The best marketing campaign ever?

Sometimes humour is a great way of getting a message across.

Apart from being an amusing cartoon, it does demonstrate that the window repair company understand what the 'A' in 'AIDA' stands for, although their unorthodox marketing strategy will probably start to untangle at the 'Desire' stage. (Who would have the desire for their products after that 'intro'?)

As authors our first objective is to gain attention for our book(s). If we are using tools such as Twitter to grab that attention, then the message has to stand out from the crowd. That is a huge challenge with only 140 characters to play with, particularly if 20 of those characters are being used to create a link to your book. 

Three strategies often adopted to grab attention, which utilise an approach called disruption, are:

Location: Placing adverts or messages in very unexpected situations. I once ran a full-page newspaper advert upside down. It certainly created a spike in sales, but after requests from other advertisers, who wanted to do the same thing, the paper refused to run any more adverts upside down again. Coming up with an idea before your competitors is always an advantage, as ideas can quickly go stale.

Shock factor: Grabbing people's attention can be done easily with a shock. The cartoon above being an example. Shock is a dangerous strategy if it goes wrong, but get the balance right, and it can have dramatic results on sales.

Personalisation: It's hard to ignore something if it is aimed at you specifically. Many authors run blogs similar to daily newspapers, and their tweets state 'top stories today from ________' Imagine the blank space contains your Twitter handle. Will you click the link? You bet.

I hope this post has inspired you to think of different ways to grab the attention of your target market.

Amazon to stop selling ebooks

Sorry, only kidding. It is 1st April after all. However, there is a more serious side to this post, and if you arrived here via my Twitter message, then you will have realised the importance of creating an attention grabbing message when marketing your books. So therefore the real purpose of the above headline - 'Amazon to stop selling ebooks' - was to demonstrate how important AIDA is within your marketing activities. So as a brief reminder please visit my post AIDA Part One to fully understand the principle.

In the meantime, enjoy Easter Monday wherever you are, and remember to use AIDA within your marketing strategies.

Should you judge a book by its cover?

Consider these two sayings:

'Never judge a book by its cover'

'You only get one chance to make a first impression'

Both make sense, in isolation, but when put next to each other, there seems to be a slight conflict. If your book cover fails to impress, it may get overlooked, and regardless of how good the content is, may not get read by as many people as it deserves. 

In an earlier post I discussed the marketing concept AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. A book cover needs to help you achieve the first two elements. If the cover doesn't grab a potential readers attention, and create  interest, it has essentially failed to do its job. The front cover of a book has three key components - a title, an illustration, and the author's name. Now unless your name is JK Rowling, Dan Brown, etc., it probably won't have a huge amount of impact on the buying decision. That leaves the title and the illustration to do the lion's share of the work. Putting the illustration to one side for the moment, let's consider the title. Assume you have just written a book and titled it 'Wanted!'. This could suggest a number of themes and genres. It could be erotica where one woman is wanted by many men. Alternatively a romantic theme, about a woman who only ever wanted to be loved. What about a thriller, where a dangerous fugitive is wanted by the authorities? To help the potential reader better understand the title, a well crafted illustration is required. So if you are on the look out for an entertaining thriller, and the book 'Wanted!' is about an armed and dangerous criminal being hunted by the police, an illustration depicting this theme will be needed to grab your attention. Below are two possible book covers for the same story. Which one is likely to grab your attention?

The book buying process goes something along the following lines. See a cover and title you like (Attention), pick it up (Interest), and read the blurb on the back cover. You like what you read (Desire). You then look at the price, and when you realise the benefit of reading it outweighs the cost, take it to the check-out (Action). What you don't know, until you've read it, is whether or not you think it's a good story. But that is now too late, you've already judged the book by its cover. . . and as authors, that is very important, because your thriller of the year could have been easily overlooked if the cover just didn't deliver.

Do book trailers provide a benefit?

In this short post I want to consider the benefit of book trailers. Let’s first of all look at the benefits. If done well, they can help create exposure, in the same way as trailers to movies stimulate your desire to watch a movie . . . or not, as the case may be. Not everyone will want to watch the same movie, or read the same book – but if your target market see it, and like what they see, then it will definitely generate readership.

If you recall my earlier post about AIDA – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action – a good book trailer, like a good movie trailer, will deliver on all four counts. Once your viewer's attention is grabbed – either through something visual, or audible, the trailer should try to build on this interest and develop a desire for the him/her to want to read the book. Finally, there should be some form of call to action. In other words, details of where the viewer can obtain the book, or at least give them more information about it.

So the major benefit is additional exposure, and potential extra sales. But what about the negatives? The biggest negative is cost, and this is where a minefield exists. Some companies charge huge prices for the creation of a book trailer. An expense you need to re-coup from additional book sales.  Yesterday’s post outlined the number of hits you need to generate to make sales. However, if a book trailer can be created for a modest cost, then it reduces the number of sales required to cover the cost. My own book trailer, below, was produced by Tracy Stewart (www.allaboutthecover.com) for a very modest $50. (Tracy’s normal price is $75, which includes the sourcing of graphics – but I provided my own.)

Once you have a book trailer it can be used on any website, without the need for the website to upload a huge file. My book trailer is on a number of sites, including, for example, my author page on the Independent Author Network website. I’ve already had a number of people inform me directly that they have purchased the book as a result of watching the trailer. I took the view that the cost was low enough to warrant taking a small gamble, primarily due to the flexibility of being able to have the trailer on more than one website.

So in summary, book trailers can help create additional exposure, but you need to be very cautious about how much of your hard earned royalties you are going to invest in them. 

Marketing Tips for Authors – The 4Ps Part Three

In the previous posts in this series I covered the areas of Product and Price. In this penultimate post in the series I would like to briefly discuss Promotion. Earlier this week I mentioned the concept of AIDA – Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Our promotions need to grab the Attention of our prospective readers and generate Interest. This interest needs to build Desire in the prospect, so ultimately they take Action – and buy our book! As authors we have a number of online tools at our disposal to help us achieve this – Twitter, Facebook, Websites, Blogs etc. However, Twitter is NOT a selling platform. With just 140 characters at our disposal, the best we can hope to achieve is grabbing our prospects’ attention, at the same time as planting some seeds to generate interest. Therefore, it is important to always have a link within tweets promoting books. Links which take the prospect to either our website/blog (preferably) or Amazon book/review page (if you don't have a website). These are the platforms where desire must be created, with a carefully worded message. Now here is a challenge for you. I want you to carry out a sanity check on the sales message, within your website/blog, which relates to your book. (If you don’t have a website or blog, just go to your book’s Amazon page.) Imagine you’ve never seen the page before, and this is your first introduction to the book. Based upon your ‘sales pitch’ would YOU buy your book? If you hesitate in saying yes, then the message probably needs a bit of a polish.

The next aspect of promotion to consider is the small matter of cost. You’ll find plenty of people on the Internet only too glad to help you part with some money. You’ll hear terms such as ‘our site will provide great exposure for your book’. If you are not ultimately interested in making money from your hard work then look away now. If, however, you do want to make some money by SELLING your book, you will now need to disconnect your heart from your decision making process. Yes, we all love to see our books in all their glory, on various websites, with people waxing lyrical about them. But this section is about the cold numbers. Let’s assume you’ve been approached by a website owner, who’s given you the ‘exposure’ speech, and he/she just wants just $50 to place your book on his/her well visited website. You know that Amazon is currently paying you a $1 royalty on every e-book sale. You just need to sell 50 to break-even.

Before you go anywhere near your wallet or purse, grab a calculator and start asking questions.

Question 1 – How many unique visitors does their website attract each month? They proudly say 5,000. You quickly calculate you only need one out of every hundred customers to buy your book in month one to break-even. WRONG CALCULATION!

Question 2 – How many of those 5,000 will visit your page on the site? It may be only 10%. So that’s 5,000 reduced to 500.

Question 3 – How many of the 500 will click on the link to Amazon? That again may only be 10%. So 50 people visit Amazon from your page on their website.

Question 4 – How many visits convert to sales? It may be just 2% - not an unlikely figure by any means. 2% of 50 is ONE!  Yes, that’s one sale from 5,000 site visitors in the first month – and I believe I’ve been generous with my percentages. So, to get your money back will take over FOUR YEARS!!

The above scenario is known as a ‘sales funnel’. Each stage reduces the numbers going through to the next stage. Good use of AIDA will certainly help you to widen the neck of the funnel. I hope the above has been of help to you. My final post in this short series will be based on the last of the 4Ps – Place. Until then, happy marketing.

Marketing Tips for Authors - AIDA Part 2 of 2

In Part 1 of this series of articles I discussed the benefits of adopting AIDA as part of a marketing approach. Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. With the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter, it is virtually impossible to successfully incorporate all of this in one tweet. In fact, to try and do it is actually, in my opinion, an incorrect use of Twitter. I believe, from an author’s point of view, and it is this angle I am writing from, Twitter should be used for two things. Developing relationships and creating awareness. In this regard only Attention and Interest are applicable to Twitter.

I have seen so many tweets where people are trying to encourage people to buy their book there and then. 'Download my novel from Amazon today for 99 cents'. That's fine so long as other messages are included within tweets, and the pricing message is related to a special offer or price. Use of reviews to promote your books work well. Buyers are more likely to be encouraged by other readers, than a 'buy now' message. Messages like this are from people who don't understand the buying process. We all have a set of scales in our head - one side says 'Costs' and the other says 'Benefits'. It is only when the costs outweigh the benefits, are we likely to buy something. Consider for a moment some of the genres you personally don't like. Even if a book in that genre was offered FREE, as a Kindle download, the chances are you wouldn't download it. The 'cost' now becomes the precious space it would take up on your Kindle, and the time to download it. There is no benefit to be gained, and because the cost now outweighs the benefit, a purchase isn't made. So why would anyone consider buying an unknown book from Amazon, just because it is only 99 cents?

On the opposite side of the coin, if one of my favourite authors, let's take Michael Cordy, as an example, tweeted me to say he has just published a new book and he provided the link, I'd go straight to Amazon and order it. As an author he provides a 'product/brand' which I have a loyalty to, in the same way we all have loyalties to brands, products, authors etc. However, if you hadn't heard of Michael Cordy, and you received the same tweet, the chances are you'd ignore it. So apart from direct contact with a known customer, Twitter should only be used for grabbing attention and creating interest. The 'Desire' and 'Action' needs to be created via your website, because here you are not limited to a word/character count. Use Twitter to get people to your site and create the desire to read your book within the site. Have your link to Amazon (and all the other online shops) next to your book details, together with any special offers you may have for your book(s). I was once told many years ago by a very successful marketing guru - 'If you want to get into my pocket, first you must get into my mind.' In later posts I'll share some tips about websites which I've used in marketing training programmes, and I'll also look at the benefits of using Google Analytics. In the meantime, why not think of some tweets you could use to encourage people to look at your book on your website.

Marketing Tips for Authors - AIDA Part 1 of 2

Many authors these days are using Twitter as part of their marketing armoury, and rightly so. Social media is a useful weapon in the battle for book exposure. Unlike most other forms of marketing, Twitter has one serious drawback - 140 characters MAXIMUM. As authors we are always aware of only using the necessary number of words to deliver our message, and this should provide an advantage when using Twitter, compared to other Twitter users who may not be so disciplined. Even having said that, 140 characters are not many when we want to included hash tags, website links, user names etc., and that's before actually writing the all important message. 

(With regard to weblinks, one very useful tool is bitly - www.bitly.com - which can reduce long URLs to much smaller, user-friendly, and Twitter friendly links. You can also track how often each link bitly creates is clicked.)

Nearly all marketing campaigns, adverts, commercials etc., adopt one very popular tactic, and that is the use of AIDA. Some of you may have heard of it before, but I'm guessing many, unless involved in marketing as part of your 'day job', perhaps haven't. AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Most marketing gurus will rip an advert to pieces if AIDA hasn't been utilised.

ATTENTION - This is where your message/product must grab the immediate attention of your audience.

INTEREST - Once their attention has been grabbed, your message needs to be of interest to them. Why should they buy your product? Why your particular book? There is an old saying in marketing - 'Sell the sizzle, not the sausage.'

DESIRE - If steps one and two have done their respective jobs there should now be some desire to purchase your product/service/book etc.

ACTION - They now want your book! Where do they get it? If you can provide a time limited offer, that will generate even faster action.

Authors are very creative by nature. So if you want to share some creative ideas for fellow readers please leave a comment for others to read. Thanks.