How to Best Turn Book Buyers into Long-Term Customers - BM416

Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:

Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. 

Today, my special guest is Chris Benetti . He's the visionary behind Smart Author Media, where he empowers authors to significantly boost their book sales and business growth. Through his innovative marketing techniques, Chris helps authors convert their readership into loyal customers and positions them as leading authorities in their niche market. To date, Chris has helped his clients collectively generate over $20,000,000 in sales from their books and digital offers. And in 2023, Chris sold over 19,000 books for his clients, all the way from Perth, Western Australia. 

Chris, what an absolute honor it is to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

youChris Benetti [00:01:42]:

Thank you for having me, Susan, and thank you for the awesome intro.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:46]:

Well, Chris, you and I were chatting before we went on the air about how authors are often in the situation where they write their book and work with a publisher to get their book to bestseller status, and then there's crickets. And I know it's at that point that you step in and help authors. So let's talk about that as to how you go about helping authors market their book and sell it by the boatload, which is something that you and I have in common because that's exactly what I love to help my authors do.

Chris Benetti [00:02:33]:

Yeah. And you're totally right. There's so many good services out there for writing and ghost writing and publishing and campaign based marketing where it's all, you know, one time events. We're doing a bestseller campaign or we're doing a launch campaign, or we're doing one big efforts to try and get a lot of book sales one time. But there's really no one that I found in the marketplace and where I kind of identified I could fit right in where people were raising their hand to go, Hey, I can help you tangibly sell books every single month and ultimately turn those book buyers readers into customers or clients in your business if you have one. And that's kind of where, like, I, you know, identified myself fitting right in the way that we do that. We do primarily Facebook book funnel, whether it's a free book funnel or a paid book funnel. And we get people to either buy or download the book on in the funnel.

Susan Friedmann [00:03:41]:

I've been very cautious about Facebook ads. How well do they really work? I mean, I hear so many stories that people are investing a whole lot of money and yet not necessarily getting the results. What's the trick?

Chris Benetti [00:04:00]:

Well, I think it's simplicity, really. If you have a book that is good and that people want and you are pretty okay about explaining your book, then you kind of have all the elements of writing content for a sales page and ads, and then being able to market the book itself. I think, you know, if anyone watches any of my content on Smart Author Podcast or anything like that, you'll notice that I don't really go complicated with my funnels and my processes and my systems and the way that I advertise because it doesn't need to be complicated. And people far too often get into the weeds of all this technical data with Facebook ads and you need to do this type of campaign or run this type of ad, and you need to do all this follow-up and retargeting and all that kind of stuff. But bringing it back down to the bare bones of, do I have a book that people want? And can I explain it to, you know, essentially write content for our ads and for our landing pages, then, you know, you can ultimately have success with marketing a book?

Susan Friedmann [00:05:10]:

So one of the things that you and I both are very concerned about and help funnel our authors into is and that is a niche market. I'm all about niche marketing, and you are too. So as far as Facebook ads or Instagram goes, how do you look at finding a niche for your authors?

Chris Benetti [00:05:39]:

So it's really done on 2 different levels, Susan. It's ultimately the targeting that we put and provide to Facebook in the beginning. So this is usually the interests, that people follow on Facebook, or it might be their behaviors, or it could also be, things like working job titles and things like that as well. So as an example, one of my clients has a book called, package price profit, super niche. It's basically a book to help MSP providers or managed service providers who have those sort of businesses grow their business. So finding those people, we would look at, okay, what's the targeting that we would, identify? Maybe it's Microsoft 365, which is a software that they commonly use. Maybe it's other softwares that exist in the marketplace, or maybe there is a specific authority in the marketplace that is an option to target with Facebook ads targeting. And that's our starting ground.

Chris Benetti [00:06:42]:

So first, we need to have some decently good targets in place. And then the second is what's the ad actually say? What's the ad image actually show? And how can we niche it there? So, you know, in all of our ad copy, we're obviously talking towards the managed service provider business owner. We're always talking towards how we can help them package price and profit their services better. And we're always talking about the benefits that the book can provide in relation to that kind of stuff. And then to further on that, our ad images are kind of doing the same thing in a attention grabbing way to stop people from scrolling on Facebook and Instagram to click over to the landing page to want to give that information to download the book.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:29]:

Are you focusing on selling books in sort of onesies and twosies, but selling them on a consistent basis versus one customer buying a boatload of books?

Chris Benetti [00:07:43]:

Doctor Yes. It's always one person buying one book. And then if they're buying a book we typically have other offers that we put into the sales funnel. So a good example of this is sometimes we have an audiobook that can go alongside the either physical or digital book. And that can be an upsell on top of the purchase of the book itself. And then beyond that, we might have some next step kind of courses that can help people with something else that they might encounter as a problem after they read the book and get the solution that the book provides. And so we can sell that as well. And, you know, we can sell that up for a 100, 200, $300 potentially in the same process as they're buying the book.

Chris Benetti [00:08:30]:

When we do this, we're able to just sell one book, but then potentially make between 20 a100 per book buyer right away, which allows us to essentially offset the ad spend that we would have spent initially to have someone buy the book in the 1st place. The scenario becomes even if we pay $50 to get someone to buy the book in the 1st place, if they're spending a $100 with us on average through our book funnel, then you can say that that's a a winning campaign all day. And then always the intention for us is what's the next step? How do we get people to become clients or customers further with us? Do we have a coaching program in the back end that's a little bit more premium priced? Do we have services or consulting packages available? Or do we wanna get speaking opportunities? So we always look at like, what's the next step in the overarching process for someone to be able to work with you closer. We always try to drive the people who buy the book initially back to that thing.

Susan Friedmann [00:09:36]:

That could take what kind of period of time?

Chris Benetti [00:09:40]:

It depends completely on each person. Like, we usually will have, you know, if the next step is like booking in a strategy session with the author's team or the author themself and being able to potentially work closer with them from there, then we would put that offer directly in the book funnel on the thank you page, the last step in the funnel. Alternatively, if they have, like, a webinar that sells their coaching program or something along those lines, we will also have that invitation on the thank you page. And then we also, you know, make sure that we're following up with everyone via email who bought the book over time, giving value, nurturing them, and then, you know, making sure that we're also doing consistent offers over there as well, just to get them back to either the strategy session, the webinar, or whatever it is. And the time period, you know, we might have a few people today, we might have a few people in a month's time, 6 months time, a year's time. The cool thing here is that with books, they're long tail. You know, someone will get your book and they might not take action on your offer right away, but they might get your book and read your book as soon as it comes. And then they go, cool.

Chris Benetti [00:10:49]:

I wanna work with Susan. And then they will take the action to make it happen. Or, you know, they might have the book on their desk for 3 months and then read it and then go, cool. I wanna work with Susan. Or it might even be on their bookshelf and then they're like, I really wanna get back to that book. And then they'll finally read it and go, Susan's the right fit for me. So I really think that the benefit here is that you're basically able to place a big old book onto that bookshelf that always consistently promotes you and and reminds people of you and the value that you have in the the area and expertise that you offer. And they will kind of come back to it when they're ready.

Chris Benetti [00:11:30]:

We will have an influx of people today. We'll have an influx of people in 6 months, a year, and so on. But it will always kind of circle around. And if we're consistently advertising with our cold ads to new audiences, then we're always kind of filling that pipeline and allowing it to trickle in as it needs to.

Susan Friedmann [00:11:50]:

So it really is a numbers game here, working with 1 customer at a time or one client at a time.

Chris Benetti [00:11:59]:

Definitely a numbers game. And, you know, that's why I've gotten really good at just selling a lot of books.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:06]:

I can see that. You talked about, you know, this great example of somebody which is so real that they buy the book, but they don't look at it. And as you said, it's either on the book shelf gathering dust or it's on the desk. And then somehow they might pick it up and then put it down. And it could take a while before they suddenly realize, hey, this is the person we need to hire to help us with this issue, this challenge that we have. From the time that they've bought the book, how do you keep in touch with them so that this keeps moving along so that, as you say, you're top of mind when they need this training program, or coaching, or maybe it's a speaker for an event? How do you keep in contact with them?

Chris Benetti [00:12:56]:

Yeah. There's definitely, from my perspective, 3 ways that we can do this effectively. So the first is communication, email communication, SMS, those kind of things, and just consistently making sure that we're contacting our email lists, just standard stuff, just continuing to nurture, give value, give content, give offers, and so on. I definitely think that that's like always a strategy that won't die. And with technology and systems these days, you can start implementing SMS as well to that picture. If you want to just kind of hit them from different angles instead of just email. The second for me, and one that I love is retargeting ads. So we can actually set up $1 a day ads and just, you know, if everyone who bought the book, we can just send them a reminder that, Hey, there's a strategy session offer available.

Chris Benetti [00:13:50]:

We do this for Nigel, who's the MSP example I gave before. He has a trial for his membership, which is $47 a month. The trial is $7 for 14 days. We just do retargeting ads for him. We spend $2, $3 a day maybe. And, we've had 100 of people take up that trial over time. So that's, you know, just a fantastic way for you to consistently get back in front of people in the Facebook and Instagram platforms in whatever format that they're looking at it in. Yeah.

Chris Benetti [00:14:22]:

It could be watching reels or it could be scrolling the newsfeed or in marketplace or in messenger and or stories and so on. You can kind of hit them at all those angles. And then the third I would say is create a community of people who buy a book or even a free one and invite the people who buy a book to that community. And then you can just consistently just show up for everyone inside of that community and allow for yourself to be approachable, relatable, and consistently giving value in that avenue. And that's just going to help them come to the realization that either A, they need to read your book and get the more in-depth value from you, or B, you, you know, you're obviously an authority and value giver and that they should probably look to work with you. And I guess, see if, you know, they might not be interested after going into there. But ultimately, you can show up in a really big way to many people all at once through those avenues.

Susan Friedmann [00:15:22]:

You already have their contact information because they opted in so you can promote stuff to them directly rather than rely on these ads. Correct?

Chris Benetti [00:15:35]:

Yes. Correct. And that's really, you know, why I'm a big proponent of running Facebook and Instagram ads and a book funnel. And we do do Amazon ads as well. But ultimately, when you sell a book on Amazon, that's Amazon's customer, not your customer. Amazon keeps that contact data. So there's really no way for you to effectively follow-up anyone based on them buying a book on Amazon. It's still a great way to sell books and to put some money to use that's effective.

Chris Benetti [00:16:04]:

But unless you have a resources page where someone can opt in to download resources or a work with me page or book a call page directly inside of your book as an offer, then there's just no way that you're gonna get someone's contact data. It kinda leaves the ball in their court. And for me, I want my dollar to go further. I wanna be effective with my advertising and our marketing strategies. So I want the ball to be in my court. I wanna be able to reach out to people via email when they purchase my book. I wanna be able to reach out to people in my community and with ads as well, just to make sure that I'm always front of mind and top of mind for the specific niche and expertise I bring to that niche.

Susan Friedmann [00:16:45]:

Yes. You're so right in terms of if people buy from Amazon, you don't get their information unless, of course, they contact you through some information that's in your book. There's no way that you're going to get their details. I know that listeners are thinking, well, how much do I have to invest in this to even get somewhere with using Facebook ads? What kind of investment are we talking about? Ballpark. What are we talking about here within? Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you need to work with people over a certain period of time. What are those time periods where you can be realistic in terms of results?

Chris Benetti [00:17:34]:

I think it's different for everyone, and there's definitely the DIY approaches. And I'm all for helping to educate people and empower people to do it themselves. You know, I've got a lot of content around that and actually did a, an hour session in a friend of mine's mastermind yesterday for her authors. And it came down to the perspective of what's the strategy for you. Like if you want to get the best bang for your buck, if you want to get your book out there as, as much as possible, and you really want that volume of lead flow to potentially book in on your calendar or watch your webinar or essentially take the next steps with working with you further, then, you know, I would suggest a more cost effective and easier DIY approach would be to do a free book funnel where you're just exchanging your book for a name and email and then giving an offer to book in to get more help with the strategies inside the book right away. And, what I've seen is that a free book funnel where we just ask for, name and email versus asking someone to give us their credit card details to buy something actually results in about 10 times more lead flow volume. We usually give away about 10 times the amount of books than we sell, and the cost per lead can actually drastically decrease, which essentially coming full circle here enables you to have smaller budgets and still get your book out there to several people per day. And so with this kind of strategy, you can give away a book for anywhere between a dollar to $15, depending on how niche it is and relevant and whatnot.

Chris Benetti [00:19:20]:

And you can do that at scale. You can start spending, you know, 200 to $300 per day and still have those numbers scale up. Or you can spend 5, 10, $15 a day, whatever you're comfortable with, and still have, you know, between 3 15 people come through every single day. And so it just really comes down to your strategy. For my clients, I usually have them start on a $100 per day budget with me because they're also paying for my service. So I want them to get the best volume as possible with a decent amount of ad spend. And ultimately, we usually opt for a paid book funnel campaign. It is a lot harder to run, validate, get results with, and so on, but it can create a better quality lead that comes through.

Chris Benetti [00:20:10]:

But at the end of the day, you just have to determine what strategy is right for you. And if you've only got 15 or $20 per day to spend, then I would suggest maybe considering giving a book away for free in the format that I mentioned before.

Susan Friedmann [00:20:22]:

That sort of makes me cringe a little bit because I've got authors who have beautiful books that are $30 a piece or more, close to $40 because, you know, now prices are going up with paper shortage and everything, so the price of books are escalating. The thought of having to give one of those away, it feels as if it's devaluing the book.

Chris Benetti [00:20:50]:

Yeah. It's definitely counterintuitive. For me, it only makes sense if you have something else. Is the book a gateway to some sort of business service and offering that you might have? And if that is the case, then, you know, it could be a good strategy. I definitely do understand the perspective of devaluing and how people don't feel comfortable doing campaigns like that. And so I completely respect any opinions and perspectives on that. From a marketing and a direct response marketing perspective, I'm just a marketer at the end of the day who helps sell books or give books away. For me, it is a very fantastic campaign if you want to have someone work with you after the book.

Chris Benetti [00:21:30]:

If you wanna get your book into as many hands as possible and you want to do that in a cheaper way, and then have people work with you further so that you can properly make money on the back of your book, then that's a really good approachable campaign that can be DIYed.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:48]:

Is there an alternative in terms of maybe a lead magnet that has high value, but a lower cost, let's say?

Chris Benetti [00:21:57]:

You can definitely look at chapter giveaways for your book. Maybe you give away a chapter. And if you have several really awesome chapters, you can split test and go cool. Let's test chapter 2 versus chapter 4. And maybe they have different concepts. So that allows you to have a different hook in your advertising. So by all means doing that. Other things you can look at is, email newsletter, freebies on the front end, and then upselling the book as a paid offer after the fact.

Chris Benetti [00:22:28]:

So join my book marketing newsletter, and then, oh, by the way, I've got a full book on book marketing. Essentially, after they opt into the newsletter, you can give them that by the way offer. There's definitely several other opportunities here. I'm just very aggressive because I wanna get books out there. So I do appreciate your perspective and understand that it's hard to do that for a lot of people. I think it's just a process of exploring what other opportunities, you know, you can think of and, are comfortable with doing.

Susan Friedmann [00:22:58]:

Yeah. And I'm playing devil's advocate here. You know, it's like, Okay, let's just poke a little bit and see Looking at different points of view and knowing my authors and the kind of books that they're putting out that sometimes it would be a tough thing to say, Hey, I'm just giving this away. Yes, the alternatives. I know that you've talked a lot about the kind of services that you offer, but this is your opportunity to really tell us how smart author media really works.

Chris Benetti [00:23:31]:

Yes. And thank you for having me to talk about everything here, Susan. For us, like, the biggest thing that I wanna do is sell books consistently for clients, and help those book buyers or downloaders work with my clients further. Every single portion of our service is based around not making money from the book directly, but making money from this service or back end offer that you have after the book. If someone is in that avenue where they have a business and they've written a book for their business to essentially be a lead generator and an authority builder and so on in the niche that their business operates in, then, you know, essentially, I'm a really good provider for helping someone put in a tactical, tangible marketing process to get those people to buy or download your book and then become clients of yours. I think we've covered the advertising and funnel perspective quite well in today's episode but if anyone does want more help or options around that, then, you know, I essentially have a book marketing call that you can book on my website. And ultimately that is an opportunity for me and you to go 1 on 1 and to look at what your book marketing is like and what opportunities there is. And if you haven't done any book marketing, then, you know, I can help you put in a game plan to essentially start marketing your book, even give you some actionable DIY steps if you want or options to have us help with it as well.

Chris Benetti [00:25:08]:

That's just a completely no obligation kind of session with me where I just go and do a deep dive, everything book marketing related to you. It's basically like $1,000 worth of consulting for free. So it's a really good value. And, I really hope that I can

If anyone's in the position and they're ready for the book marketing, they're ready to just kinda spend some money on advertising and they're just a little bit unsure or they already have been spending money on advertising and they're just like, they're not getting the results they want, then, you know, that's a really good, option.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:42]:

And the website is?

Chris Benetti [00:25:44]:

Smartorthamedia.com is the main website, and you'll see a little green button on there somewhere to book in that call with me.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:51]:

Perfect. And I'll put that in the show notes, Chris. As you know, we always end off with sharing a golden nugget with our listeners, those final words of wisdom. What would you like to leave our listeners with?

Chris Benetti [00:26:05]:

That's a fantastic question. For me, there's some really cool strategies that you can implement and that we've spoken about today. One thing that you should do if you haven't already do a revised vision of your book version of your book or something, but make sure you have an offer in your book. I think a lot of us, we know we have services that we offer to the marketplace, but sometimes the potential clients of ours don't know that yet. And I think a lot of people are scared or they don't talk about themselves and their services enough because they don't wanna sound like they're pitchy and they're salesy all the time. But definitely if you don't already have a offer in the back of your book, the the second last page in your book is the 2nd most viewed page in your book after the index. So definitely just have something there that allows someone to understand the next steps with you and how they can essentially get your help to implement the strategies faster, easier, quicker, and get better results. And I think you'll see some good success.

Chris Benetti [00:27:10]:

And then that essentially allows you to market anywhere on Amazon and sell books over there, on Facebook organic, have other people share your book and so on without these direct funnel advertising campaigns that we've spoken about today and still be able to potentially get clients reaching out to work with you.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:29]:

Perfect. That's such a great, you know, just a simple thing for authors to do. And I know that many of my authors do put a little sales page or a QR code that people can get in touch with them. So Chris, this has been amazing. My head is spinning with all the different things that you shared. Thank you so much for sharing this wisdom with us.

By the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. Go to  BrainstormWithSusan.com to schedule your free call.

Susan Friedmann [00:28:15]:

And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.