Digital Marketing for Creatives

So you’ve unshackled yourself from the constraints of the publishing industry! In fact, you are now the publishing industry! You get to decide what gets published and when. But now you need sales…

One of the most common posts I see on writers online forums are stories about how a writer has published a book via KDP or similar platform and the book sales are disappointing. They wonder how they can get some traction with their books sales. Well, just like marketing any other product there are some steps to take that will help you market your book.

Audience

Firstly, where is your audience? If you’ve written a book in the science fiction genre then there are hundreds of groups on Facebook that you can join to publicise your book. In fact, whatever your genre, groups on Facebook will be a good starting point. Maybe you have written a book that helps people in their businesses – then LinkedIn will be a good starting point. Not only can you connect directly with people who might be interested in your book, but there are also groups you can join.

There is a large amount of authors utilising TikTok to sell their books. If your audience is to be found on TikTok, then you need to be selling there. In fact BookTok has been something of a phenomena. Why not upload some videos describing your book? Maybe discuss the characters or how you develop your characters.

So you need to spend some time thinking about who your readers might be and where they will be found on social media.

Content

Once you’ve decided where you can find your audience you need to think about the type of content you will be creating. This will be very specific to the platform. For example, TikTok is video focused, Facebook offers a wider scope of content options. But whatever the platform preferences are, you need to consider a marketing framework.

Now I appreciate you are a writer, but you need to learn a little marketing theory to help sell your book. A really straightforward marketing framework to utilise is AIDA.

Attention – Your content needs to grab the attention of your potential audience.

Interest – Your content needs to keep the interest of the potential audience.

Desire – Your content needs to fuel the desire of the potential audience to make the purchase.

Action – You need to tell the potential audience how they can get hold of the item (Click here, Call this Number etc). This is known at the Call To Action (CTA).

If you construct your content following a tried and trusted marketing framework you have a better chance of getting more sales.

Also, look at any content that has caught your eye. If it caught your eye, adopt that style of content and use it for your own content.

Content Calender

I would also recommend you create a content calendar. This is simply a plan showing what content you will post, on a particular platform, on a particular day. This link will give you an idea on what a content calendar should look like. I would spend a bit of time planning out your content for the next few weeks and then you can out all that information into the content calendar. As they say – fail to plan, plan to fail!

KPI’s

Also, it is important to measure how well your content does. This will show you what type of content works well, and what doesn’t. Likes, re-tweets, etc are what we call vanity metrics. It will give you a rough idea of what type of content is connecting with your audience.

However, the main metric you will need to measure is your conversion rate. What we mean by this, in the world of writing, is how many books have we sold. This will be the ultimate test of how well our marketing is working. You can have content with thousands of ‘likes’, but if you’re not actually selling any books then the marketing isn’t effective.

Rinse & Repeat

Once you get to the end of your content calendar, review what has worked and do more of that. Look at what hasn’t done so well and make the necessary changes. Then load up your content calendar with more content and repeat the process.

Marketing is not a quick solution, so expect to have to spend a little time building up a following.

In future blog posts I’ll cover more marketing options such as SEO, Email marketing etc. Why not follow me to get notifications of more marketing startegies & techniques.

---

Follow My Blog

Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.