Understanding Your Reader’s Problem

Most people look for information to solve an urgent need, problem or pain. Once you have written your nonfiction book and you understand the profile of your target reader, it’s important to figure out what you’ve written to meet people’s needs or solve their problems.  Think about this answer in the most concrete terms.  Is this book going to help them get out of debt?  Is it going to help them fix their marriage?  Is it going to help them fix their plumbing?  Is it going to help them buy a new house without making a disastrous choice?

No matter what your book’s topic may be, at the heart it exists to solve someone’s problem.  Think about those problems that are at the heart of your book and relate them back to that reader profile.  How does that target reader feel about that problem?  Does it really have them at the end of their wits?  Is it something that they only think about occasionally?  Is it keeping them up all night and driving them to distraction?  Are they scared to death or just mildly inconvenienced?

The other thing to think about here is what triggered the problem to get so bad that your reader is now willing to [gasp] read a book about it to find out how to solve the problem.  In marketing we call that the “triggering event.” People window show long before they buy.  We hear over 10,000 advertising messages every day.  We can’t possibly pay attention to all of them.  So we filter out everything except the things that are urgently on our to-do list or we’d never get anything done.

So if you’re not in the market for a car, you don’t listen to ads about cars.  If you have been thinking about buying a new car but you’re not in a particular hurry, you may have been paying a little bit of attention to car ads.  But the day that you go out to start your car and it won’t start, you’ve had a triggering event that makes you a full-fledged car buyer or prospect.

It takes a problem getting to a certain magnitude before people will swallow their pride and decide to ask for help, even if it means shelling out $20 dollars to buy a book. So ask yourself, what’s the triggering event that is likely to make your target reader buy your book?  What has to happen before your potential reader swallows his or her pride, shells out $20 dollars, and drives to the bookstore and buy the book?

Now there may be two or three or four life circumstances that are going to impel your reader to take action and seek your book.  If your reader is having that triggering event, they’re now much more aware of your book and much more aware of the need for something in that topic.  That’s a good place for you to be because now they’re paying attention.

Your “Reader Persona”

Many people wonder about the next step once their book has been published.  How do you get it off the shelf and into the hands of readers? Is there something you can do to get people to pay for your book and take it home with them? Whether you self-published your book or have gone the traditional route with a publisher, there are effective marketing techniques you can use to start making more sales.

Your potential readers do many things other than read. They watch TV, play video games, go for walks, play sports, and do a huge number of things with their time including clean up their house and do the dishes. How do you get their attention focused on your book?

You need to break through the clutter.  And that clutter includes all of the other books out there and all of the other things that are clamoring for your reader’s time.

The first step that I suggest is to picture your ideal reader.  Even if you don’t write fiction, bear with me on this point.  I want you to take maybe 10 minutes and just sketch out who you think your reader is.  If your ideas are backed up by some research that you’ve done on who needs the information that you’ve written about, that’s even better.

I want you to write a kind of a short biography of your ideal reader to get it really clear in your mind.  Do you have an age, a gender, and a family situation?  Are they never- married, single, divorced, remarried, married for a long period of time, too young to be married, or too old to be married?  What’s their profession?  What kind of hobbies do they do when they’re not doing their profession or earning a living?  In sales, we talk about a “buyer persona”—a composite picture of the ideal consumer for a specific product or service.  You’re going to construct a mental picture of your ideal reader–a “reader persona.”

All of that research that you did about your market before you ever sat down at your keyboard to assure the viability of your manuscript, all of that research that you did on your market in order to be able to do your book proposal–tap on that information now and actually think about real living people with those characteristics.

Get this reader profile really firmly in mind.  In fact, if you feel like using your imagination, you can also have a mini conversation with this person on the topic of your book in your mind.  Ask him or her, “What would interest you most about this book?  What are you worried about that this book could solve?  What’s frustrating you right now?  What are the top three things that are keeping you up at night?”  A little imagination here goes a long way.

Marketing Touch Tips

We’re two-thirds of the way through 30 of my favorite marketing tips, talking about how to “touch” your prospects frequently enough to increase the odds that they’ll buy from you.  Now if it takes seven to 30 touches, how do you increase the number of touches for your audience?

Tip #20:  Each touch should include one of the messages that is relevant to your audience.  Remember—your audience goes beyond the end user to include gatekeepers, influencers and decision-makers.  They all need seven to 30 touches with the relevant messages!  Your touches can include ads, product demonstrations, reminder cards, newsletters and follow-up calls, along with other online and offline contacts.  Brainstorm a list of five to 10 “touches” per audience member.

If you’re feeling mystified about marketing, join me on my next teleseminar conference call.  I’ll demystify marketing for you and help you save money, get results and create marketing programs you feel good about. Get the details at www.GailMartinMarketing.com

Understand the Habits of Your Reader

Knowing where else your reader goes in addition to bookstores is important for success in today’s book market.  Many books are sold in places other than bookstores: gift shops, children’s stores, pharmacies, grocery stores, sporting goods stores and hobbiest stores.

Think about your target reader and what else he or she likes to do besides read.  What are the hobbies and interests?  Where does your reader go in the course of an average work day or weekend?  Thinking like this can also give you a sense of what time of day they might be the easiest to find.  If your book has a business slant to it, think about what other companies touch their lives. You should also think about the possibility of packaging your book as a corporate gift or an incentive, a sales incentive.  If your book has an organization or time management focus, or has a motivational slant, those kinds of books can be very popular with corporations to give as a reward. Lots of companies give books at sales conferences, or as an incentive.  Best of all: when a company buys a large order of books, they aren’t returnable (unlike bookstores).

When you are in the process of promoting your book, you want to know the habits of your reader. For example, take some time and consider what type of magazines and newspapers your buyer is reading. Knowing where your reader goes and what else he or she does in his or her life will give you a feel for the media sources that are the best to target for book reviews, articles or ads.

Where does your reader go when they’re surfing the net?  What kind of other websites are they looking for?  Are they looking for sites related to their problem or to their life cycle stage or to their hobby?  Those may be also points of connection and can also be opportunities for book reviews, online articles, affiliate sales or guest blog posts.

The better you know your reader, the better your odds of finding new ways to gain exposure—and possible sale—for your book.

Marketing Touches

On our way to counting down 30 of my favorite marketing tips, let’s talk about “touches.”  A marketing “touch” is any message or connection you make with your prospect or client.  Experts say that it takes anywhere from seven to 30 “touches” to make a sale.  Think about that.  Seven to 30 touches to make a sale.

Tip #19:  Look at the grid you created in Tip #18 and add a column to show how often each prospect-type is exposed to your materials.  Do you come close to seven to 30 touches?

Marketing isn’t a one-shot deal.  The reality is that marketing requires an urgent need and repeated contacts in order for the prospect to give you their business.

For more great ideas, get my free e-book, “154 Power-Packed PR and Marketing Tips” at www.GailMartinMarketing.com.

The Power of Article Marketing

One great way to get attention for your book is to write articles based on the content in your book. It’s kind of like a free sample of your book in or 500 to 600 words.  There are a variety of article directory sites where you can post your articles online for bloggers, newsletter editors and site masters to use for free.

You get exposure (they’re required to use your byline and resource box and are prohibited from re-writing your content).  They get content.  Everyone wins.  One of my favorite article directory sites is Ezinearticles.com, but there are others. Be sure to understand the target audience, rules and conditions before you post content.

In the resource box at the bottom of each of your articles,  you can include the following items: who you are, what your credentials are, the name of your book and your website.

I set Google Alerts so that I know whenever my name, the title for my book or my subject comes up online.  I can see where people are using my content in blogs and online magazines.  Because of this, some of my articles have even been translated into Portuguese and Italian and showing up in Blogs, newsletters and e-zines all over the world.

This type of marketing all comes back to the idea of direct-to-consumer PR.   I never could’ve found those people to pitch to them, but they found me because my article was out there on an article directory.

Try it and see what happens for you!

Connecting with your Readers via Web 2.0

Social media is a great marketing tool and can be a wonderful way to reach people who are interested in your topic. When you are a guest on other people’s blogs, Internet radio shows, podcasts and websites, you are interacting with communities that already exist.  You’re building a gateway with your social media sites.

Through MySpace, Facebook, BookMarket.ning , Shelfaria and other sites,  you as an author can reach readers in an interactive way and open a dialogue.  This type of marketing is especially great when you’re going to be writing more than one book and you want to keep in touch with your readers in between books.

Here are some other quick ideas for creating content on your social media site pages.

• You can include sample chapters for download, do a video blog, or add interactive quizzes and surveys.
• Create a forum where you can ask and answer questions or readers can post comments.  The goal is to create a site where  it’s not just you pushing information out to them, but it’s a two-way dialogue.  It is the interactivity around the shared interest, the fresh content and your willingness as an author to be available, touchable and responsive that ultimately builds a following.

An active and interactive presence on social media spreads word-of-mouth and creates the book buzz that you need and want as an author.  This process also builds relationships and ultimately loyalty that brings people back to your sites.  Visitors who return may buy related info products or purchase your second book, they might show up at your upcoming event or your teleseminar, or come and connect with you at signings..

Every author whose books are available on Amazon.com can qualify for a free Amazon author profile.  It is important to take advantage of this opportunity.  It’s easy to set up an author profile, and then every time you post on your Amazon blog, it automatically goes out to everybody who’s bought your book from Amazon.  Now you wouldn’t have another way to reach those people, but you can do it through your Amazon profile.

You can also create a Wikipedia page about you as an author and have someone else post it for you. (Wikipedia frowns on creating your own page.)  My Wikipedia page provides excellent search results on Google.  It helps to read Wikipedia’s rules and make sure that you’re putting it up according to their requirements so that they don’t take it back down, However, once you have established a Wikipedia page about you, your book and your expertise, this resource is a great way for people to find you.

Orphan Ads

On our way to counting down my favorite 30 marketing tips, we’ve spent a lot of time connecting your marketing activities to your business plan.  Now I want you to connect the matrix that we’ve been building of goals, budget, target audience and messages/benefits to your existing marketing materials.

Tip #18:  Using the list from Tip #17, match each of your target audiences to a piece of existing marketing material or an ad.  If your existing materials are on track, it should be easy to match the benefits and message to the target.  Make a list of any “orphaned” materials that don’t seem to have a target.

If you have orphan ads or marketing materials, what audience are they speaking to?  And if your materials aren’t speaking to your intended audience, what’s the likelihood that their message is going to bring you the business you want?

Get free tips and great ideas with my Possibilities! Newsletter at www.GailMartinMarketing.com

Needs and Concerns

We’re taking a look at 30 of my favorite marketing tips to get your year started right.  Now that we’ve made progress towards telling the marketing story of your business, let’s go back to making sure that your marketing is in sync with your business planning and target market.

Tip #17:  Revisit your list of end-users, gatekeepers, decision-makers and influencers.  Now make a list of each one’s needs and concerns.  Match at least one benefit (not feature) of your product to those needs/concerns.  Look for ways to “slay the dragon” as you go.

 

What’s Your Giftability?

One of the great things about Fall is that between October and February, just about every major religion celebrates a holiday.  That means plenty of gift-giving opportunities for personal and business situations.  Have you ever thought about the gift potential of your business or product?  Are you maximizing your gift-ability?

I was stuck thinking about gifts as being consumer products: you know, perfume, jewelry, music.  But in reality, a perfect gift is what the receiver really wants and today, it could also be something they need but can’t afford themselves.

What’s your gift-ability?  Could you open up a new market by promoting your services or products as gifts?

Remember, businesses give gifts to clients all the time.  Real estate agents give new homebuyers housewarming gifts.  In the October through February holiday season, business owners show their appreciation to valued clients with gifts, and individuals give presents to a wide variety of friends and contacts.

How could you position your product or service as a gift?  Think first about who needs what you offer.  Might there be someone who already works closely with that target customer (or someone in his/her family) who would be a perfect person to introduce that customer via a gift?  It could be a three-month massage package, a trial membership at a gym, a book on a business or personal topic, two months of housecleaning services—anything has gift potential.

Now think about the life events that might go along with needing your product.  Would your product or service be especially useful to someone who just started a new business?  How about suggesting a “business warming” gift?  Would your book, product or service make life easier for newlyweds, newly singles, new moms (or dads), new empty nesters or new homebuyers?  Suggest it as a gift to the people who are already serving that target customer in other ways.

Books make a great gift, but authors rarely think of books as gifts, even though research shows that a large percentage of books are purchased as gifts.  Who might be overjoyed to receive your book as a gift?  Suggest it to the kinds of people or professionals who currently provide goods or services to that potential reader.

Manicures, financial advice, car tune-ups, automotive detailing, personal organizing, personal makeovers, image consultants, business coaches, in-home or take-home food preparation services, all have gift potential….it’s only limited by your imagination.

Here’s something else to think about.  In today’s economy, people may ask for products or services as gifts this year that they would otherwise have purchased for themselves because cash is tight.  Gift-givers will also be looking for practical, useful and meaningful gifts.  It’s a perfect year for giving (and receiving) down-to-earth gifts like small appliances, computer peripherals, clothing, “green” or save-the-earth products of any kind, do-it-yourself tools, cookbooks, how-to books (people are doing more themselves now, even if they don’t know how) and other items that help do more with less or help save money.

Don’t let this year’s gift season pass you by!  Position now to be the best gift ever!