Reasons Why Marketing Fails for Authors

If you’re thinking about going the book or author promotion on your own you might want to think about what some of the causes are for ineffective marketing. There are many resources available that will tell you all of the right things to do, but there are only a handful that highlight what not to do. Before you begin launching your strategy take a quick moment to read up on what can potentially hinder your success.

Not Knowing Your Audience & Your Budget

Marketing your book or yourself isn’t a hobby and it’s not something that just ‘add water’ to and then sit back and watch the magic. You need to have an understanding of who your target market is and what type of funding you have available to reach them. If you don’t determine where your audience is it will be difficult to know how to allocate dollars and create a spend forecast with enough longevity to make an impact with them.

Lack of Ambition & Commitment

As mentioned earlier marketing your novel and yourself means that you must be prepared to work and work hard. Many authors and speakers fail to register as a blip on the radar because they aren’t stepping up and building relationships, setting up meetings, scheduling events and initiating the activity necessary to generate interest and awareness about their product.

Inability to Understand The Process

Despite having immediate access to the internet and countless free tools, many folks still struggle with how to utilize them properly. It’s one thing to set-up a Facebook Page for you or your book and it’s an entirely different thing to know how to work the Page to your advantage. There are many different communication tactics, as well as applications that need to be executed with thought and purpose. In doing this, you’ll reap bigger and better rewards by connecting with your audience.

Not everyone has the time or the skills required to build out a strategy and maintain, or adjust, it on a constant basis, not to mention measure its outcomes. It can be an overwhelming process for anyone who’s new to the game. Fortunately, professional resources, like Leili McKinley, can help alleviate the burden and provide you with outstanding results.

Facebook Page Marketing

Facebook Pages are similar to user profiles, but instead they offer a way businesses to showcase their brands, services and products, plus give people an opportunity to connect with them. As an author, having a Facebook Page for your book is a wonderful way to let your readers share feedback, provide praise and engage with you as a writer. Just like it’s important for your book to stand out from others within your genre, knowing how to make your FB Page a cut above the rest is important too. 
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Social Media Can’t Replace Marketing

When you think about social media, think about it in terms of pizza sauce. Sounds absurd, but hear me out. Pizza is a delicious and wonderful thing to eat, you’ve got warm, fresh dough, sauce, cheese a a variety of toppings to choose from. Now if you take away cheese, toppings and dough you’re not left with much. Just a bunch of pizza sauce. This is exactly what social media is. It’s not bad on it’s own, but it’s not the complete package without other components, namely marketing, public relations, SEO, advertising and other related branding factors.

If you’re going to launch a social media strategy, you’ll need to consider how it can fit in with your overall marketing plan. Use it as a tool to build your brand and elevate conversations about it. It’s misleading to think that social media alone will transform your brand into an overnight success that generates ridiculous amounts of revenue. It is simply a good marketing option that can augment your existing efforts.
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Branding With Your URL

Good branding should be a top to bottom effort. From designing a website to planning your unique selling proposition, branding encompasses an entire strategy beyond just a pretty logo. An often overlooked component of branding is deciding what your site’s or blog’s URL address should be. This is a branding are that shouldn’t be taken lightly and we’ll explain why below.

Create a URL name that reflects what your business does or if you’re creating a blog, who the person is behind the blog. For instance, if you have a business that provides shoes for older women then you’d want to create a URL that reflect this, like shoesforseniorwomen.com. Same thing goes for developing a blog URL. The person behind the blog should use their name as the URL address, like LeiliMcKinley.com.

There are two schools of thought on URL branding. The first believes that you should use your company name in the URL since there are some folks who will search by the business name. This makes sense for larger, more established brands like Nike, Starbucks or McDonalds. It wouldn’t make sense for them to create a URL that says sportshoes,com, coffeestores.com or cheeseburgerandfries.com.

For smaller brands, which applies to most everyone else, the second approach to crafting a URL would be to write one that shows of what your business does through keywords. Using the larger brand examples from above, sportshoes.com would be an excellent way to appeal to large groups of people who are searching specifically for that item. Make sense?

Now that you have a basic understanding of what a branded URL is here are some other things to consider:

Hyphenated names. The pro is that search engine easily identify each keyword and will normally return better search results for people seeking what you offer. The con is that hyphenated URLs are easy to forget when people are sharing or recommending them.

Articles and plurals. If you’ve decided on a specific branded URL like childrensauthor.com, but discover it’s taken, you could add ‘the’ to the URL (thechildrensauthor.com). Downside is that unless people aware of the addition, you’ll lose traffic to your competitor. This is the same thing for plural URLs like, cat.com versus cats.com.

Choose carefully and spend some time planning. Try searching for something on the web and look at how the URLs have been set-up.

eBook Marketing Tips

As important as it to plan a marketing strategy for the paper and ink version of your book, it’s equally vital to develop one for your ebook version. A well-crafted ebook marketing plan can determine the success or failure regarding the quantity of copies downloaded and sold. Before you embark on an ebook promotion, consider incorporating some of the following techniques to supplement your strategy.

Build a Website

If hearing this reminds you of a broken record then that’s a good thing. Times have changed and it’s crucial that you have build an online home to for your ebook to reside in. Once you’ve got your site up and running, make sure that there’s either a dedicated page or subdomain exclusively for your ebook. Give readers plenty of details, features, benefits and testimonials that highlight your ebook’s contents.

Advertising

The internet makes advertising affordable and customizable for any budget. You don’t need a Superbowl-sized pocketbook to get the word out. Sign-up for a Google AdWords account and explore some of the price models and options available. The nice thing about a pay per click campaign is that you only pay for the visitors who actually click through your ad link and visit your site. Compared to traditional advertising (i.e. newspaper ads, TV spots, etc.), this is a more cost-effective way to drive traffic and create awareness about your ebook.

Connect with ClickBank

Click bank is a fantastic resource that makes it very easy for authors and writers to sell and promote their ebooks. They are connected to more than 10,000 publishers and have 100,000 active affiliates that are ready to co-promote what you’ve written. There is a small fee involved to establish an account, but it quickly pays for itself with the rapid sales of your ebook. Visit ClickBank for specific details on how to get started.

Article Marketing

Create articles that are closely related to what your ebook is about and upload and publish them to  article directories like Ezinearticles, Buzzle and Suite101. For each article that you write and publish you have an opportunity to create a short byline that can be used to promote yourself as an expert and you can include a link within the article’s contents to bring traffic to your ebook’s sale page on your website.

There are so many ways to promote your ebook. Use traditional marketing strategies and customize them to fit your needs and work in an online capacity.

eBook Marketing Plan

You’ve written your eBook. You’re ready to share it with readers. What is your next step? Promoting your ebook requires some marketing creativity and tenacity. Roll up your sleeves and put on your marketing cap. These marketing basics will get things moving in the right direction. You can always customize and build on them once they’re in place.

Start with an ebook mini-marketing plan. It doesn’t have to be fancy or deeply detailed to start. Just a nice, tidy outline that answers some key questions and lists some of your primary objectives with your ebook. For instance, who is your audience? Where is your audience? How many downloads are you aiming for per month? You can easily outline this in a simple one-sheet, but make sure to put some thought and consideration into your questions and answers, as well as realistic and attainable objectives.

Use what you’ve got. Take the resources and tools that are already available to you and use them to your advantage. For instance, if you have a blog, use it as a vehicle to build a marketing campaign for your ebook. Create an editorial calendar and start planning your blog posts around themes directly related to your ebook. Tie in a link to your ebook and a call-to-action for ebook downloads in each and every post. Make sense?

Here’s where your social media profiles come in handy. Update your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts with ebook mentions and links. Get the word out that your ebook has arrived and  that you’re ready to share it. Consider putting together a download contest and challenge fans and followers to try and be the 100th person to download. Award the winner with a prize like an iPod that includes an audio version of your ebook.

Make your ebook front and center on your website. Feature it prominently on your homepage and use starbursts and call-outs on subsequent pages to remind visitors to download a copy of the ebook. You’ll also need to drive traffic to your website. Write articles and press releases announcing the launch of your ebook and start posting and distributing them on ezine sites.

With a little effort, you can create momentum and generate buzz about your ebook and do it all with out breaking your bank.

Best Branding Podcasts

Podcasts are an excellent way to receive syndicated information in an audio format. Whether you choose to download and listen on your computer or portably through your MP3 player, podcasts can deliver content right directly through a web feed in less than a minute.

Competition in the podcast arena is pretty fierce these days, but there are always a few stand outs that deserve a thumbs up or a pat on the back for producing consistent and relevant topics. Take a moment (or five or ten) and listen, or subscribe, to some of these popular branding podcasts. You might be surprised by what you hear.

Brand Fast Trackers. This is a weekly podcast that focuses on helping listeners build their brands and ultimately sell more product. Each week host Brian Martin interviews marketing VPs and CMOs to get their advice and insight on how to help others market themselves.

The BeanCast. Bob Knorpp moderates roundtable-style discussions with a panel of key leaders within the marketing, advertising, public relations and interactive industries. There’s always a great tip or suggestion that can be gleaned from the conversations.

Marketing Over Coffee. This 20 minute podcast is recorded in a local coffee shop each week. Hosts John Wall and Chris Penn cover a variety of topics such as making sense of Facebook, search engine optimization (SEO) and social media. Past guest interviews include:  Seth Godin, David Meerman Scott and Mitch Joel.

Marketing Voices. Created in 2006 by host Jennifer Jones, the podcast focuses on how social media is impacting marketing. This is a great place to learn how to fine tune your current branding initiatives and get ahead of the curve with trends and forecasts.

Six Pixels of Separation. Social media expert Mitch Joel developed this Canadian podcast to unravel the complex world of new marketing. Additionally, The Montreal Business Book Club is also featured and offers regular updates on the books that will help you build your brand and market yourself in the online marketing arena.

Inbound Marketing – HubSpot TV. If Internet marketing seems overwhelming then tune in to Karen Rubin’s and Mike Volpe’s podcast. They’ll help you transform your brand from an idea to actuality. They cover recent marketing news and useful online tips regarding SEO, landing pages, lead generation and more.

The mentions referenced above only represent a tiny portion of the countless branding and marketing podcasts available. Hit the Internet and access some of the online podcast directories to find more great podcast resources.