Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
Why Giving Away Your Book Content Actually Increases Sales
Want to grow your audience without sounding like you’re tooting your own horn? This episode will shift your mindset on book marketing—and marketing in general.
In this insightful interview, I (Kendra Corman) sit down with Becky Robinson, author of Reach: Create the Biggest Possible Audience for Your Message, Book, or Cause and founder of Weaving Influence. Together, we dive into how authors, thought leaders, and service providers can expand their reach, repurpose their content, and market with purpose—without feeling like they’re “bothering” people.
Whether you’ve written a book, are thinking about it, or just want your ideas to land with the right people, this episode is packed with practical tips and refreshing reframes about what real visibility looks like.
We cover:
📚 Why a Book Is More Than a Business Card
• How Becky’s own book opened doors—and surprised her years later
• Why writing a book can be a long-term relationship builder
• The “lasting impact” part of reach most people overlook
🖥️ The Reach Framework
• Why your website is the first place to optimize
• How email marketing keeps you top of mind (and why people actually want your emails)
• The overlooked power of consistent content, even on “quiet” platforms
• When to add PR, podcasts, or paid ads—and what must come first
♻️ Repurposing Your Book (Without Boring Your Audience)
• Why reshaping your message is a sign of strength, not redundancy
• The Play-Doh method of content reuse—turning one idea into hundreds
• How to turn book content into carousels, emails, reels, quotes, and more
• What to do when you feel like “I already said that”
💡 Do I Really Need to Gatekeep My Book Content?
• Why giving more sells more
• How sharing ideas builds your brand and your credibility
• Becky’s reframe: Book marketing isn’t self-promotion—it’s message promotion
🎯 Launch Strategy That Works
• Why your network is the #1 asset in a book launch
• How Becky got 100 Amazon reviews—and what it really took
• Tips for running a virtual launch party that drives sales and visibility
• Why “marketing as a sacred act of service” might be the best mindset shift of all
📬 The Big Takeaway
Your best marketing isn't about algorithms—it's about adding value. Whether you're repurposing a book, writing an email, or sending a newsletter, remember: people need reminders more than they need new info. And your ideas deserve to be seen again and again.
“Marketing can be a sacred act of service. It’s not something we do to people—it’s something we do for them.” – Becky Robinson
🛠 If you’ve ever second-guessed yourself about what to share, how often to share, or whether you’re “too much,” this episode will give you clarity, confidence, and permission to show up with heart.
🎧 Listen now and let go of the guilt: your message matters.
📬 Connect with Becky Robinson:
Website: https://beckyrobinson.com/
Book: Reach on Amazon → https://amzn.to/3IB4Bb1
LinkedIn:
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Hi, I'm Kendra Korman. If you're a coach, consultant or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science and that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, Kendra Korman, and today I'm really excited to be talking about book marketing how really authors and thought leaders can expand their reach with Becky Robinson. Becky, thank you so much for joining me. Kendra, it's so fun to be with you. Tell me a little bit about how did you become an author and get into marketing, about reach.
Speaker 2:I started marketing books back in about 2012. I founded my company after having participated in helping a business book author launch his book, and I found it to be really fun and exciting. And folks who had seen what I was doing using social media to market books started to come to me and ask me to help them market their books. So for a while I said no and then after a minute, I said yes. So I've been marketing books with authors since 2012.
Speaker 2:And I decided around the 10-year anniversary of my company, which would have been 2022, like in advance of that, I decided it would be amazing if I could have my own book come out around the 10 year anniversary of the company. So I started to take everything that I had learned about building an online presence and digital marketing and I pitched it to a publisher and I got a book deal, and so I was able to finally fulfill my lifelong dream of being an author and then also put a lot of what I had learned of through building my agency into a book. That you know now is a huge asset in terms of people very quickly getting to know what I do and what my values are. And then also, you know it scales because people who can't hire me also can read the book and then put the ideas into practice. A book is just such a powerful tool.
Speaker 1:Right, I had Mike Capuzzi on. He copyrighted like Shooks, which are short, helpful books, and we talked a lot about how there's a difference between when you're an author and when you're not, and you get a lot of like automatic cachet and credit that other people don't if that because they're not an author, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Well, in a way, kendra is probably similar to the podcast, so you and I were talking, before we started recording the show, about how your podcast is a driver of people who find you and want to work with you, and it's because they get to know and like you and trust you from hearing you talk about your expertise week after week on the show, so with a book.
Speaker 2:What's amazed me, though, is, you know, certainly I will give the book as a gift to people who are curious about working with my company, but then other times I'll get on a call, especially recently. You know my book's been out about three years. I had a sales call earlier today, and the first thing the guy said was like I read your book, and then I went looking for support, and I didn't realize that it was the same person whose book I had read, and then, in our call, he referenced a few times you mentioned this in your book, or, you know, can put our expertise into a book. It can be, you know, that business card that's working for us even when we're not out there meeting people. If they find and read it, it will lead them back to us and to our organizations. It's just so powerful.
Speaker 1:It just really gives you that way of you know again, building that know like and trust factor. Like you said, you get a little bit of automatic trust when you've been an author and written a book, so very cool. So tell me a little bit about your book. Right, you talk about a framework for expanding reach and I think the book is called Reach, maybe.
Speaker 2:Yes, the book is called Reach Create the biggest possible audience for your message, book or cause. So in the book I define reach as two things. I think traditionally, when we think about reach, we're thinking about a growing audience, and that is definitely part of it. When people say, hey, I want more reach for my business, I want more reach for my ideas, they are talking about the quantitative reach. You know the size of the audience but my definition is expanding audience plus lasting impact. So one of the things I'm trying to do for readers and for those I work with is not only can I reach more people, but also can I have an impact on more people, and what does that look like?
Speaker 2:I do talk about the reach framework, which is basically a way of looking at how to show up online in a way that helps you grow an audience and make impact, and at the center of the reach framework is a person's website. So I believe that the most important online presence we have is through our website, that place that we own and control. Then I talk about email marketing, which you know, once we get someone to our website, the most important priority is to get them to opt in so that we can hear from them and stay connected in an ongoing way. Of course, we want to do content marketing, which involves showing up with value, and that could be on a podcast like this one, or it could be on a blog or you know some other type of content that you might create. Of course, lots of people like to do videos and reels, and YouTube is a place where we can share that content marketing. So those are what I call the center of the reach framework, and then, once you have optimized those, social media is a great place to find informed relationships to reach wider audiences.
Speaker 2:Of course, that can be paid or it can be organic, and then, beyond that, once you're growing an audience, there are some advanced approaches. Typically, advertising falls there. For me, I want people to maximize the organic reach of their content before they invest in advertising, media relations and reaching out for articles and interviews and podcasts. Also, I feel like that needs to wait until you've optimized your website, because I'm sure, kendra, that before you invited me to be on your show, you wanted to make sure I had a credible online presence. That you know, if we did a show together, I would use my social media to help you reach a wider audience. So anyone who's really looking to reach a bigger audience by doing media relations or being on podcasts needs to make sure that their website accurately and adequately represents them so that the show host knows that they're a worthwhile guest.
Speaker 1:I think that it's so important that you're talking about the website, because some of us do this, you know, set it and forget it, and we can never afford to do that right. Once we get it done and get it launched, we forget to go back. And it's really important to go back and make sure that the messaging is what it should be now, even if things have changed. You know, there's just so many different things. I think I'm on my fifth website for my business and I'm in year 11. It's a journey, right, and so you need to be constantly updating it and making sure that it's supporting what you need, because that's the first place people are going to go after they hear you or read your book or see what you're doing, right? I think that's so important and I'm so glad that you brought that up. Let's talk a little bit about repurposing content from a book, right? How much do you repurpose? How do you repurpose? What are some of your suggestions?
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for asking. Repurposing content is one of my very favorite topics and even in the past few years since my book came out, a lot of people are curious about the ways of using AI to be more time effective with their work, and I'll talk about that a little. But even before AI, it was my deeply held belief that if you can learn to reshape and reuse your content in various ways, it's a much more efficient way to spend time. The other thing to keep in mind is that if you're growing an audience, you know you may have written things or made videos or created assets, and the people who are seeing you in year three or year four or year 10, they didn't see what you created in year one or year four or year 10,. They didn't see what you created in year one. And if your audience was small in year one, there are likely content assets that you've created that people have never seen. So I encourage thought leaders and authors to think about the question what do you want to be known for? And to outline a certain number of topics or themes or categories where you want to submit your expertise. But then you can create content, and it could be in a book, or it could be not in a book, but every kind of content that you create can be reshaped. So you know, think about it as like a lump of Play-Doh and you can reshape and reuse it in so many ways over time. So in Chapter 7 of my book I talk about the fact that a book itself is a content asset that can be made into hundreds, if not more, assets along the way. So if you think about this, you know you take a long form asset like a book and you can make it into short form.
Speaker 2:In every book there are likely in any nonfiction book, there are likely 50 to 100 key quotes or key ideas. So each one of those could become one post on a text-based platform like Blue Sky or Threads that might pique someone's interest about your topic. Or you can take that text-based quote. You can make it into a graphic. It looks beautiful on Instagram. You could take several of those, if they were building thoughts, and make them into a carousel post which creates a ton of engagement on Instagram where you're telling a story through, you know, one sentence or image at a time, those concepts that are taken from your book.
Speaker 2:Of course, you could take that same carousel and you could film a 60-second video where you're talking about the ideas, and that's another way that you can repurpose that. Or you can take the book as a whole and make it into a course, or you can make it into a deck Like there are, just you know, gazillions, if that's a real word. There are so many ways that you can reshape and reuse your content, which you know. People like to receive their content in different ways. So if you take one idea and you share it in multiple ways, then you are likely to reach a wider audience, because not everyone will watch your video, not everyone will take your course. But if you can touch people in different ways with different types of content, you can reinforce those core concepts over time and again. Of course, ai makes that even easier, because you can feed your content into AI and you can ask it to cut it up and give it back to you.
Speaker 1:Back when you were talking about the website, one thing you talked about was email too, and it can feed email right. I mean, that's a big place where you can repurpose content and drive people, and the only reason I bring that up is just because I love email. I think it's just so effective and so underutilized that I always feel like I have to emphasize it.
Speaker 2:People resist it.
Speaker 1:They don't want to bother people. You're not bothering. So let me ask you a quick question, becky, about repurposing, and that is one of the questions I get all of the time and it's sort of a pet peeve of mine. But oh, I've already said that already. Aren't people going to get tired of seeing the same?
Speaker 2:thing? Yeah, so well, if you're thinking about social media, I think we all get this idea that everybody sees everything we create, which is, of course, not true. The algorithm is only showing our content to a fraction of our followers at any given time. Even more than that if your ideas are important and relevant, people need to be reminded. I'll give you an example of that, kendra.
Speaker 2:One of the things I like to share with authors is what I call my book marketing reframes, and one of them is book promotion is not self-promotion, it's message promotion or value creation. You know, I think that for the authors who have heard me say that they're not going to get mad if I say it again, because they need that truth to be drilled into them. Because even if they heard it and liked it, you know they might still have that self-doubt of if I'm out here promoting my book, am I just promoting myself? And so if I show up in their feed and I say it in a different way, maybe with a different image, like they're going to be like, oh, there's Becky, she's reminding authors again and that's such a powerful idea. Right on, you know, they're not going to be tired.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's really important. It's like you're not exhausting it, You're reminding people and if it's valuable enough that people find it useful, I think it's really important to make sure that you're reminding people. I sometimes forget things that I talk about. I remember a friend of mine was like what's that site that you recommend for keyword research stuff? And it was Answer the Public and she was like oh, that's right. I think I told her about this site at least 20 times in the last five, six years and she still forgot what this site was Right and she needed reminding. I bet you, every time, every one of those 20 times, she probably went to use it and then fell out of habit with it and then when she needed it again, she forgot what it was. And so she asked me we need those reminders because there's so much information coming at us, it's so important. So the next one I have for you is another one that I've heard from people is should I really be sharing content from my book? Because don't I want them to buy it?
Speaker 2:I have heard this one a lot too, Kendra, and it kind of makes me crazy. Might seem counterintuitive, but what I have seen is that the more you give away from your book, the more likely people will be to buy it. You know, I think most people are facing not the problem of you know, people are going to hear everything I've ever said and they're not going to want to buy my book. Instead, what they're facing is no one's ever heard of my ideas, no one's ever heard of me, and the way to overcome that is to share as much value as you can in as many places as you can.
Speaker 2:You know, I think a lot of online marketing has to do with creating a memorable brand, and these two things are the same. Like, are people going to get tired of me saying the same thing over and over again, or should I share all my book? The answer to all of it is yes, because what you need is you need. When someone needs what you have as a business owner or a thought leader, they're going to connect the dots and think of you first. And so by showing up with value in a consistent way consistent about your messaging, clear about what you have to offer, then you increase the likelihood that when that person needs you, they're going to think of you first.
Speaker 1:It's all about staying top of mind. That's why email is so effective too, because you control when it shows up in their inbox, unlike social media, which you have no control over when it's going to show up in their feed, if they even go look at their feed, right, I have a story about that.
Speaker 2:Can I share it, kendra? Oh, yeah, please. So I just came back from a conference and while I was at the conference I spent some time in these one-on-one meetings with people. And this is a conference that I had been at a year before and I had two different people sit down with me who told me after I was here last year, I got on your email list. I've been getting your emails all year.
Speaker 2:This is the value that I've been getting and, you know, I think if those people had not gotten on my email list, they probably would not have remembered me. I think that it's easy for us to think. You know that we're bothering people with email, like you mentioned, kendra, but those people who truly need what you're sharing, they're going to subscribe and they're going to stay tuned in and they may not open all your email, but you're building that relationship so that when you see them again, like I did just a year later in between the two events, you know they feel a close connection and affinity to me. Because of that relationship that I've built week after week by sending my newsletter Again, I can't overemphasize the importance of a newsletter.
Speaker 1:So, yes, 100%, 100%. And I love that story because they remembered you, and I think you're right. I think they might have vaguely remembered you, potentially a little bit right, because you said some of the really impactful things last year, but it really stayed with them and kept you top of mind with them so that when they met with you they probably had more informed questions and you were able to add even more value in the one-on-ones and just, yeah, so much amazing stuff. So thank you for sharing that story because I do think it's important to remember that and the people that find your stuff valuable and need it and relevant, will you know, will stay on your list and as it becomes less relevant, maybe they move to a different point in their career or whatever, or their business. You know they'll fall off and that's okay, right? So I think we have to get used to a little bit of that.
Speaker 1:So we're repurposing content. We're giving away content. We're not gatekeeping it, because we want people to understand our ideas and who we are. They're not gonna build the book by just scrolling through our Instagram feeds, right? Our LinkedIn posts, because, again, there's so much more that's there. It's gonna build a brand that's going to have them actually more likely to purchase your book, and that's really the goal and that's how you talked about starting is you help someone launch their book. So let's talk a little bit about where you got some of the concepts, what you learned when you were launching these books for the first 10 years of your company right that you put into your book. Can you tell me a little bit about some of those experiences?
Speaker 2:I can't exactly remember the numbers now, but now I'm at year 14. I'm in my 14th year as a business owner and today we've launched about 280 books. Maybe I'm exaggerating Somewhere north of 250 books. So I've worked with hundreds of authors and, of course, things have changed in some ways over those years.
Speaker 2:There are a few things that have been constant that I'd love to share with you. One of them is that an author's own network is really the first area that you want to look at when you're launching a book, and this is another place where I hear resistance from people, where people will be shy to ask for help. So I'd love to share another one of my book marketing reframes, and that reframe is that when you ask people to participate in your book launch or sharing your book with others, they will view it as an honor and not an imposition. You know, what I've seen time and time again is that you know those authors who choose to invest time and energy and pulling together what we might call a book launch team or a street team or a book ambassador team. When those authors proactively reach out to people who have been a part of their lives and careers and involve them in the book launch, their results are outsized to those who are less willing to reach out for help. So one of the things that we do with authors is to distribute books in advance of the publication date of the book so that they can get early Amazon reviews.
Speaker 2:Usually we set a goal, whether it's 50 reviews or 100 reviews, and what I've noticed is, in order to get 50 or 100 Amazon reviews, you need to have a launch team that is three to four size the number of reviews you want. So, for example, when my book came out, I set a goal to get to 100 Amazon reviews. In the first month I sent out about 400 pre-publication copies of my book. About 275 of those were people who had said that they would write a review in exchange for receiving the book. It ended up taking me 78 days to get to that 100 Amazon review mark. So, as of the time of this recording, I have 192 Amazon reviews and I've been trying to chase down that second 100 reviews and, of course, that's taken me over three years to get that second 100 Amazon reviews. Authors always think, kendra, that it's going to be easy for them to get reviews, but getting Amazon reviews is really hard.
Speaker 1:Getting people to reply to an email sometimes is hard. Fill out a survey, let alone get a review. I mean, you're asking someone to do work and even though they feel honored which I love that reframe that they do feel honored because of a friend of mine asked me to review their book and take a look at it and be a part of their book launch. I would feel honored. It wouldn't feel like an imposition. I would be one of those slow people that took you to day 78, but you know. But I'd get there eventually, right, and I would feel honored.
Speaker 1:But we're not the most important thing to people get there eventually, right, and I would feel honored, but we're not the most important thing to people, right? And I think that's one of the things we have to remember and that's important with the Amazon reviews and how long it takes and how hard it is to get those. Also, on the repurposing piece, right, because just because we shared it doesn't mean that they saw it and even if they did doesn't mean they remember it, right? So I think I think that that that's so key to point out and I think that's fantastic. So, starting with those Amazon reviews, starting with that target. Is there a different goal that would start you with the 50 versus the 100?
Speaker 2:No, sometimes it just has to do with, you know, the author's ability or willingness to invest in distributing early copies of their book. The crazy part is, Kendra, when I sent those 400 pre-publication copies of my book out, between buying the book, shipping the books, the collateral that I included when I sent the books out, that's a $6,000 investment. I did the math so that I could talk about it. So not everyone has $6,000 for books and shipping to get their book out pre-publication. Of course some authors can choose to send a PDF which doesn't cost the books or the shipping.
Speaker 2:There is something magic about people receiving a print copy of the book and then it's always on your desk, kind of reminding you like, oh, my friend wrote a book, I need to help them promote it. But you know, I realized that I am privileged to have the opportunity to invest in books at that level. Other things I love to have authors do that I'll mention is to have a virtual launch celebration for their books, bringing together in a moment, and if you have a host who can tell people, the best way you help this author is by buying a copy of the book, even if you already have one. Then those sales concentrated in a window on Amazon will allow that author to be more likely to bump into that bestseller status, which, of course, is then something else to promote, and that early momentum can help fuel the Amazon algorithm and help people to discover your book. So that's another key learning of my book launch journey is the value of having that virtual launch celebration on the day your book comes out.
Speaker 1:I love these little tips and the insights that you're giving us so that, if you're looking to really build that credibility and that authority, a book is a very powerful way to do that and getting those reviews and things like that are extremely important, and I think that these lessons apply to everything. Right, it doesn't have to be a book. You can be getting this reach and this impact, maybe not quite on the scale as if you had a book, but you can still do that with your other content, and I think that that's just so important when you're establishing yourself as a thought leader and marketing yourself and your business. So very, very good and very important. So thank you so much, becky, for all of this great information.
Speaker 1:I have taken some mental, this great information. I have taken some mental notes here and luckily I have the transcript, so I'll be putting that into to Claude and having it create my to-do list, because there's so many good things in here that I plan on actually taking action on too. But before I let you go, the show is called Imperfect Marketing. Marketing is anything but a perfect science, as I'm sure you well know, even though there is some science behind it, like with the number of reviews right. What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned along the way?
Speaker 2:So this is a new one. I'm happy to share it for the first time. On this show, kendra, I mentioned that one of my favorite book marketing reframes is that book marketing isn't self-promotion, it's message promotion. And last week, when I was talking with a group of authors about this, something else came out of my mouth that I'd never said before, and this is my first time being recorded, maybe or on a podcast, saying it. It's an idea that marketing can be a sacred act of service, and I think so often we think about marketing being as like something that we're doing to get something for ourselves, but I think that marketing works better when it's something that we do for others.
Speaker 2:So, when we're showing up with value to offer in an act of service for others, you know, if we're writing a blog post because we have a person in mind who could benefit from the knowledge or expertise that we share in mind, who could benefit from the knowledge or expertise that we share, or if we're creating a post that we know could encourage or inspire something, someone you know, I wonder if we all started to think about our marketing as an act of service, if we would bring a different energy when we write an email newsletter or, you know, bring a different set of motivation when we film a video or, you know, whatever it is that we're doing. That's marketing, you know, and marketing can sometimes just be a box that we check. I think that the whole world would be different and better if we could bring that heart of service to our marketing efforts.
Speaker 1:I love that idea because we are bringing value. We are bringing answers to questions that people need, right Because they don't have the experience and expertise in our specific areas and they can really benefit from that. I love that insight. A friend of mine, Brenda Meller, she does a lot of LinkedIn marketing and she regularly talks about how she will have people message her questions and instead of saying, oh, you have to buy a service or buy this or buy that, she'll answer those questions on her social media page so that everybody can benefit from it. So she's providing a service to the person that answered the question. She's also providing a service through that marketing to her entire audience, because I'm sure it's a question that more than one person has and I believe that if I looked through hers, I would actually see marketing as a service there to others and I think that that's a fantastic way to look at it.
Speaker 1:And I love that reframe because I feel that so many other people could benefit from that and it moves that email I'm bothering people thing. Right, that's not a question anymore because you're not bothering them, You're answering their question. You're providing them with a service by providing them with your expertise and your stories and your information and I just love that. Love that. Thank you so much, Becky. I really appreciate your time today. For those of you listening and watching, be sure to check the show notes for how to get in touch with Becky in case you're looking to step up your reach. We'll also have a link to her book, of course, on Amazon and ways to connect with her. Until next time, thank you all so much for tuning in and have a great rest of your day.
