People have a lot of different ideas about what marketing is. But when we talk specifically about a book marketing campaign, usually the process can be broken down into four main components: publicity, social media, multimedia, and events.
Publicity is taking your message and getting it out to the masses. You can think of it as pushing your message out to the media; you’re trying to get them to pick up your message and distribute it for you.
The second component is social media: Twitter, Facebook, and blogging are the three things that I suggest authors should focus on here.
The third component is multimedia—posting audio and video on sites like YouTube. Multimedia can be a hugely effective marketing tool, even if you don’t have the funds or expertise to do a professional video shoot. All you need to do is come up with something quirky and fun that conveys your message and then get it out there using an organized strategy.
The fourth component of book marketing is events. The first thing authors tend to think of in this category is book store signings. That is one example of an event, but there are many others. For example, if your book has to do with health care, there are health care festivals year round. Maybe you could have a book event at one of those. It’s a great idea to go online and look at your local chamber of commerce’s calendar of events to see if they have anything scheduled that could be tied to your book’s message in some way. It never hurts to pick up the phone and ask if you can act as a key speaker or an expert on a specific topic at an event that’s already been scheduled. The chamber of commerce is there to add to the community, and you’re part of the community.
If publicity is like pushing your message out to an audience, then the rest of marketing is about pulling that audience in. Once you’ve got their attention, you need to get them to come and buy your book. Events can be part of that, but so can discounts, contests—anything that might pull someone who’s already interested to come and take a closer look.
So how do you integrate all of those elements into a cohesive marketing campaign? Well, imagine your book is about to come out and you decide you want to throw a book release party. Obviously, you’re going to plan that event. But you can also integrate the other components of your marketing campaign into planning and publicizing the launch party. You can post it on Facebook, add it to a twitter feed. Then put out a press release about it and make sure your local media know you’re a local author. Make sure bookstores know about it too; sometimes even national chains will let you put up a sign about a book release party. Have a friend walk around with a video camera at the party or interview you about your book and then put that on YouTube and mention it on Facebook and your Twitter feed.