Happy Marketing Monday!
I highly recommend Guerilla Marketing for Writers by Jay Conrad-Levinson
The book covers 100 weapons for selling your work range from creating media kits and promotional calendars to appearing at book-group discussions and fundraisers. Each "weapon" is rated by its monetary cost to the author, and well over half are free. This mostly pertains to nonfiction but I think anyone can utilize these strategies.
In addition, Guerilla Marketing covers 15 marketing secrets that you must think through to have a successful marketing plan:
- Content - first you need to write a great book before you can market it.
- Commitment - you must commit to creating a marketing plan and then do 5 things for your marketing every day.
- Investment - think of money you put into marketing as a long-term investment.
- Consistent - be consistent on the frequency and quality of your marketing messages.
- Confident - consistency creates familiarity and familiarity creates confidence. Confidence is more important than price or other packaging factors.
- Patient - Know it will take time to build and execute an effective plan. Follow up to ensure results.
- Assortment - use many different marketing tools to reach different people. Don't only use only 1 or 2 ways. It will only get you so far.
- Subsequent - focus on creating readers for life more than you focus on sales.
- Convenient - make it easy for people to reach you and have access to your books.
- Amazement - excite your readers. technology has a high "Wow" factor in marketing these days (vlogs, twitter, trailers etc).
- Measurement - track the effectiveness of your "marketing weapons". Eliminate what fails, continue what works.
- Involvement - Did you know that it costs 6x more to get new readers than to keep old readers? Stay involved with your readers frequently - web sites, forums, emails, newsletters etc.
- Dependent - create "win-win" dependencies that enable everyone to achieve goals
- Armament. - use up-to-date technology to promote your work. Don't get outdated.
- Consent - by being a source of information, you are silently gaining consent to market to your readers.
Let me know if you have any questions on these secrets to marketing success.
Hope this helps...
5 comments:
Sounds like a great book. I wish I was at a place in my writing career where I could utilize all your awesome advice. I'm soaking it up for the future though!
What can writers do pre-publication to set up their marketing "platform?" Just the usual, i.e. blog, publish short stories, etc?
Hey Casey - I would start with a plan. You need a campaign that utilizes all channels: personal (biz cards etc), online (blogs and sites), written (articles), person (signings). But first start with a plan in outlining how you are going to reach each group. Mostly - create a personal network that can help you spread the word. Think about creating a brand for yourself and getting it out to different people. The well-fed Selfpublisher book by Peter bowerman is excellent b/c it helps authors create a grassroots plan.
The title of that book reminds of my marketing writing days centuries ago...er, decades ago. i think there was a very popular book by that name...the for writer's part is very interesting. May have to check it out.
I've skimmed this book but never read it. It's still on the list, but the list is longer than my arm. (The to-be-read list, that is.) I'll be interested to learn more about number 8... strategies to create long term readers rather than one-time sales.
I'm not sure I understand #15--"Consent." Is that like becoming an expert in something so that others will consent to listening to you?
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