5 Tips to Make the Most of Your Free Book Giveaway with ScoreApp
Giving away your book (or just a chapter or two) might feel counterintuitive. However, for business professionals, it’s a strategic move that can transform long-term lead generation, conversion rates, and revenue opportunities.
Business leaders and entrepreneurs write books based on their hard-earned wisdom and experience.
The purpose of these books goes beyond sharing knowledge. A book can build authority, boost engagement, and drive more sales for your business.
And the secret to capitalizing on these benefits…is giving your book away for free.
Here’s how you can make the most of giving away your book for free – especially when using ScoreApp to personalize the experience and deepen engagement.
1. Decide what to give away and position yourself as an authority
First things first: you don’t have to give away your entire book!
Sometimes, offering just a chapter or section works better as a teaser.
Giving away a chapter helps establish your authority in your industry and encourages interested readers to purchase your book. It can also entice them to explore your higher-ticket products and services.
You could also use a free chapter as a lead magnet to build a waitlist for your book launch.
Creating a waitlist helps to build a sense of exclusivity that creates engagement with your book long before launch.
Your waitlist audience wants to access your free chapter. In exchange, they can offer invaluable insights on why people are interested in your book as a whole, which you can use to refine your marketing and sales messages.
You need to frame the giveaway as a valuable insight from a trusted expert, not just a freebie. The key is to choose to give away a section that delivers immediate value…while still leaving readers curious for more.
How ScoreApp helps:
ScoreApp can help you maximize the impact of your free book chapter or section.
First, create a compelling landing page that positions your book as an invaluable resource for your ideal client.
We have templates to cover a range of purposes and industries, each of which has over 50 fully customizable drag-and-drop sections that you can brand with your company colors, logos, and more.
Here are two that can help you get started:
These landing pages will collect prospect data with an engaging and interactive quiz or assessment.
Your quiz helps readers identify the value they will get from your book, and their personalized results Scorecard will provide additional insight and ways for them to act on what you teach within it.
You can then use the data you collect to pre-qualify your audience and build anticipation for your book launch with relevant and targeted email marketing journeys based on their individual struggles.
Creating such a personalized experience establishes your authority from the very first touchpoint.
2. Use different quizzes before and after reading to deepen engagement
Including a quiz is a great way to deepen engagement with your free book (or chapter) and collect valuable insights about your readers.
But did you know that you don’t need to stick to just one quiz?
For example, a pre-reading quiz helps position your book as a solution to a specific problem, increasing the content’s perceived value.
Then, you could follow up with a post-reading quiz to help readers reflect on what they’ve learned and encourage them to take further action.
These quizzes serve different but equally valuable purposes.
The pre-quiz helps readers understand where they are and builds anticipation for the value they will receive in your book.
The post-quiz helps to reinforce the reader’s transformation and provides guidance on their next steps, such as booking a consultation or purchasing a related product.
How ScoreApp helps:
Let’s say you run a marketing agency and have written a book called ‘A Guide to Digital Marketing for SMEs’.
Your pre-book quiz could be called “What’s Your Marketing Superpower?”.
This profile quiz helps your prospective reader understand where their marketing is performing well and where they can make improvements. Plus, their personalized results Scorecard makes the book feel like a tailored solution rather than a generic resource.
After people have read your book, you could then set up a 1-2-1 strategy session quiz.
Here, your quiz questions help your readers measure their progress, and then provide them with the opportunity to book a strategy session with you to gain more personalized feedback – if they are the right fit, of course!
This post-book quiz will also identify opportunities for further engagement and upselling to your high-ticket services.
ScoreApp makes setting up these different quizzes quick and pain-free. Our award-winning team has created hundreds of fully customizable quiz templates that can have you up and running in as little as ten minutes.
3. Personalize the experience of reading the same book
Even though all your leads are reading the same book, they won’t all have the same challenges or goals.
Personalization is one of the most effective ways to drive conversions and improve customer retention. 81% of consumers prefer companies that offer personalized experiences.
Why? Because personalizing experiences increases their perceived value.
When the content you use to market your free book giveaway feels directly and personally relevant to your readers, they are more likely to engage and take action because it feels like your book was written specifically for them.
How ScoreApp helps
With ScoreApp, you can personalize the reader’s journey from the second they request access to your free book.
This can include sending specific resources based on the challenges each reader is facing.
For example, if you are a sales consultant, you could set up a Sales Growth Scorecard that helps your readers identify the strengths and weaknesses of their sales strategy and process.
The data you collect in this quiz can then be used to determine which chapter or section of your book will be most useful for each person.
You can also set up personalised email sequences for your readers based on their responses to your quiz questions, and send follow-up content – such as bonus worksheets or additional resources – to match each person’s unique situation.
4. Nurture and guide readers towards the next step
To make the most of your free book giveaway, it’s important to see it as the starting point, not the end of the journey.
Without a structured follow-up plan, many people will download your book and never engage again.
Your readers have a real interest in what you have to offer. The high levels of trust you have built with your free book giveaway will make it much easier to move readers through your sales funnel to become high-paying clients.
The goal of giving away your book for free is to use it as a lead magnet that provides so much value for your readers that they are naturally guided towards higher value engagements with your business, like:
- A consultation
- A course
- A high-ticket product
How ScoreApp helps
Set up automated nurture sequences with ScoreApp to keep readers engaged without extra manual effort.
Sending personalized follow-ups helps to position you as a trusted advisor. The more people can interact with you directly (or at least feel like they are), the greater the likelihood they will want to engage with your other offerings.
For example: If you are a nutritionist and your free book is about creating a balanced diet, you could set up a Personalized Nutrition Audit quiz to help people understand how they can optimize their nutritional wellbeing.
You could then share exclusive resources and offers (such as meal plans or lifestyle advice) based on each person’s quiz responses.
ScoreApp can automatically segment your leads by their reading behavior to ensure your leads receive the most relevant next step for their situation.
5. Track and optimize your results for continuous growth
Finally, simply counting the downloads of your free book or chapter isn’t enough to truly make the most of the opportunity. You need to base the success of your free book giveaway on deeper insights.
Before you launch your free book campaign, set clear KPIs and understand which metrics are most important to you.
The data you track could include:
- Number of book requests
- Quiz engagement rates
- Follow-up sequence open rates
- Conversion rates at each stage of your book giveaway funnel
- % of readers who convert into customers
As you analyze and optimize your results, you should A/B test different quiz formats and questions.
If you’re only giving away a chapter of your book, you should also experiment with which section you give away! The most valuable insights will come from knowing which content drives the most engagement and action from your readers.
Remember: people who take the time to read your book automatically pre-qualify themselves as high-potential leads.
When you understand their behavior, you can refine your marketing efforts and optimize your follow-up sales processes to increase effectiveness across your business.
How ScoreApp helps
ScoreApp’s user-friendly data insights dashboard gives you a clear view of not only who engages with your content, but also how they engage with it.
You can easily track which chapters are most impactful, interactions with your quizzes, and responses to your follow-ups, down to each individual lead.
The more of this information you collect, the more effectively you can segment your audience based on quiz results to create targeted future offers and content that speaks directly to your readers’ needs.
Why business leaders give away their books
One of the biggest misconceptions about giving away your book for free is that it devalues your experience and expertise.
Here’s the truth: business people don’t give away their books to devalue them. They do it because a free book is a strategic tool that grows their influence – and their sales.
A well-crafted book, based on years of hard-earned experience and expertise, serves as a powerful entry point to your wider business ecosystem…including your higher-value products and services.
When leveraged effectively, a free book giveaway creates an opportunity to:
- Establish yourself as a leading expert in your industry.
- Build trust and authority with your ideal clients.
- Drive engagement to your premium offers (such as on-demand courses, group coaching, and 1:1 consulting)
- Turn readers into long-term clients.
When you pair your book with ScoreApp’s powerful quiz marketing software, you aren’t just giving away a book.
Instead, you create a highly personalized experience where every reader feels supported and understood.
Not only that, but a targeted quiz or assessment helps you build a goldmine of data from your readers about their challenges, beliefs, and aspirations for the future.
Create a high-converting free book giveaway with ScoreApp
When positioned correctly, giving away your book for free is a strategic investment, not a loss.
A free book giveaway helps you deliver immense value and build strong relationships with your ideal client from their first interaction with your business.
With ScoreApp, you can transform your simple book giveaway into a powerful lead generation tool that creates long-term engagement with your content and long-term business growth: all because you have maximized the opportunity to turn curious readers into loyal clients.
We have hundreds of ready-to-personalize quizzes and landing page templates, plus all the resources you need to create a free book giveaway that collects, nurtures, and converts high-quality leads on autopilot.
Best of all, you can try ScoreApp for free!
