Thursday’s profit tip for authors
Authors interested in selling more books to multiple markets can learn from the way the Heath Brothers target their free downloadable resources to specific market segments.
This targeting increases the relevance of their books to their prospective readers and clients.
Targeting market niches
As you can see from a glance at the left, or by visiting their Buy or Resources pages, the Heath Brothers offer a variety of PDF and audio downloads customized for each of their titles.
These targeted resources go far beyond the typical “free chapter” downloads authors and publishers typically use to build their lists and introduce their books to new readers.
Instead of a “one size fits all” approach, the Heath Brothers’ resources position their books for different market segments, thus increasing their book’s attractiveness to specific readers (and, hopefully, clients).
For their already-best-selling Switch: How to Change when Change is Hard, for example, they offer resources for:
- Individuals and personal change
- Organizations
- Managers
- Marketers
- Social sectors, i.e., associations and government
- Reading groups
Targeting their free resources to specific markets is a brilliant strategy certain to increase their sales and speaking opportunities.
Putting this strategy to work for you
If you’re interested in selling more books by following the Heath Brothers’ lead and targeting sample chapters and free resources to specific market segments, start by listing the key markets for your book (or your back-end profits). Next, using your Reader Personas, identify each segment’s unique concerns, problems, and goals. Finally, create a compelling PDF or audio/video for each segment that explains how your book can help. Let me know, as comments, how your targeted free resources work out–or the concerns or obstacles that keep you from trying the idea.
February 20, 2010
I agree completely that it’s important to tailor free bonus to the target audience, but it presents some challenges when you have several distinct target audiences. If you have your opt-in form on the home page of your website, then everyone is filling out the same opt-in form and getting the same bonuses. I have one client who offers two different bonus reports on his opt-in form, to appeal to two distinct audiences. Does anyone have any creative ideas on how to handle this without putting multiple opt-in forms on the home page or asking visitors to click through to another page where they can select the appropriate opt-in bonus? Thanks!
February 23, 2010
Dear Dana:
Thanks for asking an extremely good question.
I agree with you that offering 2, or more, incentives from one page is an unsatisfactory conclusion.
One approach, the one I’m currently working on, is to provide a way for website visitors to self-select the characteristics that best reflects their needs and interests on the home page, and create a landing page for each market segment.
If you go to Published & Profitable’s home page, for example, you’ll see the question, “Where are you in the writing process?” followed by a bullet list with 3 options: Explorer, Emerging Author, or Published Author.
At present, these are just bullet points. I’m currently writing the copy for the landing pages related to each option. Within a few days, the words you see in bold will become links to separate landing pages with content that addresses each category. Soon, there will be separate incentives for each category.
Let me know what you think of this, and if this might be the solution you’re looking for.
Thank you, again, for sharing such a good question.
Roger