How To Create A Book Marketing Plan
We know that some authors write books for their own self-fulfillment, however, if you want to increase your audience and make money, you need to treat your authorship as a business. Which means, you need a marketing plan customized for each book and its target audience.
There are many ways to promote a book, but having a comprehensive book marketing plan will give you a blueprint for promoting a successful book by using effective book promotion strategies. It’ll also let you know how and where to spend your limited time and money at.
Key elements to include in you book marketing plan:
Assessment
The Book
What is the book about?
What makes the book different from your competitors’ book?
Where will the book be sold? Which formats? (eBook, paperback, audio, etc.)
What is the price of all formats of the book? Sales price?
Why will/should your audience enjoy this book?
What message is this book giving?
How will/should this book make your audience feel?
Do you have unique experience or expertise on the topic of the book?
Is the book a standalone, or will it be included in a series?
Is the book a novella, short, or novel, etc.?
You (The Author)
Write an engaging bio in third person. (Make sure it’s not dry & boring)
Do you have an official website where potential readers can visit and learn more about you?
Do you have a mailing list where potential readers can sign up to receive your newsletter?
Which social media platforms are you on AND do your potential readers hang there?
Do people in your book’s niche know about you?
What makes you as an author stand out?
Are you consistent? If not, what will you do to start?
Define Your Target Audience
Listen, this is one of the most important parts of this marketing plan. Please understand, your book is NOT for everyone! Ok, got it… let’s continue.
Who are the primary and secondary audiences of the book?
What are their characteristics?
How old are they?
What are they’re interests?
What do they like to do for fun?
Which social media platforms are they active on?
Why do they buy books?
What topics do they discuss?
What do they do for a living?
Are they single, married, divorced, or widowed? Do they have kids?
Who is most likely to buy this book?
Get as detailed as possible. If necessary, create multiple audiences that you think may be interested in the book. Never, use a broad audience like, “black women, age 25-40, who love reading urban fiction stories,” because it’s not going to cut it. The more detailed your target audience is, the better you will be able to attract and sell them your book.
Study Your Competition
Who are your top competitors?
Who are they marketing to?
What type of audiences follow them?
Where are they marketing their books?
Which social media platforms are they active on?
What marketing messages do they use?
How consistent are they?
Please do not copy your competitors, always be your creative self.
When you study your competitors, you gain insight on how to better position your book in the market. You can come up with great marketing and promotional ideas as well.
Go an extra mile and write down a list of books from your top competitors that’s similar to your book. Now, how is your book different? Better? Be sure to write down how your book is different and better. Get creative and write a compelling & effective sales copy explaining how different your book is.
Set Your Core Marketing Message
Based off what you’ve done so far above, it’s time to write out some effective sales copy for your book. You can always tweak it later, but having a few core marketing messages will help you understand if your audience is reacting to your communication style.
What are the main messages you want to communicate?
Create messages for your newsletter, your website, each social media platform you use, and other media channels you plan to utilize.
Set Your Goals
When I ask my clients “What are your goals for this book promotion campaign?” I almost always get an undefined answer… and that’s really frustrating as a book marketer.
Having well-defined, realistic and actionable goals for your books are crucial.
However, setting them too high, could affect your motivation. And, setting them too low or easy, isn’t going to make your books that successful.
Here’s a few goals as an example:
Sell (# of) eBooks on Amazon in (# of) months
Sell (# of) Paperbacks on Amazon in (# of) months
Increase my followers on (insert social media platform) by (%).
Increase my newsletter subscribers by (# of additional subscribers you want).
Reach out to (# of) (insert influencer).
Create awareness by creating a blog on my website and driving traffic to it.
Give away (#of) eBooks/paperbacks to (# of) readers in exchange for an honest review.
Develop A Marketing Strategy
Depending on the goals you’ve set for your book, you will need to develop strategies to start promoting your book to accomplish your goals.
We’ve talked about five book marketing strategies to get consistent sales in our previous blog post here.
Set Your Budget
After you’ve developed different strategies and set up the action steps to accomplish them, you will need to determine how much it’s going to cost you. Granted, a lot of promotional tactics are free, but some will need some funding. In this industry, like most, you have to pay to play.
We highly suggest that you choose lower-risk strategies that you believe will have the most effect if you have a tight budget.
Make sure you project the cost for everything for the most approximate costs, so that you won’t have any surprises or go over your budget.
Develop A Timeline
Now it’s time to put everything in action!
Prioritize and assign dates for every action.
Set a deadline for every action.
Schedule all of: your posts on social media, your blog posts, your mailing lists, etc.
Consistently engage with your audience and your network on a daily basis.
Measure Your Success
Hooray! You’ve created your book marketing plan!
It’s very important to track your progress to see what’s working and what’s not working in order to refine your marketing plan.
Answer your well-defined goal questions.
How many eBooks did I sell on Amazon in (# of) months?
How many paperback books did I sell on Amazon in (# of) months?
How many new followers did I get on (insert social media platform)?
How many new newsletter subscribers did I get?
How many (insert influencer) did I work with? What were the results?
How many new visits did my website get?
How many readers (that I gave away a free book to) left an honest review?
Continue to use what worked really well. Whatever didn’t work so good, make adjustments or swap it altogether.
Many of the actions you are going to take are going to pay off in the long run. It’s ok if you don’t see results right away — marketing isn’t a race, it’s a marathon.
