How authors can be their own marketing team and not absolutely hate every second of it.

Ask any author what part of the book publishing process makes them wanna tear their hair out, and I guarantee you marketing will be the #1 most hated stage.

‘My posts don’t get any likes!’

‘It takes so much time, and I don’t have time!’

‘None of my marketing activities actually do anything!’

As an author and a long-time marketer that makes me so sad! So I’ve written this blog and recorded a 4-part short form podcast series to help demystify the marketing process and give you a framework to market your books without feeling like everything you try is a failure.

What you’re missing is strategy, and that comes from an understanding of the marketing cycle. This outlines the phases of your campaign so you do the right things at the right time.

First up, listen to this short episode that will help you reframe your marketing efforts.

There are 3 key phases to any solid marketing plan, and below is what you need to do in each phase. Prepare your mindset now – treat every marketing activity like an experiment. Some activities will work for you and your audience, others won’t. Take notes! And next time you come around to that part of the process, stick with what works. Try not to get too hung up on activities that don’t work out how you’d hope. You learn more from failure than success, and it’s only with practice that you begin to learn what marketing activities are effective for your books.

Phase 1: Brand Awareness

This phase is all about introducing yourself to the world. You’re not (I repeat: NOT) asking anybody to buy anything yet. You need to spend more time in this phase than you think, which I know is completely annoying to hear. Realistically this phase never ends because there are always new readers out there. As that’s the case, this brand awareness piece should be a major focus for you. Readers who are aware of you, become readers who might consider you, who become readers who buy from you.

Listen to the short episode below:

Examples of brand awareness activities

Activities that fall under the brand awareness banner are broad audience-reaching and have low buy-in for potential readers to engage with. They should be free and regularly available. I’m talking zero barrier to entry. Your goal with these is to target a broad reading group, so you can begin to find readers who might move into the consideration phase. Imagine this is the very first conversation you have with strangers at a party – don’t be afraid of basic ‘this is who I am’ content. You’re aiming to share news of you and your books with a mass of potential readers (note that I said readers – you need to be in the spaces and on the platforms that readers use). You’re also sharing about book content in general that shows readers you’re just like them. Below are some examples:

• post routinely on social media (note: I said routinely, not necessarily every day – just a consistent routine you know you can stick to)
• start your newsletter subscriber list and share even monthly updates
• run a giveaway (if you have a previously published book you can give away)
• share reviews of your previously published books
• share short stories on blog posts so readers can engage with your stories without a $ spent
• engage with content created by other authors and readers – leave comments and likes
• build a website! This can be used for all kinds of marketing activities throughout promotion, so start slowly building it now.
• get yourself out there for some PR! Put yourself forward as a guest on podcasts or seek out some local media opportunities
• run a stall at a market event or expo – maximise this by having something you can give away that has your details on it like a flyer, bookmark or business card

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Phase 2: Consideration

This phase involves taking those who are aware of you from the brand awareness phase, and turning them into someone who might consider your book. Start giving them an inside scoop into your story, so they are intrigued at the idea of reading a sample chapter or learning about your characters.

Listen to the episode below to learn more:

Examples of consideration activities

These activities begin to dive deeper on the audience you’ve already connected with by offering them a closer (still free) look at you and your book. You are STILL not selling anything yet. These readers are being brought into a more exclusive circle. These readers have subscribed to you on Instagram or Booktube, or have signed up to your newsletter. They are your VIP’s! They’ve shown that they want to know more about you and your work:

• share a sample chapter that has the potential to hook them
• write a newsletter about each character in your story – share about who they are, what drives them, their background
• post on social media about your story, sharing exclusive trailers and behind the scenes footage
• seek engagement by posting polls or question boxes in Instagram stories or your newsletter (some newsletter distributors will let you ask engagement questions as a poll)
• get some ARC copies of your book circulating and share the reviews with your close audience
• reveal your book title or cover to them first via newsletter, before going to the general public
• reveal your book’s publication date
• share whatever exclusive content you can give your audience!

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Phase 3: Conversion

This is where you turn those from the consideration phase into buyers! Now you start to do a hard sell, offering links to where readers can buy your book. You goal is to make buying easy. Remove all barriers to buying. But there are a few tricks to this phase, so listen to this short episode carefully:

Examples of conversion activities

Knock down all the gates, build all the bridges and teleport your potential buyers to a ‘buy-now’ button. This phase is where you go hard with your sales hat on. We’re talking:

• a series of newsletters that build towards your publication date! We’re talking countdowns, character reveals, news and updates. All the juicy goss your fans want to know.
• a newsletter with direct links to retailers that sell your book on publication day. This newsletter should be sent regularly for a couple of weeks and potentially months after publication depending on your community and how they receive it (watch the stats).
• posting on social media with one link to purchase (note that links in Instagram descriptions and comments do not work – opt for Stories instead)
• do a livestream on launch day! Turn this into a digital book launch where you read a sample of your book, and answer reader questions.
• get some digital advertising going on your platform of choice, pumping the ‘out now’ message
• share reviews of your book with your VIP’s!

INFORMATION OVERLOAD: what do you do with all this information?

You create a timeline that factors these 3 phases in. You decide what activities will have the most bang for buck for each phase, you line it up on a timeline, and you give it a crack! In terms of planning, below is what I have created for my debut novel to help me plan out the phases step by step. You’ll note that brand awareness activities don’t ever really end:

I’ve created a free download template similar to the above so you can get started in filling it out and using it to plan your marketing activities.

I hope this is helpful! I know this stuff feels foreign when you’re an author and the focus of your time and effort has been on simply getting your story and characters right. It’s hard shitfting gears into marketing and promotion! But I hope this gives you a template to approach this part of the process without stress.

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Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash

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