I’ve been hearing a lot about the rise of subscription services so this month I decided to read Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future – and What to Do About It by Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora, a company that provides a billing and finance platform for subscription-based businesses.
Later in this post, I’ll share my thoughts on two implications for expert authors.
The premise of the book is that today’s consumers have moved away from ownership towards access and outcomes. They also want to be happily surprised on a regular basis. Because of this trend, businesses need to think beyond the transactional purchase and build a relationship with individual customers, not customer segments.
A good example is Amazon. Every Amazon customer has their own home page, not a generic, one size fits all. When you access your Amazon home page, you’re presented with your personal activity history and personalized shopping recommendations based on past purchases and previous searches you’ve performed on the site.
Companies used to follow a top-down business model that started with the product at the top. The product was then pushed out through various sales channels to the customer at the bottom. The new business model Mr. Tzuo advises companies to use is a concentric circle with the customer in the center circle, surrounded by the Customer Experience, Services, and finally sales channels. In other words, the business is driven by the customer, not the product.
What that means is the need to have a big launch of a new product with all the features you can imagine is going away in favor of launching a product (or service) with a robust set of features that evolves over time based on customer feedback and interaction.
It also means that companies have an opportunity to lock customers into a subscription which guarantees a certain amount of income each month. The client experience and satisfaction is the driving force. In order to prevent the customer from unsubscribing, the company will have to build a strong relationship with the customers.
I’ve adapted two strategies from the book into takeaways authors can use:
Establish a Direct Relationship with your book buyers
You probably have several distribution channels for your book, including Amazon, so let’s use them as an example. As the largest book store in the world, Amazon is an excellent distribution channel. When you sell your books there, Amazon owns the customer relationship, you don’t. They collect the buyer information and that isn’t passed on to you.
If you want to establish a direct relationship with the buyer, you have to bring them to your author platform (mailing list, social media page, etc.) and capture their information so that you can start communicating with them on a regular basis. One way to entice buyers to your platform is to offer them something on the author’s bio page or on a resources page in the book.
- Provide a link to an assessment, worksheets, tips sheets or other tools. When the buyer visits the link, you provide the resource in exchange for their email address.
- Invite the reader to join your Facebook group
- Utilize your Amazon Author Central Account to connect your blog so that blog posts show up on the page. Look at my Amazon Author Page to see an example.
Promote Your Book Using Search Engines and Social Media
Search engines and social media platforms have become the primary tools people use when looking for solutions. Building a tribe of followers who are interested in you and who will recommend your books and services to others should be a focus for you:
- Ensure you’re active on the social platforms most likely to be visited by your ideal reader.
- Use personal stories to stand out from other authors who may focus on the same topic as you. Start with your ‘who’, ‘why’, and ‘how’. Who is the person that will benefit the most from reading your book? What problem are they trying to solve? Why did you decide to write a book? What issues do you see happening in the world that caused you to know the time is now for you to write the book? What do you see happening in your industry or society that makes you experience and expertise relevant? How your readers lives be better or transformed when they finish the book? What will they learn? What will they be able to do that they couldn’t do before?
- Share information in blog posts and articles that are optimized for the search terms your ideal reader uses.
I recommend the book to anyone who wants to understand the societal shifts occurring around product ownership and the opportunities with a subscription model. It’s well researched, but I believe it’s geared more towards companies as opposed to solo-preneurs.
