New Podcast Episode: Grow Your Author Brand Post-Publication with Deb Gabor

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smith publicity's all things book marketing podcast grow your author brand post-publication with deb gabor

Can you give us a quick recap on author branding?

It’s important to understand what a brand is. A lot of people think that a brand is a logo or a color scheme or a tagline or something that you’re known for. Really, there’s two kinds of branding. I like to refer to “big B” Branding, which is strategic branding—carving out the conceptual space that you occupy in the minds of the customers who are most highly predictive of your success. Then there’s “little B” branding, which, if you envision a brand as being kind of like an iceberg, is the part of the iceberg that you see above the top of the water. It does represent things like color schemes, logos, typography, campaigns, and things like that. So, in total, a brand is the emotional connection that an author makes with their audience, and it’s something that’s consistently delivered across not just everything that they write, but everything that they do. I always say actions speak louder than marketing. A brand is more than marketing. A brand is a promise, and that promise is the ultimate benefit, the singular benefit that you’re going to deliver to people when they don’t just consume your book but consume any content or thought leadership that comes from you.

Is it ever too late to start developing a brand?

No, there’s never a time that’s too late. I always say that branding is like an always-on activity. If you’re an author or you’re thinking about being an author, you’re kind of like a startup, right? I always say brand early, often, and always and always have your finger on the pulse of what’s going on out there. So, no, there really is no time that’s too early to think about your brand. Now, I know that sometimes it’s too early to hire a team to do your publicity. If the brand isn’t really carved out, it’s not well established, like, “Who you are?” “What do you stand for?” “What is the change you’re looking to see in the world?” then it makes the job of folks like Smith Publicity very, very difficult. But the question that you were asking was like, is it ever too late? And I think that my own story is a really good example of: It’s never too late.

I used to be a publicist, and as a publicist there are lots of things that I should have known better. One of those things being if I was going to come to market with a book, I probably should have worked on publicity before I did that. But we’re our worst clients. I made the switch over to doing branding consulting a long, long time ago and wrote a book. I wrote a very popular book. But what I hadn’t thought about was, “How is this book going to serve me in my career?” I was so compelled to share my content with other people that I didn’t think through all of these things thoughtfully and strategically, like the good former publicist that I was. So here I was with a book that had been on the market for, I don’t know, seven or eight months or something like that. And I was having good sales and speaking engagements and all of that kind of stuff, but I wasn’t deliberate about how I wanted that book to serve me in my life, my career, my authority, and what I wanted it to do for me personally. I hadn’t thought about any of those things. I was sort of late to the game. The interesting thing was my brand has always been really, really clear. I’m the brand. I’m the brand dominatrix, the irrational loyalty lady. I’m known for that. So I think it made the job of publicity a little bit easier because I was very clear on my brand, but what the publicity team did post-publication was use my book as a piece of referenceable credibility that helped me get into the conversations that I needed to be in with the right people.

What are ways authors can actively use their books to boost their branding?

My first book is about the methodology that we use in our business. I basically give our secret sauce as an organization away for the cost of a book. It is an artifact of my career success and knowledge. I give the methodology away for free, but I also know that people can’t really do it on their own. And so to some extent, it’s more than a business card, it’s a lead magnet. Now, I did a really, really bold thing in my second book. At the back of the book, in the acknowledgments, I wrote a letter to the reader that says something like, “You know what? If you don’t believe that branding is important and you don’t believe that it can change the trajectory of your organization or you as an individual, here’s my proposal to you. Hire me, pay me nothing upfront. And then once we go through the process of really focusing, refining, and articulating your brand, you can pay me what you think it’s worth based on whatever stray idea, transformative notion you picked up from work with me.” And you’d be surprised. I’ve had some people take me up on that. Having a book is more than just a calling card. It’s an artifact of your authority.

I use my books for reference material and content as well. One of the things about establishing and growing your authority footprint is that you have to be out there all the time. You have to be sharing information. Well, I wrote a couple of books that are all over 200 pages. Every single word in those books is a piece of content that can be leveled, repurposed, atomized, turned into a different form factor used in a media interview, whatever. Every single book, it’s like two years of content, and then it’s two years of new content if you’re thoughtful and strategic about it.

What are some things that authors can do post-publication to continue growing their brands?

If you haven’t done it yet, clearly articulate your brand narrative and foundation. The hint that I give for this is to really think about these three things:

  1. The best brands in the world become part of the people who use them.
  2. They’re not just different, they’re unique. Legendary brands are unique.
  3. Brands make their customers a hero in their own stories.

So if you are an author and you are not clear on your brand identity and your brand narrative, your brand foundation, answer these three questions:

  1. What does it say about my reader that they read my book?
  2. What is the one thing that people get from me as an author and my books? By extension, what is the one thing, the singular thing they get from me that they don’t get from anyone else?
  3. How do you make your reader the hero in their story?

That’s the shortcut for doing it right there. This really goes into the idea of putting your reader in the center of the brand and demonstrating how do you become part of them. I also have free digital downloads on my website that people can go, and they can download brand exercises too. Also, figure out how are you going to extend your brand beyond the book, right? How are you going to get the thoughts, the ideas, the notions, the stories, the change that you want to see in the world? How are you going to get that out to as many people as possible? It doesn’t necessarily have to be in a monetizable way, but how are you going to take the content in that book and bring it into the real world?

“Leading Expert” doesn’t come close to describing Deb Gabor‘s passion for brands. More accurate? Brand Guru. Brand Impresario. Brand Evangelist. She’s written the book on branding (three times!) with bestsellers Branding is Sex, Irrational Loyalty, and Person-ality. She’s the founder and CEO of Sol Marketing, a strategy-led marketing firm obsessed with solving major business and branding problems for clients in every industry. Companies throughout the world use Deb’s Brand Values Pyramid, Ideal Customer Archetype, and “Brand Swagger Questions” to align their teams and articulate their brands to audiences.

Deb also lends her brand authority with frequent contributions and commentary to major news outlets such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, FORTUNE, Inc., MediaPost, New York Times, NPR, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Business and marketing organizations regularly call on Deb as a keynote speaker and workshop leader, relying on her as an inspiration for executives to embrace the power of branding to create Marketing That Sells.