In this post I wanted to touch on what I feel are 6 vital elements of book marketing that you really must implement in order to maximise your book sales. It’s easy to sit back and wait for sales of your book to come in via traditional channels. Maybe you’re expecting for your book publisher to sell your book for you or your self published book has been submitted to online directories. Chances are you’re not going to see a great deal of sales that way. By implementing just one of these tactics you should see a significant increase in sales – combine all of them and I you’ll be certain to increase your chances of selling more books.
1. Public Relations – Getting Into The Media
You don’t have to hire an expensive public relations firm to get yourself into the media and sell more books. In fact it’s a lot easier than you think when you know how. Public relations is about creating a story that a newspaper, magazine, radio or TV journalist will see as news worthy. Let’s say you’ve written a book about health. Do you have an example of how your book has helped someone overcome a condition and helped them with their lives? This would be a great case study for the media – they love ‘real life’ stories. Maybe you’ve written a book about helping babies overcome sleep problems. Do you have some interesting statistics that a newspaper would find interesting, or is there something in the news that would directly relate to your book. Always be on the lookout for ways to get your book out there, but position yourself as an expert on your topic rather than simply be out to get sales. The media will simply ignore you if they think you’re out to promote your book, you have to have some information of value. Offer your local or national news ’7 Top Tips on’ your subject and send them across. Talk to the editors, get to know the local news and become someone who they go to. It’s then a case of ‘dropping in’ your web site address and promoting your book after the story.
2. A Good Web Site, That Converts
It’s very easy to get a mate to put up a web site for you, or to buy a freebie package online and expect to sell your book. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to be honest with you here – it’s not going to happen. There are a few reasons for this and it’s based on years of experience. Number one, most web designers don’t know how to market, they don’t know how to bring visitors into your web site and most of all, they don’t know how to ‘convert’ a visitor once they get there, this means – when someone arrives at your web site, does it say, look and feel right for the person to buy it. Don’t worry, I’ve spent many years with online without testing variations of headlines etc and it’s cost me money. By investing propely in your book with someone who knows not only how to give you a good web site, but who can also help you market your book, you’ll sell far more diets and the free vs paid ratio becomes clear. You want sales and this comes from this special three-pronged approach that’s tried and tested. You’ve put the hard work into your book, you’d had it published, now you don’t want to fall at the last hurdle and be frustrated with no sales.
3. Forums – Overlooked Book Marketing Tactic
This has been a bit of a gem for me over the past couple of years and you can get a great deal of interest from people who are already chatting in web site forums about the topic of your book, but you have to be careful. Spamming is a big problem for a lot of forum owners, including me for some of my web sites. You have to be genuine and go and provide good quality information to people who need it, but a lot of the time you’ll be able to add your details and web site address into the signature of your profile so that every time you post, a link will appear at the bottom. Not only will you be interacting with your target audience, you’ll be generating confidence in them which is huge if you want to create a buyer who trusts you. So, my advice would be to go and find some forums on your topic, create some accounts and spend a few hours a day replying to people offering good quality information.
4. Lead Generation – Eh? What’s That?
Things have really changed over the years when it comes to marketing, especially online. These days you can’t just exect the majority of people to just visit your site and buy, although this can happen with sites like mine that covert more visitors into customers. Lead generation is about grabbing an email address but not through the traditional ‘newsletter’ angle. By offering a unique document such as tips sheet or report that the visitor can get for free, you can start to generate a relationship with your audience. You can also offer a first chapter free or a mini online course that works quite well. Lead generation, when implememted correctly will transform your business. Why? Becuase you’ll have a list of potential clients or customer who may buy from you again. This now means not only have you written a book, but you have a potential business model to work from. What other products can you sell to your list of leads and customer. This is a very powerful marketing tactic that has transformed my business and will for you too.
5. Seminars
If you’re confident about talking about your subject then seminars can be a great way to promote your book. Who can you link up with locally to offer them a free or paid talk on your subject. Who would benefit from what you’d have to say. If you write fiction, who would be most interested in that kind of story? Alternatively, non-fiction lends itself to so much potential, you just need to sit and brainstorm ideas. If you’re not confident about talking in front of large groups then either learn or start off with smaller groups and build up gradually. The secret here is to get going and overcome the fears you have. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. All positive change comes from being outside your comfort zone. What’s more, the more confident you get in this area, the less likely you are to get nerves when it comes to media interviews. Seminars are also a great way of generating ‘leads’ (see above). If your first seminar is free then maybe you could offer a paid upgrade to your second topic. The possibilities really are endless, so just get out there and get going, you won’t regret it.
6. Social Media – Facebook, Twitter Etc
This is a great way to drive free traffic to your web site. Social media is growing massively and it’s not going away, so if you ignore it, you’ll be behind other book author who are doing it. Do you want that? Oh no! All of my web sites have social media abilities built in, but there’s a lot that happens on the back end to make it all work and a system that works really well. It combines twitter with facebook, youtube, blogging and lead generation and together, it’s a force that your competitors cannot compete with. Learn about social media and understand how it can work to help your book marketing and sales. Start by using any social media plaform you’re on and telling people abuot your book. Maybe you use facebook or twitter – great, this is a good place to start. But you need to remember that it’s pointless in using social media if you don’t have a web site that sells a visitor when they get there. I know it all sounds quite complicated, but it’s not when you really start to learn it all. In fact it becomes very easy and think about all the books you’ll be selling.
So there you go. But listen, I’ve only touched on 6 areas of book marketing and there are hundreds of potential ways to build your book sales. The secret is, take action – invest some money and start making money with your book.
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