What Authors Need to Know About Book Marketing
EPISODE SIXTY FOUR
A majority of the conversations I have with authors about book marketing start off with, "I hate marketing!" I get it - it's not what you got into writing for. But, what if I were to tell you that marketing just might not be what you think it is? In this episode I share four very important details that authors need to know about marketing.
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TRANSCRIPT:
If you've ever found yourself saying, "I hate book marketing," or, "I feel uncomfortable asking readers to buy my book," or if you feel gross or slimy when you think about selling your book, you are not alone. So many of the authors that I talk to really have a big resistance towards book marketing and they have really a misconception of what it is. Today I wanted to talk about some of the key factors of marketing that are going to make it so much more enjoyable and more effective and make your efforts more successful.
My name is Jenn Hanson-DePaula and I'm the co-founder of Mixtus Media. The purpose of our work is to empower and educate authors with the best book marketing, social media, and newsletter information available. I'm really good at helping authors simplify the book marketing process and helping them connect with their readers, specifically using social media. If this sounds like something that you need help with, be sure to subscribe for more.
One of the first misconceptions that many people have about marketing is that marketing is sales. Marketing and sales are two completely different things. Marketing is all about building awareness and making connections. You can do that really effectively, specifically on social media because you can create a community and people can get to know you, more about your books and it's really a connection tool. Sales comes after you have set up your marketing. Sales comes when you're actually ready to sell your book.
It might be around the launch of your book or when you have a promotion. They are not lumped together. Many times when I talk to authors about marketing their book before it's actually ready to release, they say, "I don't have anything to sell. How can I market my book?" This is really about separating the two. You can absolutely market your book before it's even available. I really encourage authors to do that because it takes some time to really create community and to create these relationships.
Looking at marketing as separate from selling is going to be essential within your overall book marketing approach. The second point that I want to make leans a little bit more into what we were talking about within creating relationships and connection. Marketing really is about awareness. Even though social media is one of the best ways to really create that connection, you can do it in many other ways. Marketing can include being on podcasts, doing different podcast interviews, it could be guest blogging, it could be a multitude of different things.
Thinking about marketing as really the top of your funnel, that's really the beginning of where we're going to be leading people down to actually buy our book. When we focus on building that awareness, letting people know that you and your book actually exist is going to really make marketing more relationship-focused and not sales-focused. Thinking about how you want to connect with your readers, even if it's not through social media, you can find other ways to really connect with readers, even locally or in person, it doesn't have to be online.
Focusing on building awareness and connection is key. The third thing I would love to point out is that marketing does not have to take over your life. Back 20 years ago when we didn't have online resources or we didn't have social media, we only had a few months where we could actually promote and talk about our books within the media or within certain other in-person events. Now that we have social media and other online resources, we can really stretch our marketing out.
When we're looking at our release date, we aren't going to have to focus all of our promotions within this limited timeframe. You can spread your marketing out throughout the year. It's not so concentrated within this one particular timeframe. Also when we focus on just a few marketing tactics at a time, we're able to give it our focus and then we're able to do those tasks really, really well rather than when we spread ourselves out too thin by doing anything and everything within our marketing.
When we focus on just a few key tasks at a time, it not only saves your sanity, but it helps you to actually do those tasks better. The fourth point to really point out is that marketing has dramatically changed even over the past few years. When we think that the same marketing strategies will work over 20 or even 30 years, we are sorely mistaken. People discover, discuss, and purchase books in different ways. They are going to be changing year after year, especially as technology advances.
When we mainly focus on our content, meaning how do we want to connect with our readers. What is our messaging? What are the topics that we want to talk about? That is really going to be evergreen. It's something that we can tweak here and there, but as technology advances and as new marketing techniques appear, we're going to be able to easily fit into those new ideas and new tactics because we know what our messaging is and we know how we want to connect with people.
Even though things are going to be changing, it doesn't mean that we have to change our messaging or our approach to it, the vehicle will just be a little different. Being fluid with how things work and really starting to not look at change as being this dramatic or life-changing event within our marketing, we can adjust easily to it when we know what it is that we're talking about and how we want to connect with our readers. To recap, first things first, is that marketing and sales are two completely different things.
We need to focus on marketing being a connection tool. Sales comes down the line. Third is that marketing does not have to take over your life. When we can spread things out and focus on a few things at a time, it's going to change everything. Fourth, remembering that marketing has changed and will continue to change over the years, so being fluid with it, but knowing how you want to connect with your readers and your content that you're going to be sharing is going to stay the same.
If you would like a more in-depth view of this or to get a better strategy around your book marketing, be sure to download my free book marketing blueprint. It's going to help you get everything on track and it's going to give you the parameters that you need to really simplify your book marketing and to see better results. You can get your copy by visiting mixusmedia.com or checking out the show notes.