I want to start this week’s post with some breaking career news. I’m pleased to announce that I am now part of Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula marketing team. My official title on the team is … you guessed it – copywriter.
I am a big fan of Jeff Walker’s mission, and I look forward to writing my best marketing copy for his books and products. It should be an exhilarating journey.
In my last post, I taught you a marketing copywriting exercise you can do to put the passion you have for your book down on paper.
This week I continue my back-to-basics series by showing you another writing drill that is vital to developing persuasive book marketing copy.
This is an important writing exercise because it inspires you to think about the one thing on which your book promotion copy MUST focus.
When readers are deciding whether or not to buy your book they’re going to ask themselves two simple questions: “Why should I buy this book now? What’s in it for me?”
If you answer these questions incorrectly, your book sales will suffer. But if you answer them by focusing on the one thing readers really care about – you can become a bestseller.
What’s the one thing your marketing copy must focus on?
Find out when you watch this week’s Book Marketing Copy Quick Tip video.
Here are the main points I talk about in this week’s video.
Focus Your Book Marketing Copy On This
When you write your marketing copy it’s natural to want to tell readers what your book is about. However, taking this approach is a mistake.
Instead of focusing your copy on what your book is about, you want to focus on the benefits readers will derive from reading your book.
Remember, the overriding questions readers are asking themselves as they consider buying your book are: “What am I going to gain by reading this book? What’s in it for me?”
This is why you always want your book marketing copy to focus on reader benefits. If you can communicate how readers will benefit from reading your book – they’ll know what your book is about.
Benefits and Lessons
Now that you know the importance of focusing on reader benefits, do this exercise:
Open a document and write down a rough list of benefits, lessons, or takeaways readers will walk away with when they read your book.
Don’t overthink this. Write down whatever comes to your mind. Don’t worry about good grammar, spelling, or the quality of your writing. Just let the benefits and lessons flow forth into your document.
If you’ve written a murder mystery novel, your benefits might revolve around how readers will be entertained and scared to death.
If you wrote a memoir, make a list of the life lessons readers will learn from reading your story.
If you’ve written a business book, detail what readers will gain from the systems, principles, and blueprint formulas you reveal in your book.
As you write, just keep asking yourself, “What will readers gain from reading my book?” And write down anything and everything that comes to mind.
Highlight the Gems
After you finish the above step, go back through your document and highlight your “gems.” These are the words, phrases, or rough thoughts that jump out as being your best ideas.
Don’t worry if these gems are jagged around the edges right now. You can edit and clean them up later. For now, just look for words and phrases that with some polishing can be turned into strong benefit statements about your book.
Again, I dig further into this exercise in this week’s video, so I encourage you to watch it.
Until next week, take a lot of action and make things happen!
Casey
*****
Will this post help you prepare to write better book marketing copy? Please leave a comment and let me know!
If you got a knowledge boost from this post, I encourage you to share it with your crowd!
To be the first to know about future Book Marketing Copy Quick Tip videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel.