Strategic Book Marketing 101

Sales and Marketing professionals understand that completing a sale is a two-step process (some say three steps or more, but for simplicity let's boil it down to two steps). The two steps are:

1) Awareness = Marketing, and
     
2) The Close = Completing the Sale

Most individuals and publishers do not create awareness via public relations, traditional means, or even use the web very well. In general, we see that most publishing companies and self-publishing companies do an adequate job at providing the "Close" via a purchasing website.

Awareness is typically referred to as Marketing. We will use the two terms interchangeably. Without Awareness, the buyer doesn't know the book exists, therefore, they cannot buy it. It seems simplistic, and it is. Without AWARENESS, there will be no sale. One caveat: You want to create awareness within a "buyer" demographic related to your title, not the general public.

Closing the Sale, or "The Close" refers to the mechanics of completing the sale for the book.  Hopefully, the publisher has thought through the following: Is the book easily purchased? Should the purchase go through Amazon, or the publisher's website, or the author's website. Each has different costs, profits, and viability.

   
Creating Awareness, Buzz, Marketing... And more.

Awareness about books can be created in a myriad of ways including PR, radio, tv, Internet search engines, blogs, traditional mailings, tradeshows, interviews, etc. Every method has it's supporters and detractors. Every author is more comfortable with one method over another. Some companies are better at one method than another, very few companies do it all well.

Our company believes that one of the simplest ways to create awareness and give the author the most "bang for the buck" is to make sure that the authors web presence is optimized. Whatever marketing technique is used, it will generally flow back to a web page to complete the awareness/close loop.

We believe in using PR and other methods to drive sales to the web.

   
Optimizing Web Presence

Given the ever increasing and expanding nature of the Internet, and the ability to focus on specific buyer demographics, it makes sense to make sure that your web presence is optimized. Traditional sales of your book will go through traditional channels, however, incremental, and an increasingly greater share of your book's sales will go through the web. Even radio, TV, interviews, etc, are typically going to refer the buyer to a website for more information and to close the sale.

Where is your "landing page"? If someone goes to the web to find you, do they end up at an Amazon listing, or a publisher listing? And if they do end up at this listing, are you presented in a way that differentiates you from your competition. Let's discuss the three main types of Landing Pages for a book on the Internet. They are:

a) An Amazon Page, or

b) A Publisher Page, or

c) Your Web page.

Particularly in the case of Amazon, you will be one of a list. What would make me buy your book from a list where you look like any other book? A publisher's page can be good, but it also may not show all your strengths, and it is quite likely not optimized for search engines.

Next... I Have My Landing Page, Now What?
Send it traffic, send it traffic, send it traffic!

Now that you have a proper landing page, and a proper way to close the sale, it's time to generate traffic. These are the top ways to generate traffic that we promote:

• Public Relations to build your name
• Reviews in major periodicals
• Interviews
• Blog Tours
• Advertising on both the web and traditional media
• and more, more, more!