I’ve got another video in my series of four traits for speakers who successfully launch their book. I’m looking at point number two today which is all about giving away a sample. Here’s my three tips for doing that effectively and why you should want to do it.
First of all giving away a sample is no risk especially if it’s a downloadable sample that people can collect from your website. Consider giving away the first chapter of your book or giving away a couple of the processes or a few of the recipes, whatever is easy to separate out.
Choose something that people can apply and so they can trust your information because they know it works.
This strategy means you’re encouraging them to buy the full book.
It’s a bit like a “try before you buy” scheme.
Again, it gets rid of any fears or doubts or worries that people have got in their minds before they buy the full book.
It doesn’t cost you anything to give them an electronic copy of the chapter, so well worth doing.
Also giving things away via downloads gives you a reason to capture people’s details. As I’ve mentioned in other videos when you sell a book, it’s done anonymously. People can contact you (if you added your contact details to the book) but you can’t contact them.
If you want to follow them up and ask them
- how they’re getting on with the book or
- if they’d like more help
- about success stories you could use
can’t do that.
You have to provide a mechanism for them to contact you so you need to think about that when you’re finishing off your book.
When you give away the sample, make sure you’ve got other ways of capturing details, perhaps a someone who downloaded it forwards it on to a friend. You won’t have the friend’s details so give them a reason to perhaps register with you as well within your freebie giveaway so you can expand your marketing potential.
