Personal experience has proven that converting an expensive glossy brochure into a fascinatingly descriptive yet plain looking sales letter gets more response.
In the first few years of my life as a business owner, (I started out as a freelance database programmer in 1996), I thought it would be a good idea to blast more than £6,000 on some georgeously designed glossy brochures.
They looked great — existing clients loved them… but they did absolutely nothing to help me win new business.
Why?
Because they were all design and hardly any content.
The ‘marketing’ company who ‘advised’ me on the brochure said they’d produce the final design first. And only when they’d finished the design would they be able to tell me how much text to provide — depending on the amount of room available.
Of course the whole brochure ended up being design, and hardly any text. They cost me a fortune yet when I sent them out as a mailer… I got zero response.
Pitiful.
In a nutshell, the brochure was all puffery and no substance. It did nothing to explain to prospects who did not yet know me why I was different from any other service company operating in my niche.
It was a costly mistake — but also one of the reasons that pushed me into direct response marketing (so maybe it was a good thing?)
Anyway, these days one of my biggest roles is helping private clients convert their focus on front-end marketing activities from ‘advertising’ into ‘publishing’. You also know my focus is primarily (although not exclusively) on ways of using the Internet to achieve that.
With ever increasing competition, it’s more important than ever to educate and inform your prospects about how and why they should choose you.
Remember the old adage… “the more you tell the more you sell.”
A book is of course the ultimate ‘published’ item. Most authors are revered as experts — and many small business owners turned authors have made a great deal of money from the recognition and ‘posture’ that helps them achieve.
But after meeting a lot of business owners turned authors, one thing that really struck me is how much concerted effort, time, money and persistence it takes to write and publish a book.
Some people can do it in a few days, but for most business owners it takes months or even years.
So my advice is to not create a book first.
Get some audio or video-based information products under your belt and working on the front-end of your business.
Create them so they complement (or follow-on) from each other. Then when you have a suite of courses they can be transcribed and transformed into your first book. That’s a much easier path to book authorship.
Unfortunately, I’m doing all of this in reverse!
My book came first… and it took me more than 2 years of blood sweat and tears to end up with The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy.
Now that I’m just about to launch “Shrink Wrap Your Brain!”, closely followed by “Landing Page Power” and then an e-mail marketing home-study course I can reflect on how I should have done things.
Had I created those products before the book, not only would I have had information product revenues flowing sooner — and from multiple products rather than a single e-book — I would also have ended up with the book a lot sooner… and with fewer grey hairs!
We sure can learn a lot from our personal experiences, and so can your prospects.
Publishing for the front-end of your business is a highly effective tactic for customer or client acquisition… but consider shelving the book idea until you have some information products under your belt. I wish I had! 
-Ed.
