Article - Marketing Plan

Marketing is probably the most important thing for you to do, apart from actually writing something that is. You can write a hundred books, and even get them placed on Amazon, and other online stores, but unless you actually tell people they are there, you’re not going to get many visitors.

You need to be thinking about this a good few months before your book even hits the shelves. I use the What, how, and where plan for my marketing:

What are my objectives?

How am I going to achieve these?

Where am I going to market?

This may, or may not work for you, but feel free to adapt it. The first thing to do is write a marketing plan and I’ll go through mine with you here:

Objectives It’s no good simply stating sell lots of books, you need to break this down into smaller objectives. Mine are:

• Attract high numbers to website
• Convert visitors into buyers
• Place book into high street bookstores
• Create public awareness

If I can achieve these four simple objectives, then as long as my book is good enough, I should be able to sell quite a few.

Next up is deciding what my target audience is. Who am I going to sell these books to? For my book (Kopek the Destroyer), it’s:

• Dog lovers
• Animal lovers
• Humourous story lovers

My next section is the first part of how, and where. This includes tools etc. that I’m going to use:

Benefits/Encouragement

• Free Bookmark
• Free Pen
• Free T-Shirt
• Signed copies

These are things that I will use to encourage people to buy my book directly from my website. I can use these as give-aways, or in competitions.

Now the important bit, what tools am I going to use:

• Website
• Google AdWords
• Word of mouth
• Libraries
• Postcards
• Flyers
• Awareness material
• Competitions
• Press
• . Radio
• . Work Colleagues

All of the above are things that I can use to either create awareness, or drive people to my website. I should mention a company I use frequently here, and that is VistaPrint. They often give away merchandising products on a regular basis. One of the most useful I get from here is postcards. There is almost a weekly giveaway of 100 postcards for free from this company. You can simply choose one of the standard designs, or for a small charge (about £3.00) you can design your own bespoke one. Here’s an example of my postcard FRONT / BACK.

I have managed to spend about £100 over the last month or so, by using VistaPrint's offers. They generally send out an email every week with some offer on it, either 250 free business cards, or 100 free postcards. I have so far collected:

• 5 bespoke t-shirts
• 12 pens
• 500 postcards
• 1,000 business cards
• 75 brochures
• 3 notepads
• 100 return address labels

If I were to go to a normal shop, this would have cost me close to £600, at least. The t-shirts and pens I can use as give-aways, or in competitions. Either of these will help to create awareness for both the book and the website.

Method
This is how you are going to use the above tools and information to achieve your objectives.

Public Awareness

• Using marketing material in comepetitions, or give-aways - t-shirts etc. should create more awareness
• Placing material, such as bookmarks and postcards, in public areas
• Pubs
• Libraries
• Shops – postcards
• Give away free business card magnets

Targets

• Pubs – list the pubs that you go in on a regular basis. You can drop material into others, but they won’t be as effective as your regular haunts.
• Radio Stations – list the individual radio stations that you are going to contact.
• Newspapers/Magazines – Which magazines are good matches to your book.
• Hairdressers
• Cafes
• Dentists waiting rooms
• Doctors waiting rooms

The final four points are places where people have to sit and wait, and most will generally pick up something to read, even if it’s a flyer.