Marketing with Mandy~Dorchester Publishing Spotlight Part III
A: Networking and publisher support are the two best promotional tools you have—aside from writing a great book. The more friends you have out there spreading the word about your book, the better off you’ll be. Ultimately, sales drive careers and word of mouth is one of the best marketing tools there is—and the hardest to get going.
Having said that, there are some things we can all do improve our odds of reaching prospective readers. I worked in marketing for many years—mostly for high tech products—but many of the concepts and practices do transfer fairly well. Here are a few tips:
1) The work comes first. All the marketing in the world isn’t going to help you if your book either (a) does not exist, or (b) does not meet reader expectations. Write the best book you can, polish it ‘till it shines. If you don’t do that, the rest is a waste of time.
2) Track and measure the success of your marketing efforts. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Metrics are hugely important. If you don’t know which marketing efforts are being most effective, you’ll have no idea how to spend your money/fine tune your efforts in future. At a minimum, track where your contacts are coming from. Here are a few simple ways to do this:
a. Ask the reader when they contact you. Where did you hear about me/my book? (this is not always reliable as people don’t always remember, but it’s worth asking)
b. Use a different email address for various “marketing/promo” campaigns. Most hosting accounts give you lots of email addresses for your website. Some as many as 100 or more. Use them. If you’re doing an ARC giveaway, for instance, have people email “ARCGiveaway@clwilson.com” to enter. If you’re going an ad campaign, have them email “RT_Ad@clwilson.com”, and so forth. You will know that any emails coming into these email accounts came from your specific campaign.
