147: 6 Steps To Sell More Books with a Strategic Podcast Guest Tour

Have you heard the myths about selling your book to bestseller status with podcast guesting? Some say it's a shot in the dark, others claim it's a waste of time, and many believe it's just luck. But I'm here to share the truth about how to make your book a bestseller through podcast guesting. I'll reveal the strategy behind it all, and it's simpler than you think. Get ready to debunk these myths and learn the real path to bestseller success.

The strategy of a podcast guest tour can elevate your author status by increasing your visibility and credibility. It is a powerful promotion with minimal work. In this episode, I break down step-by-step how to use podcast guesting to sell your book to a best-seller, and keep book sales going years after your launch date! 

You’ll hear about:

• How to identify the podcasts that will actually sell books
• How to strategize a successful podcast guesting tour
• How to leverage your podcast interviews to sell more books
• How to maximize book sales with podcast guesting 

…and much more! 

Sell as many copies of your book as you can. Get it out there, get it to bestseller, bump it back up to bestseller, use that amazing piece of collateral you've created, that asset you've created in your business to reach more people, to attract more clients, to make more money, to get your name out there, to get your work out there!

Have a question or topic you’d like to see covered on the podcast? Go to www.lifewithpassion.com/podcast and I’ll create a custom episode just for you!

Transcript

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Are you an author who wants to sell more of your book that you poured your heart and soul into? Or maybe you're currently pouring your heart and soul into a book and you want to make the most of all of that work? Sell as many copies of your book as you can. Get it out there, get it to bestseller, bump it back up to bestseller, use that amazing piece of collateral you've created, that asset you've created in your business to reach more people, to attract more clients, to make more money, to get your name out there, to get your work out there. All of the reasons that you wrote that book in the first place, or are writing that book in the first place. Well, I'm really glad you are tuning into this episode, because I'm going to teach you how to sell your book to bestseller, or re bestseller, or just sell more books. Launch it exactly how you want to launch it, relaunch it, reactivate it, all of the things. Wherever you are on the book selling process, I want to teach you how to use a podcast guesting tour to accomplish your bestseller and beyond goals. So I'm going to break down for you today six simple steps to make the most of a podcast book tour. This is the best way to promote your book. I know this because I wrote a book called the income replacement formula, and it hit bestseller status in all of its categories on Amazon. I made back an ROI and the five figures that I had invested into that book in the first six weeks after publication. And the main way that I did that was a podcast guest tour. And you're going to see, you see a lot of the biggest names in personal development, in self help, and really any type of book nonfiction going out there and promoting it via podcasts these days. So the podcast guest tour is replacing the book tour where you show up in bookstores and you could still do that. And that's awesome. This is much more leveraged. This is much more leveraged. It's much easier, right. If you're self published like I am, and most of the clients that I work with are and or you have a small audience, then it's usually the logistics involved in a book tour are huge. They can be really overwhelming, and they might not make financial sense, they might not make time sense, they just might not make logistical sense for a return on your time and a return on your investment of dollars and all of that stuff. So let's do a virtual book tour instead to allow you to not only get in front of potential readers, but the exact potential readers who you want not just the ones who happen to be able to make it to a particular bookstore in Chicago that day. Right. You want to begin to think about, and you probably already are, how do I guess? On podcasts where the people who are listening are interested in the topic of your book. Right? In my case, where are people interested in learning how to replace their incomes, working from wherever they want, doing what they love? That's a particular subsection of podcast listeners and of podcasts. And I can target those. So what else can podcast guesting do for you as an author? Well, we've talked about how it can get you in front of more of the right people. It can increase your visibility. It can increase your credibility, because now you're an author on a podcast, creating instant no like and trust, borrowing that no like and trust from the host, transferring that no like and trust. Immediately that credibility skyrockets. All right, you are not buying a spot, a 32nd advertisement right, where you just have to deliver a quick hook, read it off of a piece of paper, and hope that it works. The average podcast right now is around 43 minutes long. You get to have a lot of time to talk about your book in compelling detail, to speak about the framework that you've created, to speak about the results you've helped people get, to speak about why this work is important, to speak about your own personal story, to create more know, like and trust, and to create more attraction for that book. Here's the deal. It is powerful promotion with minimal work. Guesting is extremely leveraged. It's mutually beneficial because you're creating content for a host, and you are getting to promote your book. In exchange. You all are having an in depth conversation about the topics of the book. But of course, you can't cover the whole book in 43 minutes, but you're giving people enough of a taste of it in order for them to make a decision that they want to buy it. So we've talked a lot about the benefits of what a podcast guest tour can do for you as an author and for your book. But the thing is that most people, when they try to do this, they don't have a strategy. They just know it seems like a good idea. They heard it somewhere, and they just try to go on podcasts. I get people reaching out to me all the time without any good reason to be on my podcast or any good connection to what I'm actually talking about. But they've heard, oh, that's a good idea for me to be on a podcast, or their agency is just spraying and praying and hoping they know that. They figure if they send out however many hundreds, they'll get x number of replies. Yes, well, not if it doesn't make any sense. So let's talk about a strategy. Okay, you've probably heard me say this before if you have been around here, but podcast guesting is its own stage. It is not the same as public speaking. It is not the same as being a podcast host. It is not the same as a Facebook live. It is not the same as a TikTok, an Instagram, or whatever. It's its own specific stage, requires its own strategy and approach, especially when you're talking about launching your book or promoting your book. It's already launched. That's fine. You can do a podcast tour at any point. You can continue a podcast tour as long as you want to sell books and keep sales high that way. So the sky's the limit when it comes to using a podcast guest tour to sell your book. You got to have a strategy, though. That's why I am excited to break down for you six simple steps to make the most of any podcast book tour, from getting on them to what to do once you're there. All right, number one is identify the shows that will actually sell books. There are millions of podcasts listed on the podcast search engines. There are several hundred thousand that are active, depending on the day, and that is a lot of strategy or a lot of places to sort through. That is a lot of places to sort through. You're obviously not going to pitch hundreds of thousands of podcasts, so I recommend that you start with podmatch. Podmatch.com. My friend Alex Sam Filippo runs podmatch. He's amazing. This is an awesome place where you can connect with podcasters who have an audience might be interested in the topic of your book, and we'll make sure to link up podmatch in the show notes. Get started with them. And for a free search engine to find other podcasts you could search, I recommend listennotes.com and Apple podcasts, of course, which is sort of the google of podcasting has its own search engine as well. These platforms will help you build an initial list of podcasts to research to find out whether you want to pitch them, whether they're still active, all the things you need to know, whether they're a fit for your book and your topic. Number two is plan ahead. I get the question all of the time. How much time do I need to plan ahead of launch for my podcast tour? In fact, I even got a message from a literary agent whose book was coming out in two days, and he wanted to know if I could get his client on a few podcasts to help him sell the book during launch week. The answer was no. Creating a podcast guest tour takes a lot of effort, so you need to plan as far in advance as possible. It also depends on what you've got, right? Work with what you've got. If the sky's the limit and you don't have a tour, you don't have a publishing date out yet, give yourself six months. Give yourself six months before your book is published. Plan to go on that tour during the launch, and even after. What if you don't hear this until after your book is published? Great start. Now, I know people who keep their book sales high by continuing to go on podcasts years after their book has come out. Okay, what if you are totally overwhelmed because you're writing the book, you're planning to launch the book, and you're running your business all at the same time? I did that. Not ideal. But then, hey, as much as us perfectionists are, like, always chasing an ideal because it's how we're wired, that's not also how life works, right? So there's that constant friction. So do what you can. Allow yourself the time that you can within the scope of the launch and the business, and know you don't have to put it out at any particular time, you can launch and relaunch your book via a podcast guest tour whenever you want. So that was number two is plan ahead. Number three, prepare your expert topics. This does not mean read your talking points like a politician who says what they want to say, even if the question was about something completely different. You want to create a real connection between you and the host because the audience is listening for the host. So if you show up and you try to monopolize that stage, people are not going to like you. But if you create a conversation that's real and that's unique based on the actual podcast that you're on, then someone can follow you from this podcast to another podcast, right? They can binge you across podcasts and not fall off after the second one because you said the exact same thing. Instead, they're finding, oh, my gosh, this person's interesting, authentic conversation. Right? They get to experience you in different places. So, how do you go about creating an authentic, original conversation time after time? First, determine the most important topics or keywords that you might talk about and put them on sticky notes on either side of your screen so that you don't have to look away. You don't have to flip through your book or anything like that should you forget something or need a prompt. But if you do need a prompt, you can just look right to the side and get right back on track. If like, my book had seven simple steps. And so if I put one of each of the steps on each side of my monitor, then I wouldn't have to worry about if I lost my spot or if I was looking for an example in case I got stuck. Also recommend doing this for what we call stories that silently sell your success stories with yourself and with your clients so that you can illustrate questions with a story answer which are much, much more memorable. Now, one thing that people do a lot that I think is a mistake because they're nervous or they're unclear is they'll show up. An author will show up on a podcast and talk about their work. In general terms, don't really talk about the book. On the other flip side, all they do is say, well, when you buy the book, what you'll find, or when you get the book now available on Amazon or my book really delves into this, but you'll have to buy it on Amazon to find out. You've got to be able to strike a balance of giving people value and not holding back just because you want them to buy the book. They're going to buy the book if they found you interesting and they want to learn more about it, but they're not going to like it if you hold back at all on that interview or you don't talk about the book, don't talk about what makes it so wonderful. Don't talk about some of the best stuff in it. Be prepared to have a conversation in depth. Be refreshed on your topics. Know your stuff well enough to be able to speak what we call extemporaneously, where you're not scripted and you're not totally ad lived. You're prepared, but you don't sound scripted. When you've done your research ahead of time, listened to the show before you get on, you have an idea of what you're getting into. You know it's a fit. You're going to be a lot more comfortable, and you're going to have been able to prepare what to say. You might know what questions they're likely to ask you. You have the information that you need to make that episode unique and original. You can also practice with a friend and have them ask you those questions. You're afraid they're going to ask, get on and record in Zoom. Like replicate what you're going to do. Do a practice interview. Do you know every celebrity, every professional athlete, all of these people who hit a certain level where they're going to be in front of the camera, they go through media training. Put yourself in media training so you can work out those nerves before the interview. Number four, offer a freebie. What we want you to do is create what we call podcast offer alignment. This is at the end of the interview so that people will follow you. And this is one of the places where most people go so wrong and they end up confusing people because they tell them to go a bunch of different places. Overwhelming. So don't say, well, go find my book on Amazon. Offer a free direct call to action and tell them the one place they can go. Recommend a landing page where the only option is to get a free gift. People are going to buy the book anyway. Some people want the free offer and to be warmed up with a few emails. First, I offered a free chapter of my book when I was doing my own podcast tour. Now, there are a lot of different ways to do it. It's been a few years. You might also invite them to a private community that you have. You might offer them a checklist, you might offer them a video series, something free, something that you have the bandwidth to include within your launch, and something that makes sense with a topic of your book. I get asked all the time, what's the best opt in. There is not one best opt in. That's why I would tell you if there was. And it needs to make sense for you the way your business works and the topics that you're talking about, who your clonable clients are. And it also needs to not be so overwhelming that you're not going to do it right. So it needs to be simple. Now, if you do a good job of pitching and serving the audience and the hosts and all the things that we teach you to do, it may be possible for you to do number five, which is to request for the episode to be released around your book launch date. So if possible, we want a bunch of episodes, if you're doing a tour to come out within a week or two of that book being published, so that you're getting a lot of traffic at once. This is, if you're doing this in conjunction with your launch, if possible, you want to look like you're everywhere, right? That said, you need to feel into this and see if the host is open to this, if the size of the show they may be planning way further in advance than you're recording. The host may or may not understand how books are launched and what it would do to have you air on a certain date. Don't have an expectation that this is definitely going to be something that you can secure. Respect that it's their show. Ask them when it's going to air and if they say, well, what would be best for you based on the date, then you can go into that conversation. If they choose a different date, that's okay. Any publicity is going to be wonderful for this because it's their show and their rules. Many of them, though, who do understand book launching, are going to be happy to accommodate for that. And finally, step number six is to make the most of the episode even after it airs. You can reactivate that episode anytime that you want. You can build a relationship with the host. You can bring them into your community. They might ask you back. You can create clips or quotes from the episode. They might provide you with some of those as well. Be sure to share those. If you do, you can link to it on your social, you can link to it in your email. Some people will run ads to their episode as a guest if they know that it's converting for them. Really, the sky's the limit. But what do you have the bandwidth for in order to share that episode? Because here's the deal. Some people feel like, oh, I don't want to send my audience to somewhere else. Well, the episode is about you, friend. So it's a way of giving free value to your audience and having another opportunity to create connections with them. Make more book sales. Warm up the people who are in your audience who may need a touch because maybe they're in between being brand new to you and being ready to buy, they might need to be warmed up some more. Get to know you better. They might share it with their friends, right? So give them that opportunity. All right, now, one last tip before we wrap. If you have been a guest already on some podcasts, go back to that list and pay attention to look at two things. Which shows did you particularly enjoy being on and which ones would match the theme of your book. Now look in, look at the overlap of those two. Check back in with those hosts. If you did a great job the first time, they're going to remember you. You were a standout guest, especially if you did this the way that we teach you. So if you go back to them and you say, hey, I have a new book out, and if it feels like it would be a fit and it would serve your audience. I'd love to come back on and share about it. If not, no worries, right? Go in with detachment. This is somebody that you previously established a relationship with, so maybe you need to reactivate that relationship first before you make an ask. But regardless, if you've been a great guest, give your self a chance to go back, because often they're happy to have a repeat guest when there's a reason and a new book is a great reason. I hope these tips have been helpful for you as you consider using a podcast guest tour to launch, relaunch your book, or sell more books. And I'd love to hear which ones you're going to take and how it