Tuesday, August 6, 2019

The Ten Top Book Advertising (and Marketing) Tips from RWA's Annual Conference, complied by Diana Urban at BookBub Partners

This highlights article is loaded with ideas, including some excellent step-by-step advice, gleaned from the recent Romance Writers of America annual conference.


There was so much good stuff shared, here's just the first one of ten:

1. Create reader sales funnels

A sales funnel is the journey a reader takes in order to eventually do business with an author or publisher. Dana Kaye, founder of Kaye Publicity, explained how to implement sales funnels to increase book sales. The funnel breaks down into four main stages:

Awareness: the reader first hears your name or book title and starts to become familiar with your work.

Interaction: the reader engages with you through social media, your website, or at an in-person event.

Interest: the reader signs up for your newsletter or downloads a free ebook.

Sale: the reader purchases one or more of your books.

You can drive readers down your sales funnel across various marketing channels. Take email marketing, for example; when someone signs up for your mailing list, you can set up an automated email series driving potential readers who just became aware of you (by finding your website) and interacted with you (by subscribing) to become more interested in a specific title and ultimately land a sale. Dana recommended setting up an email sequence like this:

Welcome email: a brief introduction to you and your work, with a free piece of content.

Backstory email: a deeper dive into your writing and your backstory.

Social proof email: reviews of your book, awards and notoriety, read-alike suggestions.

Tripwire offer: a discounted ebook or other low-cost content (hook readers with this first sale).

Free gift offer: another free piece of content, access to a Facebook group, or other free offer.

You can also apply this sales funnel methodology across other channels, like Facebook ads (to target readers who’ve visited your website) or quizzes (to email content to readers who selected specific quiz or survey responses). 

Click here to read the full piece on the BookBub Partners website.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

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