Hey, There's a sales technique which you are subjected to all the time, even if you don't know it. It's incredibly effective – used by everyone from sleazy internet hucksters to the biggest companies in the world, like Apple. Apple are the masters of this technique, which we'll illustrate with a real-world example. And then we'll talk about how fiction and non-fiction authors can adopt these techniques to sell more books. I Thought Apple Was Losing?It might seem strange to pick Apple as an example, particularly in our industry where Apple hasn't exactly taken over the ebook market. And it might seem even stranger to highlight Apple today, when the news is full of stories about how the Big Tech party is over. Layoffs, missed earnings, falling share prices, regulatory oversight increasing, and the anti-trust tide turning – the bad news has been unrelenting for the tech sector. But Apple is the most valuable publicly traded company in the world with a market cap north of $2 trillion dollars, possessing one of the strongest brand identities and fiercest customer loyalties. Even though authors are selling very different products – at prices waaaaaaaaay down at the other end of the market – there are lessons we can learn from their exceedingly slick sales and marketing operation, especially the specific way Apple deploys what's known as a "Value Ladder." Always Be UpsellingUpselling is probably a term you are more familiar with as it is something we all experience regularly, whether shopping online or in terrifying meatspace: we go to the store to buy something… and get pushed something else to go with it. A Value Ladder is a specific type of directed and intentional upselling, and a real-world example will illustrate its full power. Apple has a finely honed Value Ladder and it's very hard to resist unless your budget is absolutely non-negotiable (and even then…). It works like this. Let's say you want to buy a new iPad – just the regular model. You head along to the Apple Store, and the basic iPad is available for $449, which is a price you are happy to pay, but you can't even complete the transaction without being faced with choices. Apple will dangle more storage… for a price. And they make it sound like you are getting a lot more for just a little increase in cost – 64Gb to 256Gb is four times the storage, and the price "only" increases to $599, making it feel like you are getting a bargain, even if you are paying full freight. It doesn't stop there, of course, with more options to increase connectivity, or to add a stylus, or a keyboard, or AppleCare, or whatever. You can push the sticker price that "basic" iPad north of $1000 without going too crazy – double what you intended paying when you went to the store in the first place. But the genius of the Value Ladder doesn't end there, because at this point you have a $1000 basic iPad sitting in your cart and you think to yourself, "well, if I'm spending this much, should I not get the iPad Air?" It's got that M1 chip everyone is talking about. Plus, there's more color choices and it starts at $599. So, you decide that's a smarter choice. And then you get the pesky storage question again. 256Gb is a lot more than 64Gb, and it's only $749 vs $599, so that seems like the clever thing to do. We're futureproofing our purchase, we tell ourselves while turning over that credit card in our clammy hands, as we get walked through the value ladder by Apple once again. Because if we are spending this kind of money, it makes much more sense just to get the iPad Pro, right? The 256Gb iPad Pro is "only" $899, which we were willing to spend a moment ago on an inferior device. We become more and more convinced of our logic. We tell ourselves we are being restrained by not springing $1099 for the larger 12.9" screen. But here come those dastardly questions again… In partnership with Reedsy. How to successfully promote your book with Amazon ads Are you an author struggling to sell your books on Amazon? If so, help is here! Inside Amazon Ads for Authors: Unlock Your Full Advertising Potential, Ricardo Fayet shares his expert experience from managing hundreds of campaigns across all genres. This book will teach you key principles such as: understanding product and keyword targets, creating the right ad campaign type, optimizing click-through rates, maximizing profitability and scaling up spending while maintaining profit levels. Plus, each step is illustrated with examples and screenshots so that you can immediately apply the advice to your own campaigns. Apple's Value Ladder (Cont.)To be clear, this isn't a pop at Apple in any way. Neither am I casting aspersions on its products, or any of the value propositions mentioned above, or even the techniques used to sell them – Apple makes quality devices that are extremely popular for good reason. Nor am I an Apple fanboy BTW. I don't own any Apple devices – I'm PC-all-the-way, and Android when mobile. However, I do have respect for Apple's marketing game. I'm sure you can also see how this particular flavour of upselling is used on you, in some form, when purchasing all sorts of products and services, online and offline, from purveyors large and small. Like all sales and marketing techniques, the Value Ladder can be used ethically… or in shady ways to push questionable schlock. It's not so different to the boiling frog idea – they walk you up the Value Ladder in small increments. If it is done skillfully, you will barely notice that you have ended up very far away from the product you wanted and the price you were willing to pay. It doesn't just apply to customers with money to burn on fancy iPads and premium extras. An effective Value Ladder doesn't just squeeze the whales; it can also close the sale with the most price conscious purchasers. Even those on limited budgets can take a step or two up the value ladder, if executed correctly. Shady operators might not have the brand appeal or reputation of Apple, but they can deploy other tricks like false scarcity/countdown clocks to turn up the heat and close the sale. Now, it might not be immediately obvious how authors can apply these techniques to their own business – or even that they would want to. I bet that's especially true for fiction authors. But it's possible to apply some of these insights here even if you "only" sell books. Let's whizz through the much more obvious case first – i.e. non-fiction authors – who often have the possibility to sell lots more besides books, and then talk about the much-more-interesting case of how this can be used to help you sell more books as well. (Yes, fiction too). But first, some Apple news of my own. Discounts now available at AppleThe discounts I shared last week on all my books for authors are still running, while I do some extended testing for new audiences on Facebook. I had a problem with Apple Book dropping the price, but I'm happy to confirm that is resolved. These deals are available globally. Click the buttons below for Amazon USA or UK, or hit the third one to get links at my site for Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play, plus the international Amazon stores.
Remember: I tend to discount these books only once a year, so if you were considering grabbing any of them, now is the time! Sale ends Sunday night (Feb 5).
The Obvious UpsellFor many kinds of non-fiction there is an obvious opportunity to sell all sorts of other products and services along with your books – workbooks, webinars, courses, coaching, consulting, and all sorts of other informational products and services, as well as the possibility of things like merch, sponsorships, and so on. Constructing a Value Ladder of your own can help you upsell these things more effectively – and that's probably obvious enough to any non-fiction author flogging non-book products. There's so much of this stuff pointed at authors now, that you probably feel like you're running the gauntlet every time you sign up for a mailing list, or ask for advice online, so I don't particularly want to run through a checklist of how to sell webinars more effectively. Instead, let's look at how authors can deploy a Value Ladder to sell more books, and generally be more intentional and directed with upselling their back catalogue – something which can work for all authors of fiction and non-fiction, in case it needs to be said. The Ebook Value LadderThere are lots of different ways that you can package and sell books, and many different approaches to pricing. Novels can be sold as ebooks, paperbacks, and hardbacks reasonably easily. Audiobooks can be worthwhile if you can front the recording cost, or produce them yourself. And then all those things can be packaged up in collections or box sets too. The range of options is considerable even if you only sell at Amazon, and then just begins to multiply if you opt for wider distribution – especially if you also decide to sell direct. Even if you just add a basic paperback edition of your books – which can be done relatively easily – you are already deploying a rudimentary Value Ladder, because those print editions suddenly make the ebook look like a deal.
The prominence of this pricing box on all our book's pages shows that Amazon understands the power of a Value Ladder on consumers. A reader who might have felt that $4.99 was out of impulse buy territory, might reconsider when it's placed in the context of formats costing $14.99 and $19.99. The obvious takeaway here: paperback editions are worth the minimal investment to produce even if they never sell a single copy – just to make that ebook look cheap. But this is pretty basic. What else can authors do to be more intentional with their upselling game? The Reader JourneyThose of you who have read my book Strangers to Superfans will be familiar with this concept – which runs through the entire approach (99¢ thru Sunday, don't forget!). It's a concept borrowed from the general world of marketing, where it's known as the Customer Journey. Knowing who your customer is, and where they are on their customer journey towards wanting to buy a product, is incredibly valued by marketers because it helps them moderate their approach - sell stuff more effectively, on other words. Authors are not marketers, and don't have access to all the data marketers do, but there are moments where we know exactly where our customers are and what they need. One way that all authors can be more effective at upselling is in their end matter – i.e. all that text in your books that comes after The End. Authors who sell well tend to spend a lot of time thinking about their end matter, testing different variations, tweaking it until it's generating more sign-ups, more sellthrough, and more social follows. However, one thing I don't see authors doing enough is focusing on the very best book to push at readers in that exact moment. Most authors either push readers towards their site with a kind of generalized message: "see the rest of the series here" or whatever. Or they go too far in the other direction, and they list all 24 books they have written, complete with direct links to all the Amazon stores where they can be purchased – resulting in this laundry list of links that is not in any way enticing, and does a poorer-than-it-should job of closing the next sale. There is a better way. You need to think about your Ideal Reader, where she is in her Reader Journey, and what book she is most likely to purchase from you next – and really focus on selling her that particular book. That doesn't necessarily mean you can't mention anything else you have for sale, but in terms of pushing books in your end matter, think about what you are focusing on specifically. It's a general principle of marketing that if you overload customers with CTAs – i.e calls-to-action, where you are asking for something like a sale or a follow or a sign-up – then there is a real danger that the response will be diluted severely, and some customers will just glaze over altogether and do nothing. The right book to push is obvious when you have a series. At the end of Book 1, you push Book 2. And at the end of Book 2, you push Book 3. A reader finishing Book 1 is much more likely to purchase Book 2, than to have their head turned by a spin-off in the same world, or an unrelated standalone. This is something we all know instinctively, but is often not reflected in our end-matter. And if you tweak your end matter to place the sales focus on the most logical next purchase for your Ideal Reader, it will be more effective. It's harder to figure out which book to push when you are talking about books outside of a regular linear series. But you need to spend some time thinking about your Ideal Reader, and which book will appeal to her most in that moment, as well as considering your own strategic needs, of course. And then pick one book to focus on. Again, you can mention your other books here if you wish, but keep the focus on the most likely purchase and you will see better results. Go Forth And Be IntentionalIt's good to know how things like value ladders work – not just as an author trying to sell stuff, but a customer in the world trying to navigate your own purchases. Being aware of what persuasion techniques are being used on you can help you make more informed buying decisions as well as selling your own work more effectively. The real insight for authors is this: Upselling is much more effective when it's directed and intentional. And you should always think about what you are pushing after… The End. Dave P.S. Music this week is Son Volt with Windfall. |
Friday, February 3, 2023
One simple tweak to boost your backlist 👊
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