Audio Transcription

Welcome back to the Branding Through Books podcast. In this episode, I’m going to be talking about the components needed for a successful book funnel. So let’s get into it.

Since I launched, Write a Book, Build a Brand, people have been asking me what exactly is needed to sell a book through a slow funnel. There isn’t a long list of things needed to make a successful SLO book funnel, but it does take time to build everything out. Let’s jump right into the slope book, funnel requirements. But before we get started, let’s define slow for people who don’t know.

SLO is self-liquidating offer, so whenever you hear me refer to slow, that’s what that means. All right, so for SLO book funnel requirements, we need a non-fiction book, valuable bonuses, at least five to seven, I would say, supplemental products for your upsells and down-sells, a sales cart builder, a high ticket offer, an email service provider, email sequences, and a membership area.

I’m going to go over each component and a little bit more detail. So your book, the hallmark of your book funnel is your book that solves a particular problem your reader has. Your book needs to ascend readers into buyers of your supplemental products and services related to your high ticket offer through the Ascension model. The Ascension model is based on your book creating the problem that the reader now wants to solve after reading it. For example, in Write a Book, Build a Brand, readers may want to quickly implement the method for their own business, but don’t know how to put all the pieces together.

My book has caused a problem. People want to be able to achieve what they’ve learned in the book faster, with less hassle and fewer mistakes made along the way. Here are the key features your book needs to have in order to lead people into your high ticket offers. It needs to be nonfiction, it needs to teach your complete signature method, framework, or system, lastly, it needs to leave the reader with a new problem after finishing your book.

All right, let’s get into the valuable bonuses. To make the purchase of your book a no-brainer offer, you should aim to include at least five to seven related bonuses. Bonuses can be anything that is related to the subject of your book that will help readers. For example, the bonuses included in Write a Book, Build a Brand, include a private Facebook Group, A Podcast Guest Pitch Tip List, Anatomy of a Killer Sales Page Checklist, a Book File Launch Checklist, a Names that Sell Naming Guide, seven Day Quick-start Mini-Course, and a Book Profit Calculator. All of the products I’ve included as bonuses help people with implementing their own book sales funnel and offer incredible value. This is especially important if you’re trying to sell your book for $27 or more.

Supplemental products. Any successful book funnel will need supplemental products to help you negate your ad spend, basically making it free and make a profit on the backend. My suggestion is to include two upsells and corresponding down-sells, meaning that if you sell a course for $197 as an upsell, then your down sale should be a payment plan of the $197 course instead of a completely new product.

Once again, these products should be related to the core offer of your book and help readers get something faster with less hassle and fewer mistakes than if they were to do it on their own. Examples of good upsells and downsells include courses, templates, checklists, guides, software, one-on-one coaching, memberships, digital planners, audio files, fonts, branding services, stock photos, stock videos, apps. The list of what you can sell as a supplemental product can be whatever you want it to be, so don’t feel limited to the list that I just listed.

Next, we’re going to move on to the sales cart builder. You’re going to need to have a sales page and a platform to accept payments such as Stripe, PayPal, Venmo, etc. I use ThriveCart, which allows me to build a sales page and accept payments on the same platform. Some people build sales pages on their website and attach a separate payment processor to accept payments. I’ve done both, but after using ThriveCart, everything is so much easier to have everything in one place.

Another great reason I liked ThriveCart is that it has lifetime pricing, meaning you pay for the software once and don’t have to worry about monthly fees. You can grab a lifetime membership with ThriveCart with my referral link. I jump on this ASAP because no one knows when ThriveCart will actually pull this offer. And for the people wondering how user-friendly ThriveCart is, it’s super easy to build a sales page and their support team is phenomenal if you ever get stuck.

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Next, we’re going to move on to your high ticket offer, this is optional, but I highly suggest you have a high ticket offer in your business that you can lead your book buyers into. Check out my podcast episode on how to write a book to lead people into your high ticket offer for more in-depth information on high ticket programs and how they work within a book funnel.

Next is an email service provider. If you have a way to collect emails and send out semi-regular emails to your list, you’ve already got this covered. If you’re new to email marketing, the first step is to get an account with an email service provider like ConvertKit, Mailchimp, or ActiveCampaign and start collecting emails.

It’s taken me a few years to figure out the whole email marketing thing. So when I finally figured it out, I chose ConvertKit as my provider after using a few others that want really user-friendly for me. Even with my limited knowledge of email marketing, it was relatively easy for me to figure out how to use ConvertKit to send emails, and create automations.

Next are the email sequences. To properly set up your automations, you’ll need to have email sequences for each product of your funnel. This means you’ll need to have emails that trigger for purchases, cart abandoned, and for upsells.

Last, but not least, an email nurturing sequence that will help people with the know, like, and trust factor after they have purchased your book. Check out my podcast episode for six email must-haves for your slow funnel for more information.

Next, we’re going to move on to the membership area. I highly recommend that you have a dedicated members area for your products instead of just a download link. The reason being is that with a members area, you can showcase all of your products. This includes products that a book buyer didn’t end up purchasing within your funnel, and later on down the line, when a reader is ready to buy your upsell, it’s easier for them to purchase because it’s right there in the member’s area where they can see it. If you’re ready to start building your book, though, these are the components you need.

Links mentioned in this episode

ThriveCart: https://bit.ly/nacholetc

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