Recently, our staff was faced with a question:
“Why publish a book when a website or video work just fine to tell our story?”
We love questions like the one above because it allows for us to educate authors, followers, and career-minded professionals about how books can be your next favorite marketing tool.
Pithy is a bad word when it comes to storytelling. Though, that’s just what you get with most websites and videos—flashy style and very little substantial information. Columns, bullets, and blurbs only scratch the surface of your business’ history, your personal brand, or your organization’s culture. But websites and videos are instruments for sales that often get disguised as marketing tools. In short, they get the point across and that’s about it.
But how was that calamity resolved back in 1987? Did it help develop your company culture in a way that contributed to its success? How has your brand been created around its story? With books, you can delve into these questions in detail while you attract quality talent, pique investors’ interests, and create an instant revenue stream.
Not only do books function as a way to entertain clients, but people will appreciate your more candid approach—after all, you are asking them to do business with you, right? In B2B practices, you know relationships are everything. Books focus on building trust, creating a great foundation for your business relationships.
Can you hand someone a website? No, not really. But you can hand someone a book. When you stand to leave the conference table of a company across the country, after speaking at length about your product or service, a book enables you to leave a more lasting impression behind. In your prospects’ hands, you’re putting everything they need in order to establish a strong relationship with your company. You’re reminding your peers that you’re a person with a team of people behind you. A book enables you to immediately say “this is who we are, this is what we do, and we want you to be a part of our story, too.”
Lastly, books provide a warm intimacy that at website or video can’t provide. Plus, any old Joe can produce a website, but to self-publish a book, that says your quality-minded and that you have the assets to make sure a job gets done right.
