years, and essentially we help business owners who have books for their business market sell books and then convert those prospects or leads into clients on the back end for their business. So my methodology and approach is always backend centric. So how do we get new people into our coaching programs, our services, our consulting offers, and things like that? And so when we sell books on the front end, it's always with that outcome in mind.

So it's like the book is almost just the beginning point of a conversation.

Yeah. It's basically the entry point into someone's world. So it's very similar to, I would say, podcasting even. Like, someone comes into your world as a listener of your podcast, and eventually they listen to enough stuff from you that they're like, okay, Cool, I'm sold. I want to work with Stacy further. And a book is a similar thing but in a physical paper format, but with a little bit more of a specific kind of outcome driven approach where we're taking someone through and teaching them something very specific based around our expertise, which opens up the floodgates for them to go, cool. How can I expand upon this? How can I get more help with this, how can I do it faster? And so on. And that's where they reach out to work with you.

How did you get into doing this?

I have been running a funnel development and conversion rate Optimization Agency since 2018 and have been doing funnels for other people since the end of 2016. So I'm definitely not new to online marketing and advertising. But we kind of came to a Crossroads in 2022 where I was basically selling one time projects and having to start from scratch every single month. And out of the need for finding a better business model, I hired a mentor and we worked together towards creating two things. One, a recurring offer that gives recurring value to clients so that we get paid every single month and it's not start from ground zero every single month. And then two, niche. So we basically did some market research and found that the author niche was being under service. From a marketing perspective. There's a lot of ghostwriters, publishers, editors and launch marketers, but there's no one who really comes in and will help them ongoingly market their book, to ongoingly make book sales, to ongoingly get clients. So that's kind of where I step in and I have kind of taken my slice of the pie out.

That's amazing. So who are you mostly helping? How do you actually get your clients?

Yeah, so most of our clients come through my own marketing channels. So like I do a lot of organic social posting and a lot of my network has, there's a bunch of authors in there and business owners in there who need that or they recommend me to people on socials as well. So like through referral basis, just because I've become so well known for this over the past couple of years. The other things as well, doing podcasts like this is a fantastic visibility medium for me. So the more hosts like yourself, you have programs, you probably know people who have books and need that. But then also listeners may also need services that we speak about today and then lastly referral. So past clients, current clients, or even just other people I've connected with who are in the same industry or I've done another project for or something along those Lines?

Yeah. It's like the more you're putting yourself out there, the more people are seeing what you do and hearing about it, which is then equating you to new clients. Yeah. What do you think about speaking of putting yourself out there? That's. I think sometimes people's biggest resistance to wanting to do something like this. Right. Is to actually say that they're able to do a book even if someone's a business owner. If you had to help someone overcome their own limiting thoughts. Or is that something where they're already wanting to write a book by the time they come to you?

I think a lot of people see the value in books by the time that they start chatting with me and they are pretty all in on doing it. I think potentially the big caveat that people have is like, I don't know if I've done enough yet. I don't know if I have all the wisdom to give. And yeah, I would just probably reframe that and make someone consider if you are good at what you do, you likely have some information to share that could help a bunch of other people. I think that's a fair statement to say it doesn't mean that you're endgame, you know, Stacy or endgame Chris, that has all the wisdom in the world to share and can never learn anything else. That's never going to be the case for any of us. So it's like if you're already at a point where you think, feel like you have a process, a methodology, a system that someone can go through and get results with, then I think that you can write a book no matter how far along you think you are or aren't. And I would just say don't overcomplicate it. Not everything has to go into a book. You can create a short book that's a hundred pages or less and it can just be around one specific thing that you do. And that doesn't mean that you're not going to write another book tomorrow or next year or even two or three years down the line. You can always do new books and you can always revise the books that you've already written as well. If you have some new up to date information.

Where did you learn the stuff that you're learning? How did you get good at it?

Well, I've been doing sales funnels for lots of years, so I learned from some of the masters, Russell Bronson and whatnot. But then also a lot of my learning is on the job learning. I am a big fan of figuring stuff out and then learning from actual efforts made instead of from content. So I will learn some basic strategic things in the beginning and then I'll just basically go and test stuff. So with the advertising and how we actually sell books and that process, to be honest with you, it's literally just been from working with a couple of dozen clients, if not a few dozen clients over the past two years and figuring out what works and doesn't work based on their campaigns, and then kind of revising and taking that lesson to the new client. So every new client that comes on with us kind of has a stronger marketing team as time goes on. And we obviously take the same lessons that we learned from current client accounts and then apply them to the same accounts as well. So it's all through kind of trial and error, I guess. But at the same time, it's like I'm not just a newbie and the trial and error is not valid at all. It's actual good trial and error where I've thought about the best things that we can test and we go through it at the end of the day, advertising in general, running ads, it's a testing game anyway. It's not like everyone has the answer for what they're currently doing. So we do have clues from the past and from other clients, but everything is a new test at the end of the day. And that's the best thing about it. If we don't know the answer, we can test things and figure out the answer. And that's what I love about it.

So what do you suggest to someone that has a book and they're wanting to start to even do what you're doing now in terms of marketing it or getting it out there?

Well, I'm sure you probably, if you have a book already, you're probably doing a lot of the manual, organic, non scalable kind of activities. So you're doing podcast tours, you're doing signings, maybe you're posting about it on your socials and things like that. And I got this concept of leverage and scalable. And so most authors will go out and do all the things that are not really leveraged and not really scalable. Whereas when we look at what is leveraged and scalable, it's advertising and sales funnels, essentially. So the first thing I would suggest is build a book funnel for yourself. So you're not reliant on selling your book on things like Amazon. Amazon is a great place to sell books and it's a good traffic source generally. But you're at the whims to that marketplace. So if Amazon makes an update and your book gets de ranked from top 10 or something like that, it's like you're going to lose that traffic overnight, so you can't really control it. And then beyond that, when someone buys a book on Amazon, you have the ball in their court. They have to reach out to you and read your book and actually consume it. Before that, you can kind of continue a customer journey with them. So when we talk about book funnels, it's really allowing us to run our own ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram and drive people to our own asset, which is a book funnel, to sell the book. So we get the contact data and we can kind of follow up and nurture the book buyer and help them become a client in the future if that's the path for them. So the real benefit here is that we can now leverage these assets and then we can scale ads because it's really just a monetary exchange instead of a time spent and energy spent exchange generally. And that allows us to sell thousands of copies of books with our own assets so that we're building our own email lists so that we can follow up with people and then obviously help them become clients as well. So generally that's what I would suggest is if you don't yet have a book funnel and you aren't yet running advertising, then that would probably be generally my recommendation. If the book is a entry point to your business, it has to be congruent and allegiance to your business. Yeah.

And speaking of that, what do you think are some of the benefits of someone basically moving forward? And for those of people that haven't done a book yet or they're maybe holding themselves back, I mean, it opens up everything for them. Right. Because then they have this business card in their pocket essentially that opens up this funnel for all of the things. But I would just love to hear you kind of share a little bit about that too.

I mean, at the end of the day, it's the best lead magnet or whatever you want to call it for your business. It's so much more substantial. It's not like a PDF download that someone's getting, like a worksheet or a checklist. And those things are not bad to market. It's just that it's a substantial asset. Like someone cities someone with a book and it's like, wow, they're an author. There's a credibility aspect and authority aspect that comes into place when someone has a book versus when someone doesn't. Have a book. And if there were two service providers in an industry and one of them had a book and the other person didn't, who would you think is more credible and more of an authority to potentially work with? And probably the person who has a book. Right. It's an instant differentiator between other providers or other people in the marketplace and can easily help you to stand out in that regard. It's also a really fantastic gateway asset. So if you want to get on podcasts and you've got a book, you can. Right. If you're going to get on stages, you potentially can. So it opens up doorways for you because you're now a potential bestselling published author versus someone who doesn't yet have that credential. And so business growth aside, those assets or those pieces that help create authority and credibility and open up doorways for you, that's kind of the main benefits that are too hard to overlook. There's not anything.

Well, I'd love to hear your number one piece of advice for people on doing the thing.

Oh, I would say consistent action, whether it's perfect or not, is the thing. You always have to be that 1% better every day and if you don't do the work, you're not going to get the outcome, so you can't expect to kind of thing. So I would just say always just show up and do something better every single day or do something consistently every single day and your world will change over time.

Really good advice. And so people can follow along with you. And potentially if they're wanting to use your company, what would be the best way for them to reach out to you?

Yeah, I mean on Facebook, Chris Benetti is the profile. Smartweather.com is our website. So if you want to book in a chat with me, there's a little green button on that website and basically it's a. It's like a 30 minute consulting session and I charge two grand an hour for consulting so you can put the value on it how you wish. But my whole goal there is to help you put a marketing plan into place for your book. If you are not yet marketing it, or help you revise what you're doing currently. If you are marketing it and if you want to work with us on implementing the strategies that we discuss, then we can talk about that as well.

You're basically giving them tremendous amount of value for them to do it. Or if you guys are wanting to actually use them, then you're helping them implement it too.

Yeah, it's not a sales call. For me, it's just a value call. And that's kind of the way that I get clients is I just show up and give as much value as possible. And then people are like, okay, cool. How do I work with you on that? And so it kind of just comes full circle.

Well, thank you so much for coming on. I'm seeing books in a whole new way now. Maybe it's time.

Definitely is. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. And thank you guys for joining. And if you have not joined the do the Thing community yet, go to do the thingcommunity.com and do the Thing. Don't wait for opportunity. Create it.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the Thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message at do the Thing callcast co. Or email us@helloothethingpodcast.com.