That observation was shared by John Zulli in reference to his journey as a multimedia author/publisher.
It was a fascinating conversation on topics ranging from listening to the professionals you hire (“John, why do you buy a dog and bark yourself?”) to choosing the media format(s) and distribution that best fit your material and target audience.
Unlike even two years ago, today’s media makers have a variety of affordable media technologies to choose from. Video, audio, text, mobile apps are all relatively inexpensive to produce.
Add to this the dizzying array of distribution choices that seem to grow daily (YouTube, Facebook, iTunes, Amazon, etc), not to mention traditional retail channels where you can sell packaged media like books and DVDs.
The combinations are overwhelming and every media maker needs two things to be successful: a plan and discipline.
John is on a mission and you can hear it in his words below. There are six great lessons here for anyone planning to release a media product.
Lesson 1: Which comes first? Marketing or distribution?
The huge mistake I made was that before we really had avenues of distribution in place, I went on a rampage with PR. We were on Amazon.com, I think we were on barnesandnoble.com, but we didn’t have any distributors. We really weren’t in bookstores. I jumped the gun. The problem was that they couldn’t go down to the bookstore and buy it.
This time I’ll do exactly the opposite. We’re creating more and more lines of distribution whether it’s Amazon or anything online, even eBay. I’m going to re-release the book in January 2011 because January is the month that everybody starts to make a decision they want to make some kind of personal change.
Lesson 2: Find the market and then build the product they’re looking for.
Somebody told me when I started my book that 90% of the things that you’re going to do to sell this book will not work. You’re going to have to find the 10% that works for you and you’re going to have to focus on that 10%.
Let’s take the golf market. I worked with people on the Senior Pro-Tour but I didn’t have anybody new and exciting. I got on plenty of shows, I talked a lot of golf. The audience loved it. The press loved it. But we didn’t really see a lot. The people didn’t flock in to Amazon or our website to go get the book.
Now about 6 months ago, I did a program and again this is very much in line with my target audience. I did a program for the International Association of Administrative Professionals. Women in their let’s say mid 20s to 50s and 60s. And they had bought 200 copies of my book. And when I was about to take the stage, the President of the Association came to me and she said, “Listen, if we can’t sell all these books, would you be willing to buy them back?” And I looked at her and I said, “Well if I can’t sell 200 books to 600 people, then I’m in the wrong business. But I’m happy to buy them back.” To make a long story short, we sold out after the first session. They sold 200 books to 300 people.
So go to your base and then work out from there finding topics that cause your audience pain – you know pain causes people to change.
Lesson 3: Match your media to your target audience.
The techniques that I teach really do lend themselves well to listening and to watching, either through a demonstration or through audio presentation. So before I create books I’m actually going to create a series of DVDs and audio products.
If you’re a good negotiator find somebody who might be willing to shoot the entire video, do the editing, maybe even do some of the packaging for a percentage. If you have to pay for it, good videographers are running anywhere from $50 to $100 an hour. The great news is that there’s software that will allow you to do a bang up job on editing. The hardest part isn’t the cameras. The hardest part is the lighting.
And here’s the other part, one of the things that I’m doing, and this is what makes it cost effective for me, is that if I write out and put on the teleprompter what I’m going to say, I can pretty much do anything in one take. Then what happens is that we go ahead and we have the teleprompter information transferred over into an ebook.
You really can’t manufacture a book with the same economy of scale and so once you got it all package up, it seems like it’s just either about the same price or possibly even a little bit more, and then you’re left with 5,000 or 10,000 books.
Lesson 4: Promote the expert, not the name of your media.
Here’s another mistake that I made. When we first launch the book I kept branding the book The Mind Rules. But that was a mistake because people don’t really care about The Mind Rules. They’re more interested in John Zulli and what John Zulli can do for them.
I had 4 agents that wanted to represent me. One woman called me up and she said, “I’ve been passing your proposal around and it’s opening a lot of doors.” And I said, “Well, there you go. It’s good proposal.” She said, “No, it’s not your proposal, it’s your picture.” I said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Don’t hate me ‘cause I’m beautiful.” And she said, “No, John it’s not that. When people see your picture, they think this guy can help me.”
Lesson 5: Some media are better credibility builders than others.
When you see someone on television, there is an unconscious association that this person is an expert or else why would they be on television. And oddly enough, it doesn’t matter if it’s Fox News or whether it’s a video that you presented. When people see people on their TV screen, they have a tendency to connect to them or associate with their expertise. And we are a visual society. So yes, I think that the DVD will lend itself very well to marketing the personality, to marketing the information.
Lesson 6: Building your authority.
I have certain capabilities and if I don’t approach these things from a one step at a time situation I get way ahead of myself.
I’m not going to make the same mistake I made the last time. Let’s get the products up. Let’s get our avenues of distribution out there. Let’s start the research moving forward. Once that’s done, I will go on a PR blitz.
One of the ways that I will build my reputation as well as my audience base is by going to the types of TV and radio shows that utilize my information. In addition, I’ve realized that I wrote a lot of articles. I got these articles on the Internet, they got posted on people’s websites and that brought me a lot of business.
I’m also very fortunate in that I do seminars and workshops.
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