AP 0939: How Do I Engage with People Who Buy My Book on Amazon?

AskPat 939 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here. Welcome to Episode 939 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

Here's today's question from Byron.

Byron: All right, Pat. This is Byron TGI Friday. I'm at BMXTeacher.wordpress.com. My question is regarding optimizing your marketing for Amazon book pre-sales. I recently purchased three books on pre-sale, and the marketers did not leverage any kind of technology for pre-marketing or post-sale marketing. No follow up, anything. Seemed like there was a lot of opportunity to engage with the person who pre-bought the book on the pre-sale. I'm curious your thoughts about how to optimize or maximize your marketing if you're using Amazon. What service would you use to manage the sale, manage the post-sale follow up, et cetera, so that you can engage with that person that bought your product? Thanks so much. You rule. You're so helpful and your Smart Passive Income is incredibly valuable. Thanks so much.

Pat Flynn: Hey Byron, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate you and all the amazing support. Thank you for that. The trick is, how do you know who's buying when somebody buys on Amazon? That's why authors struggle with Amazon, especially during the pre-sale phase, is because Amazon doesn't tell you. Amazon does not give you a list of email addresses, they don't give you access to any names of the people who buy your book ahead of time, at least as far as I know—I know a lot of people who help authors on Amazon—it's just not going to happen.

You have to get creative with how you can get those names and emails. During the pre-sale phase, before people even have access to that book, well it's even more challenging, because any calls to action that you include in the book they're not going to see until after the book goes live. Here's what I would recommend. Utilize a street team before the book goes live. Insert some sort of promotions or contests on your own site related to the pre-sale so that you can then determine okay, who is actually engaging with you so you can engage back with them.

To be more specific, I might offer a contest or some sort of incentive to have people send me a copy of their receipt after purchase, which qualifies them or allows them to gain entry into something. That's how you know who's buying the pre-sale. Amazon makes it easy to set up a pre-sale, but they don't make it very easy . . . Well, even that is not true. At least when I launched Will It Fly? back in 2016, it just was not easy. Now, there were some things related to create space that we had to worry about too, and then we just kind of hacked our way through it.

Again, you don't know who's reading your book, or who purchases your book until you collect that email address or you get engagement on social media. I would definitely go for the email address. That's why I definitely recommend planning ahead of time, utilizing a street team like we've talked about in the show on Smart Passive Income before, and definitely utilizing a contest of some kind to just understand who is it that's going to be buying from you ahead of time, giving them something as a reward. It doesn't have to be something physical; I would actually recommend against that. Something digital is much easier to fulfill than a physical thing. You can do that and give something away as a result of buying early, potentially as a result of buying multiple copies early, potentially. That way you can utilize, like you said, that underrated post-sale offer and that follow up.

I guess if I had to say one tool or service, that would be email, email provider. I would use ConvertKit, and you can run contests through that, or start building an audience on social media and run it through that as well. ConvertKit—I am a compensated advisor and affiliate for them as well, just so you know, but the affiliate link for that is AskPat.com/convertkit [Full Disclosure: I'm a compensated advisor and an affiliate for ConvertKit.]. Again, you're going to have to get a little bit creative. I would see if you could find other people who are doing this, but doing it well, Byron. You're in a good space where people are trying a lot of good things, and just keep an eye open. It seems like you're doing that already.

Great job, Byron. Great question; thank you so much. As a result of your question being featured here on the show, I want to send you an AskPat teeshirt. We'll send it to you in the next couple weeks or so, or at least collect your information so we can send that to you. Finally, for those of you who are listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show as well, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.

Thanks so much. I appreciate you. Here's a quote to finish off the day by Sheryl Sandburg: “What would you do if you weren't afraid?” That's a great question. What would you do if you weren't afraid? I'd love to hear from you on Twitter with your answer. I'm going to give away an AskPat teeshirt randomly to somebody who answers that question within the next couple weeks. Use the hashtag #AskPat939. Don't worry Byron, we're not giving away your shirt. We're going to give away an additional one for some random, lucky Twitter, or Instagram—if you want to do an Instagram post and kind of highlight this and have your audience engage with you too. The quote is from Sheryl Sandburg, and the question is, “What would you do if you weren't afraid?” I'm really curious to hear your answers. Use the hashtag on Twitter or on Instagram, #AskPat939. I'll follow up with one of you in the next couple or weeks or so after this episode goes out, and I'll award you an AskPat teeshirt. We'll send it to you free of charge. Again, one more time, Sheryl Sandburg: “What would you do if you weren't afraid?” #AskPat939.

Cheers guys, thanks so much. Take care, and I'll see you next week in the next episode of AskPat. Have a good weekend. Cheers. Bye.