Marketing for Authors: What it Can and Can’t Do

Are you expecting too much from your author marketing strategy? Pick your mountain … Thanks to Jukan Tateisi for the amazing pic!

I’m currently helping an expert in telemarketing to develop the manuscript for her first book.  She’s an absolute whizz and blows me away with some of the things she tells me about an area of marketing I know little about, despite all my previous years in radio commercial production.

I am learning as much from her about her field as she is about authorship … the creative collaboration thing is already happening and we’ve only recently started up together.  I love having this ‘whoopee’ feeling so early in a project:  it sets a good pace and energy for the next several months’ book structuring and writing. 

Being the marketing whizz that she izz, of course, she asked the killer question in our very first chat:  “What kind of return on investment can I see on the book within the first six months?”

“It depends on what you want to do with it,” said I.  “What would you like your book to do for you?  If you just want to sell it unit by unit, it’ll take you a long time.  Books are not big-ticket items.  But if you want to use it as a PR hook to land media interviews, bigger speaking gigs, use it as a lead magnet for seminars, build a backend business from it and so on – well, then, it’ll give you your ROI pretty darned fast.  What would your book be worth to you in those terms?”

She confessed that she hadn’t thought about it in those terms very much yet – but the tone of her voice had already changed from guarded to super-animated.  I could almost hear her imagination spinning into top speed over the ‘phone.

With her brains and experience, she could immediately see possibilities for her book-to-be that stretched far beyond the hardcopy. 

True to form, she’s wisely planning her marketing strategy while the book is in production.  It will kick in before it’s published in preparation for its launch … and especially because of a vital, often ignored principle of marketing which applies across the board.    

It is this:

No amount of advertising and marketing you do will ever make somebody buy your book if they don’t want to.  That’s not how people behave. 

MARKETING AND HUMAN NATURE

Just because your book/webinar/podcast is available doesn’t mean that your target market will immediately buy it. 

When was the last time you responded to an advertising message by actually investing in what it was persuading you to buy?  What was the product, what was the name of the business you bought it from and why did you buy it from that business rather than its competition? 

The advertising message may have been entertaining and the offer strong … but if the timing wasn’t right FOR YOU, you wouldn’t have responded and bought the product. 

No matter how brilliant your book, no matter how targeted your social media campaigns, no matter how entertaining your online videos, podcasts and network television show (wow - mazeltov!), you cannot make somebody buy something that he doesn’t want to.  

There are THREE THINGS that your marketing CAN do: 

1)    BUILD BRAND AWARENESS:  It can make you the author that your ideal reader thinks of when he’s ready to buy a book about your subject.

2)    BUILD BRAND IMAGE:  It can bring to your ideal reader’s mind your title and cover when he is ready to buy a book about your subject. 

3)    INSPIRE RESPONSE:  It can give your ideal reader a reason to buy it on the day he decides he’s ready to buy a book about your subject. 

We can’t expect other people to behave in a way that we ourselves wouldn’t.  If you’re fretting about the seeming ‘lack of response’ to your marketing, don’t give up on it.  If your message and scheduling are strong, simply tweak your expectations instead and give the process more time.  

Courage, mon brave!  Your brand is becoming known, and people buy when they’re ready to buy something – not before.