How to Use Authority Marketing to Attract Right-Fit Clients

Why Write a Book?

One of the biggest challenges of an agency owner is consistently attracting right-fit clients into your sales pipeline. While there are many marketing tactics you could employ, the #1 way to attract new clients is to write a book and promote it generously.

A book allows you to demonstrate your expertise and approach in a substantial way that a blog post, video, or podcast episode cannot. By reading your book, prospects get an in-depth understanding of your philosophy, methodologies, and ability to help them succeed before ever speaking with you directly.

The goal is not necessarily to sell thousands of book copies. In fact, the goal isn’t to sell the book at all. Instead, the book is a marketing tool used to “pre-sell” the right prospects to choose to work with you over competitors.

Authority Marketing

The book itself is just the starting line, not the finish line. Once you’ve written it, there’s a lot to be done to promote it and actually get copies into the right hands. 

Where to begin:

• Speaking Engagements: Booking yourself for virtual or in-person speaking slots, such as podcasts, webinars, conferences, etc. This allows you to share insights from your book with an already interested audience.
• Your Own Shows: Consistently creating content through your own podcast, video series, email newsletter etc. can drive awareness of your book and expertise.
• Relentless Helpfulness: Looking for opportunities to generously share valuable information and insights with your target audience, whether through guest posting, social media, or any other available channels.
• Piece it Together: Take smaller excerpts from the book and chop it up into bite-sized nuggets of information that you can share widely with your audience and get them interested in learning more from you. 

The more targeted your approach, the more effective it will be. This is the core idea behind authority marketing. The more people hear about the book who aren’t already familiar with you, the more successful you will be in this approach.

Pre-Selling Yourself and Your Philosophy

According to Henry DeVries, one of his previous clients has followed that advice by giving away hundreds of books for the cost of printing and shipping (about $10 each). He credits this approach with generating nearly $1 million in new business while increasing his sales closure rate to 88%.

Why is the impact so powerful? When a prospect calls you up looking for advice or help, they already know your credentials and what you’re about. With their confidence in you already established from the beginning of that conversation, you’ll get to the core of their problems faster. They view you as the authority and are essentially “pre-sold” when that initial sales conversation happens.

Conclusion

Writing and promoting a quality book does take significant time and effort. However, for many businesses, it can be one of the most effective ways to continuously fill your pipeline with right-fit clients who are primed to buy. By putting in the work to get your book into as many hands as possible, you establish your authority and expertise in a way that perfectly sets up new business opportunities.

To learn more about how agency owners can use a book to fill their sales pipeline and attract right-fit clients, tune in to this episode of The Progressive Agency Podcast to hear more from our guest, Henry DeVries.