page title icon Writing Your Own Book to Establish Authority

Establish Authority By Writing Your Own Book: Costs

There’s no doubt that having a book published is a great way to establish authority in the domain you are in. However, actually having a book published may not be as easy as it seems. There is a lot of writing and preparation involved and the majority of people are not able to publish a book without having to spend a lot of money on book publishers.

In this episode of the B2B Digital Marketer Podcast, Raza Imam shares how you can publish your own book using content that you may have already published!

Raza Imam is an entrepreneur, author, speaker, and coach with a passion for digital marketing and personal development. As an entrepreneur since college, he’s always been interested in the relationship between personal development and business.

Now, as a top 100 Amazon Business and Investing author, he shares his achievements, struggles, and breakthroughs with other entrepreneurs. After writing his first book, he discovered his passion for helping people improve all aspects of their lives.

Through his writing, coaching, and consulting, he helps entrepreneurs get incredible results by learning how to build ruthless focus and the mindset of a champion and the digital marketing skills to grow their business.

Podcast Timestamps/Outline

00:36 – Introduction

01:11 – About Raza Imam and his background in B2B digital marketing

02:56 – How writing a book helps in B2B digital marketing

08:29 – Writing a book for busy executives

10:37 – Automating content repurposing

12:18 – Determining the quality of a book

15:53 – What’s overrated in B2B digital marketing

18:18 – Budget reallocation

21:29 – Making the right investment

24:29 – The one question every B2B digital marketer should be asking themselves

30:06 – Connect with Raza Imam

Memorable Quotes from Raza Imam

“If you want to sell well you have to have process.”

“Why reinvent the wheel? You’re already doing these marketing activities, why not take your existing assets and compile them into a book?”

“Three things a great book needs: story, imagery, and emotion.”

“Take pulse of the market, understand what people want, and refine your messaging on that.”

Episode Links and Resources

Raza’s LinkedIn: https://www.authorpreneurelite.com/

Raza’s website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/razasimam/

More episodes on B2B publishing: How to Leverage Data in B2B Digital Marketing

Episode Transcript

Click to access unedited transcript

Unedited Transcript

Jim Rembach (00:00):

Okay. B2B DM gang. All right. Today, we’re going to have a really good discussion because I have questions about some things that have kept really been, or I should say, have been in my inbox probably for about every single month for the past couple of years. And I want to talk about how it could actually help you be bring impact to your overall B2B digital marketing. So I’m actually here with Raza, Imam, and we’re going to talk about something that you probably never even considered to help you with your B2B digital marketing. So Raza, if you could please tell us a little bit about your background and how you can actually bring value to B2B digital marketing.

Raza Imam (00:41):

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me here, John Jim, I’m really excited to be here a little bit about my background. So by trade I’m a tech guy. So I, I’m a, I’m a systems guy. I’m a tech guy, but I’ve had a love for marketing my entire life, my entire adult life. And the two kind of converged. You know, I had a position in sales early on in my life. Um, B2B kind of, uh, corporate sponsorship sales. Then I took, you know, a traditional position in, in, in my expertise, my industry, but it’s the technology and systems analysis and things like that, but I’ve always been entrepreneurial. And what I realized from the sales side from the, the systems kind of tech side is that you have to really have process if you want to sell well, if you want to build a system and you know, software, well, you need to have process.

Raza Imam (01:32):

So I wasn’t really able to, or over probably the past 15 years kind of marry my marketing and sales kind of passion with my tech expertise and come up with a process where now what I do is I help B2B executives, whether they’re corporate executives, I want to branch out on their own or whether they are entrepreneurs again with a BDB offering, I show them how to do two things, how to build their authority and establish themselves as like the preeminent, um, the preeminent, uh, uh, provider in their market by writing a book and then how to use strategic outreach to really get, and kind of Spearfish and harpoon for those big whale clients. So I hope that that kinda answers your question, you know, succinctly,

Jim Rembach (02:20):

Well, I don’t know about synchrony and we’ll, we’ll get into getting to the succinct part because for me, as I had mentioned, I, you know, being a podcaster for multiple years, you know, being one of those people that was responsible for, you know, biz dev marketing, you know, client onboarding, partner relationships, uh, all, all of those aspects of a business. You know, I found myself in that same scenario when I was working for somebody who had a very different business philosophy of, you know, Hey, I’m not giving you an unlimited amount of money for your advertising and your marketing, and that’s not going to happen, you know, fill your own darn funnel. I’m like, Holy smokes. How do I do that? And so then it’s starting to build the digital platform and awareness and networking and connecting and doing all that stuff. And that’s, you know, one of those things, why it keeps coming back, or people are like, Hey, I should be doing what you’re saying that I’ve done well, for me, I’ve never really been one that just loves to write the actual activity of do it, of doing it. I do it because I have to, I would prefer to podcast. That’s why I’ve been podcasting so long, but I get what you’re saying and people say it all the time, stand out, write a book. Okay, great. Right. But if I’m talking about in a B to B digital marketing process, and I’m the marketer that’s responsible for helping to bring sales qualified leads to the salespeople, how does this really work?

Raza Imam (03:39):

I love it. I’m so glad you asked that. So if it’s okay, I want to share a story with me. So imagine this, you know, imagine you are 24 year old Raza or 23 year old Reza, fresh out of school took this sales position. I’m responsible for picking up the phone and cold calling tech companies to get them to, uh, purchase sponsorships for this event company event management company that I work for, I’m picking up the phone. I’m cold calling 70 to a hundred calls a day, right? What if rather than doing that, we worked with the CEO of the company to write a book about the event management industry. How, how events and how corporate sponsorships specifically generate and translate into real belly to belly face to face sales conversations that generate real dollars and real revenue. Now that CEO wrote a book and just sent it directly to his ideal customers, just imagine how, how impactful that would have been.

Raza Imam (04:44):

So I’ll take it even a step further. So again, we’re talking about the B2B context. Let’s say, let’s say you need sales, qualified leads for some sass product that you have some software to service product that serves the enterprise market. What I always say and great marketers know and great salespeople know, you always want to focus in on your ideal customer profile, not only the demographics, but the psychographics, what are their problems? What are their, um, their perceived challenges? What are their obstacles? Now, if you can write a book, if the CEO of the company can write a book that talks about those problems and those pain points that talks about the consequences and the ramifications of leaving those pains, um, left untreated, you’re addressing the conversation in their mind. Now I’ll take you one step further. Let’s say in your book, you also lay out the false solutions.

Raza Imam (05:37):

I call it lay in slim. So if you think this is your solution, that’s not it. If you think this is your solution, that’s not it. If you think this is your solution best at it. So by that time, the reader, the recipient, which is your, your, your, your target customer is reading it and be like, man, this guy gets it. He’s talking about these problems that I’m facing. He’s talking about these solutions that I’ve, that have failed. Now I’m chomping at the bit. What is it that he’s selling? What is it? That is his process. You lay that out in the rest of the book, you share case studies and testimonials, and then you have a call to action saying, let’s get on the phone. Let’s talk. So the way that, the way that translates for B to B marketers and B to B salespeople who are looking for sales, qualified leads is here’s another story.

Raza Imam (06:20):

I was working with a, um, um, a client of mine. She’s an executive coach and she wanted to write a book and she wrote a book, but she had no idea how to market it. And I told her, you don’t want to mass market. You don’t want to just reach this, you know, reach just anyone and everyone, your executive coach, you know, you have this, this amazing background. Why don’t you come up with a dream list of like your dream 50 clients send a physical copy of your book to the executive team, the CEO, the CFO, the COO with a handwritten note saying, Hey, John, I noticed you did X, Y, Z. I have a few ideas that could help. Here’s a free book. I’d love to talk to you. You send it to the CEO, the CFO, and the COO. You better believe you send a physical paperback copy of your book.

Raza Imam (07:04):

You better believe they’re going to be talking to each other and say, Hey, Jack, did you get this email from this Audrey lady? Hey Mike, did you get this email or this book from this Audrey lady, you’re building internal buds. So then when you reach out to them with the LinkedIn message, or then when you reach out to them with an email, or then when you pick up the phone and call them, it’s not a cold call. It’s not a cold email. It’s not a cold LinkedIn outreach message. You’ve already preempted yourself. You’ve already shown such immense value. You’ve already, you know, built internal buds. So that at the very least, they’re curious. And as you know, with sales, if you can get their curiosity, if you can differentiate yourself and kind of peak their interest, you’re in, then it’s, then, then that’s your time to shine. So I hope that answers the question.

Jim Rembach (07:49):

It does. Okay. It does. It does at that high level, but for me, I’m thinking about, okay, now I’ve met some of these, you know, CEOs at some of these tech organizations, and there could be in the same position. I am. They’re not, they’re not going to be interested in writing anything. They’re not going to be, they don’t, they don’t want the spotlight. They don’t want any of that stuff. So for me, I’m thinking about if I’m supporting this entire sales cycle and you know, I have to essentially put everything together and kind of lay it forum. So to me, I’m thinking I need to do that. It don’t, I

Raza Imam (08:21):

Oh, absolutely. And you know, and my whole, my whole philosophy, the way I differentiate myself, you know, like you said, you get pitches all the time. People saying, Hey, you should write a book. And I, and I, and I understand that. It’s what I said. What makes me different is we’re going to treat this whole process like a tech startup. So what that means is from the product market fit and the validation to the messaging, like coming up with killer messaging and positioning to understanding who your ideal customer prospect is, or your ideal, your ideal prospect is. But here’s the part where, you know, this is where I get to the part that you just asked, which how do you kind of write it? You don’t want to sit there and write and take all this time to write the beauty of the beauty of it is you already have existing assets, whether it’s webinars, whether it’s podcasts, whether it’s white papers, whether it’s power points and slide decks, whether it’s interviews, you’ve given, whether it’s even proposals, you’ve sent out, I’m a big fan of not just staring at a blank sheet of paper.

Raza Imam (09:16):

And it’s hoping you get hit with inspiration. I’m a big fan of taking existing content and assembling that into a book. Of course, that’s going to be your draft manuscript. You need an editor to come back through, make sure it’s clean, make sure that there’s a good flow. Make sure that everything ties in together, but why reinvent the wheel? You’re already doing all these other marketing activities. You’re doing all these sales activities. Why not take your existing assets and leverage them and compile them into a book. And that’s where I think the real value is not spending six to 12 months writing a book, but figuring out who it is you want to talk to, what are the problems they have taking your existing content content, compiling it and assembling it. And boom, that’s your book right there.

Jim Rembach (09:59):

Okay. So for me, uh, I help with organizations, uh, to be able to build that brand recognition and build that thought leadership. And we focus a lot on what you’re talking about to me is content repurposing, right? I’m repurposing content. I do it in a digital sense. We will take a podcast. We’ll repurpose it. We will take a video. We’ll repurpose it. Well, I mean, I, so I get what you’re meaning as far as that’s concerned. So I, so what’s your, so what you’re saying though, is you said you’re a tech guy, you know, you talk about automating it. So are you taking all these things and then therefore putting it in some system and it’s helping with that?

Raza Imam (10:37):

Oh, absolutely. So it comes back down to systems and process. So even with a book, I have a specific outline framework. It’s a specific template I use. So that every project I’m not having to rack my brain from scratch. Now, of course, there’s a little bit of variation and things change and, and, you know, get modified, but you have a skeleton and a framework. So it’s very easy to duplicate it because you have a system. And as far as, as far as on the tech side, there are so many tools out there from utter.ai, to rev.com to [inaudible] dot com, where these are like automated AI transcription services. So you don’t even have to sit there and rewrite or retype everything. You just literally take your existing content, repurpose it, whether it’s videos or podcasts or whatever, repurpose it, um, get it transcribed using this AI and boom, your, you know, your content is right there. Your, your manuscript is right there. So yeah, to your point, absolutely repurpose existing content and use these tools and systems that are already available to make it easier on yourself.

Jim Rembach (11:37):

Okay. So then for me, um, I started thinking about, you know, the perception, the credibility, and I’m, I may be so firm, well, let me talk about backstory. Let me tell you a story. Um, you know, I actually purchased the equipment to do podcasting three years prior to me actually starting. And it’s because I had some of those questions in my mind that were preventing me from just getting it going, because if you were to go back like most podcasts, my longest running one is called the fast leader show. If you’d go back to episode one, you know, which was five plus years ago, it’s pretty decent. I have to admit it. I mean, because I was so focused on the whole, you know, image perception and qual production quality and all that. I mean, you know, when we finally did get moving, we did a pretty good job of producing that particular podcast and have just tried to continue to build upon that, um, with not going out too crazy. I mean, some people go way overboard in their production. And so I guess my question is at what point, you know, should you find something that would be perceived of being credible and of quality versus, Hey, I’ve seen a lot of paperback backs out there. That’s like, I’m not opening that, you know, and, and I’ve also seen some books, like for example, um, that have been so textbook looking, I’m like, I don’t want to go back to school and read that. Um, how do you find that happy, medium between credibility, you know, and crud.

Raza Imam (13:05):

Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great, that’s a great point. So two, two things I’d say there is a great book doesn’t need to be in depth, textbook level 300 pages of highly, um, kinda technical information, right? Three things that a book, great book needs, our story, imagery and emotion. If you can tell a great story using imagery and emotion to make it just punch and really just kind of touch someone’s heart and just really strike up their emotions. That right there is something that’s gonna, that’s gonna catch fire, right? It doesn’t matter if it’s 75 pages, a hundred pages, 150 pages. If it speaks directly to your audience in an emotional vivid illustrative way, that’s a good book. You can explain the process real high level, but if you can punctuate them with S punctuated with stories and outcomes and transformations and case studies and proof and testimonials, that’s when people are like, yeah, we gotta, you know, we got to take the next, the next step, which is, you know, picking up the phone or calling you or reaching out to the author.

Raza Imam (14:14):

So in terms of the difference between credibility and crud is again, story imagery and emotion. And then the second thing is to again, make sure that I, especially with, with, uh, all the publishing options that are available, you can always iterate. You can always iterate. You can always make it better. But what I say to people is that’s why it’s always helpful to have an outside set of eyes. This is why, you know, the best authors in the world always have editors. Cause no matter how smart you are and about how much of a domain expert you are, you need an outside set of eyes and objective of eyes to look at it and say, Oh no, that’s not that good. Or this doesn’t really connect here. Or, you know, you left something out. So that’s, that’s a simple solution to that problem. So if you’re willing to say I’m an expert, I’m going to pour my heart and soul into this work, and then I’m mature enough to step back and disassociate my emotions from it and have someone else look at it. That’s how you really have like a winner.

Jim Rembach (15:15):

Well, that’s very helpful. Okay. So now you’ve taught and I looked at your background a little bit and you you’ve sold, you know, multimillions of dollars worth of medical equipment, um, you know, to, you know, hospitals and healthcare systems and things like that. So, you know, you were dealing with a lot of that higher end, you know, type of solutions. And so when, when I start thinking about that in the marketing associated with that long sales cycle, and, you know, it can be very similar to that whole, like you talked about that sass example, or you talked about people selling, you know, solutions into, into enterprises because those are, you know, multimillion dollar, many year payback types of decisions to be made. Um, but, but when I, when I stop and think about the marketing and the hype, oftentimes that we hear and see, you know, about B2B DM, you probably been exposed to a lot of that as well. Is there something that kind of stands out to you that you think is overrated?

Raza Imam (16:07):

Yeah, that’s a good, that’s a good question. You know, I think so. I’ve been, I’ve been, I’ve been part of supporting these big multimillion dollar systems within, you know, billion dollar hospitals and healthcare systems. And I think when it comes down to the hype, I think this is why I love BDB sales and marketing specifically B to B sales so much is because yeah, there’s a lot of marketing. There’s a lot of branding. There are always conferences and things like that. But to me, what it boils down to, it’s a one on one conversation with a prospect, for me, whether it’s one prospect, whether it’s a specific stakeholder or it’s a team of stakeholders. That to me is what I think is the most impactful. Of course you need brand awareness. Of course, you know, you should be at the, at the conferences yet. So you shouldn’t be doing the sponsorships and having the boots and everything like that.

Raza Imam (16:54):

But what I really find to be the most impactful, I had to really just boil it down is understanding who I’m selling to understanding deeply like what their real problem is. Not just on a demographic level, but on a psychographic level of what are their problems, what are they up against? What is their, um, what are the consequences that they’re, that they’re facing if they can’t solve their problem. And then speaking, just human to human at that level. And I find that really, um, really to be the most impactful and I find everything else to be kind of supporting that. But I think the real, you know, the real thing for me is like, I love when I reach out to somebody and they’re like, yeah, Hey, you know, I’m really interested in talking, you know, uh, I think that’s what it boils down to.

Jim Rembach (17:40):

Okay. Well then for me, you talked about a, several, several of those things that I should be doing and I could be doing. And, uh, right now we’re sitting here in COVID and there no belly up in, you know, there is no sponsoring, you know, face-to-face events. I mean, and I don’t think I’ve talked to a lot of people. I don’t think it’s going to come back to the degree and the level that it once was. I mean, I think we’re in a brand new world of, you know, being able to have those types of conversations, which I think, you know, offers opportunity. A lot of people may look at that and it’s too easy to do and say, Oh gosh, I am losing this. However, if we really just turn a little bit, we’ll see that now I could do this, that I didn’t look at before. That’s the one reason why I also wanted to have you on the show, but if you’re to start talking about, I have budget, right. And I am not doing these, these things, I’m not doing, you know, this, I need to be doing that. You know, where should it, where should I take some of the money that I’m currently hopefully have available to me right now? And where should I reallocate it?

Raza Imam (18:38):

You know, I think for me, what I’ve found to be very, very helpful, um, cause you know, so there’s two ways I can answer that one. It’s kind of the traditional marketing cycle where, you know, you’re doing advertising and running retargeting ads and getting people into your funnel and, you know, tracking all the ads and statistics. That is great. If you have a team and you have the budget to do that. Absolutely. But let’s say you don’t have all those resources. You know, uh, for me, what I find to be the most effective is just direct outreach and the two channels that I’ve gotten this phenomenal success results with are LinkedIn and email. And it really just boils down to again, knowing exactly like researching and refining and filtering out exactly who I want to reach out to having messaging. That’s just so punchy. That’s so compelling that creates so much intrigue that they feel, they feel compelled to respond to me and say, Hey, yeah, I’d love to talk. I’d love to hear what you have to say. Um, so I hope that answers the question, you know, in terms of what I find to be the most impactful, but it’s this direct outreach through LinkedIn and email.

Jim Rembach (19:47):

Yeah. I mean, definitely. Cause I mean, I mean, I, I, it does make sense. I know, oftentimes we talk about the differences between transactional and relationship based and everything else that needs to go along with that and align with that and some paths to go down and others, you don’t, and it’s just hearing people’s different perspectives, which is, I think are so important because I think traditionally, quite frankly, in looking at B2B digital marketing, you know, I wouldn’t even look at what you’re doing as a potential option quite easily. I mean, I, you know, I’d be like, Hmm. And I would be very skeptic, but I think given where we are now and also the discussion and the dialogue we just had, it’s like, Hmm, I think this needs to get raised to notch. Right. Probably several then. And that’s why it’s so important to, you know, like you are talking about, have a mentor, get different viewpoints. I mean, all of these different elements are validating a lot of different things in regards to our decisions of what we’re going to do. Um, and so I, I mean, appreciate your perspective and sharing all this and, but I have to stop, stop and look, it’s a new world. Right. And so if I was to say, all right, let’s just look at where I can invest in what I am going to do. Um, you know, where, where should I put my money?

Raza Imam (21:04):

No, that’s a great question. I think it depends on what you’re selling and who you’re selling to. So if you’re selling, if you’re selling, um, you know, if you’re selling large scale software, the enterprise, you’re going to want to take a certain, you know, a certain, um, uh, path, certain trajectory. And in that case, I would say it’s probably more of the branding because with enterprise sales, they want to make sure that the vendor they’re buying from it’s legit, that they, you know, they have been reviewed by like Gartner or Forrester or some of these analysts in the enterprise. It’s a completely different mindset. They it’s tougher for them to buy. And I understand this because I’ve worked in an enterprise, you know, I’m on the technology side, it’s very hard to buy from a smaller, lesser known vendor, without them having a lot of, whether it’s media mentions or industry analyst, you know, mentions behind them because it’s a risky thing.

Raza Imam (21:57):

People, people can get fired for choosing the wrong, the wrong vendor. Like they’ve always said no one ever gets fired for buying IBM. Right. So I think if you’re selling a product to the enterprise, you do need to really invest your time and your, your effort in the branding and really kind of having large reach and industry recognition. However, on the flip side, let’s say you’re a consultant, you’re a BDB consultant. Whether you sell leadership training or whether you sell, um, you know, I was talking to a guy yesterday and he’s got his MBA from Kellogg, he’s got this, you know, he started and sold like a successful, um, a tech startup for the insurance industry. And now he wants to get into product management. He wants to show, he actually wants to show data science companies, his product management kind of a procedure or protocol is very specialized.

Raza Imam (22:51):

Um, it’s very expensive, but it’s very high value for organizations. So he’s ready. He’s basically selling to software companies who want to get, um, built a better products, faster, more innovative products. So I said, you know, for you, you really do want to reach out directly to whether it’s the chief revenue officer, whether it’s, um, you know, uh, whoever’s in charge of the commercialization of products and sell them on your service and your process. So again, if you’re a consultant that sells a very highly specialized high margin service, I would go direct to your ideal customers. If you’re selling, if you’re selling a large scale software product to the enterprise, you may want to invest your time and your, your, your money into building this big, this large presence for you. You know, getting mentioned in the wall street journal, getting mentioned by, um, you know, IDC or Forrester or Gartner, et cetera. So I hope that answers the question. It just depends on who you are, who you to no,

Jim Rembach (23:46):

I think that makes a lot of sense. Um, cause I, I mean, based on what you’re talking about, um, you know, I have definitely seen where that clarity did not exist and certain people going after certain organizations and it just, there’s no way they can compete. Right. It’s just not going to happen. And that while that is a painful reality, uh, it still remains to be a reality. Yeah. So, all right. So if I, if I start looking at, um, you know, where I am right now and what I’m doing and what I’m focusing in on, um, oftentimes I have to question what I’m doing and why I’m doing it from a marketing perspective and a sales perspective. So what’s an important question that a marketer should be asking themselves right now,

Raza Imam (24:32):

Um, in the current climate in COVID specifically,

Jim Rembach (24:37):

I don’t want to bait you. You can give a two, you can give a two, um, uh, response to the question if you want, you know, COVID non COVID.

Raza Imam (24:46):

Sure. I think a marketer specifically the question they should always be asking COVID non COVID economic crisis, no economic crisis, um, is what does my market want? I think, understanding your market, what they want, what they need. I think a lot of times, and I’ve, you know, I’ve, I have a sales background, w one of my first jobs out of college was in sales. I think that was something that, that really, really helped me. And that was because my mentors, you know, my sales director who was really telling me, look, you have to, you have to really refine and target the market. You can’t just go out there and shotgun and hope you get something you have to just really, really, really understand who you’re talking to. Cause then when you do your outreach, whether it’s direct outreach or whether it’s branding or whether it’s advertising, your message is just amplified. You become the big fish in the small pond, because you’ve predefined who you’re already reaching out to. You already understand them and your messaging does hits so much harder. So that’s, that’s what I would say. The numb, my number one advice to myself and to anyone else who’s kind of in a marketing role is to take pulse of the market, understanding what people want and then kind of refine your messaging on that.

Jim Rembach (26:06):

Well, and I think for, you know, depending on where you are with that, being able to get that feedback can be kind of tough. Uh, so like for example, I worked with, I had mentioned, you know, doing the sales and marketing BizDev for an organization for a number of years and what we were doing was selling research programs. Uh, and when you start talking about research, you know, there is there a certain amount of data you have to be able to obtain before you start getting past, um, let’s just say confident, whatever was referred to as confidence in your decision, statistically, you start talking about confidence levels and errors and all that type of information in regards. Um, what do you do with the data? And so if, if I’m not able to capture a lot of that information, I mean, what, what, what is reasonable here? I mean, cause when you start talking about getting the pulse in the, in the, in the focus, in, on, you know, your particular target and your particular industry, well maybe I can’t go out and collect 500 pieces of feedback from somebody. They’re not gonna give me that information. I mean, how do I seek that and find that,

Raza Imam (27:08):

Oh, that’s a great, great question. So with B2B, this is why I love B2B marketing because it’s so much more targeted. It’s a much smaller market than the selling B to C, right? Like if I was selling like some, some cosmetic products or something like that with B2B to get research from the market, what I would like to do, number one, I go on amazon.com look at related books to my topic. So if I’m selling some sort of software or some sort of consulting offer, I look at other books that are similar to my offer and I’ll read the reviews and I want to hear exactly what customers are saying. So in their customer’s own words, you know, and that’s one of the, the number one keys to marketing is address the conversation in the customer’s head using, um, their own words and then wrap that up in your messaging and send it back to them and communicate back to them.

Raza Imam (27:57):

So I think Amazon reviews are a goldmine, you know, on relevant books to your industry, absolute goldmine, read the good ones and read the negative ones, read what people like and what people hate. That’s really going to help you shape. And that gives you like real life research from the market. Uh, I also like to tell people to go to Reddit forums and Reddit discussion boards, you know, uh, around your industry and read, it has so many subreddits and you’ll, you will find something, even if you sell something really obscure, some, some B2B product or service that’s really seemingly obscure, you’ll find a thread. So let’s say you’re selling like, uh, let’s say you sell, uh, uh, packaging, like to the bubblegum companies. You know, uh, you will probably find something similar to that on Reddit. And you can hear what people are actually saying.

Raza Imam (28:48):

Um, on top of that, on top of Amazon reviews and Reddit, I would also go to industry, um, industry associations, industry conferences, industry, trade groups, and associations. They usually will have some sort of user group. They usually will have some sort of forum. They usually will have some sort of blog. They’ll usually have some sort of Facebook group, some sort of online presence where you can just directly, you don’t even have to interact at the beginning. All you really have to do is just read what people are saying, you know, and that just gives you, it helps inform and kind of shape, um, you were messaging cause you’re just listening directly to the market.

Jim Rembach (29:23):

Oh, that’s very, very helpful and very practical. And I think anybody can access that. I can tell you Raza, I’ve had a really good time talking to you today. Can you tell me how the B2B DM gang can get in touch with you?

Raza Imam (29:34):

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think the easiest way is just to go to my website. Authorpreneurelite.com. So the word author and entrepreneur, like from entrepreneurial elite.com or you can look me up on LinkedIn. Um, but yeah, I’d love to, uh, those are the two, the two best ways to get ahold of me,

Jim Rembach (29:52):

Raza Imam, thanks for sharing your knowledge and wisdom and we wish you the very best.

Raza Imam (29:55):

Yeah. Thank you so much.

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