6. Create an Irresistible Product! Once again, these partners have only a limited number of products they can promote—so a smart thing to do is to make a product they’ll fall in love with. The more they personally think the product is fabulous, the more they’ll want to promote it. Your product should make people’s lives better when they use it! At least since my third book came out in 1993, my books have gotten extremely positive feedback from readers. People constantly praise their practicality, their approachable language, and their easy-to-implement yet radically different concepts. This newest book, in my opinion, is far and away the best book I’ve written yet. It has the potential to actually change the business culture in our society.
7. Sweeten the Appeal with Social Proof—and Let Others Spread It Not only does this book have the imprimatur of one of the country’s most successful publishers of business books, not only does it carry the name of the single most successful author in the field, but the book is also going to press with more than 50 endorsements, some of them quite prominent. Not to mention a foreword by another celebrity author, Stephen M.R. Covey, son of the 7 Habits guy (also named Stephen Covey) and author in his own right of the amazing (and relevant to my book) bestseller The Speed of Trust. In short, we’ve made it a no-brainer to believe that this is a book worth reading, because the experts have already certified it. And throughout the marketing, we have subtle little messages that it’s ok, even encouraged, to pass it on. For instance, the launch email invites recipients to pass it on.
8. Remember to Implement the Traditional Marketing Strategies While I expect to gain most of my sales through the power of endorsements from my partners, we’re also doing a lot of the lower-cost pieces of traditional marketing:
Notifications to the thousands of people who have bought one of my previous books directly from me, or from Jay
A teleseminar, publicized to both of our lists
Press releases sent directly to about 700 journalists and book reviewers, review copies to some of them, press releases also posted through a wire service and to several press release distribution sites
A launch event at a local bookstore, and hopefully one in New York later on
Announcements on various social media platforms and discussion groups
Postcards with the front cover on one side, a short marketing message and room for a personal note and/or mailing address on the other side
Public speaking
Media interviews
9. Build the Buzz For months, I’ve been dropping hints (not repeating the exact same message, but creating different messages) about this book everywhere I can. I’ve even had a form up to collect e-mail addresses for advance notification. Since it often takes multiple contacts to move people to action, when they get the announcement that the book is finally out, I’m hoping for a lot of “oh, yeah, I’ve been hearing about this and I need it.”
10. Have the Infrastructure In Place We set a week-long window for the partner mailings, so people could mail on their own schedules (and told them they could still mail even if they missed the window). We bought inexpensive, robust software for managing password-protected membership sites that include affiliate programs (yes, this is an affiliate link). We thoroughly tested the forms to capture bonuses and load them into the bonus package with minimal work from us (we see and approve it so nobody fills it with crap, and then off it goes). We put up two new websites, one for the book and one for the membership program. We talked to the charity partner ahead of time. Ideally, that phase would be a couple of months,but we had to compress it into a couple of weeks.
