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Author Roberta Trahan

~ Murder, Mayhem, and Mystical Mystery

Author Roberta Trahan

Tag Archives: Marketing Tips

Marketing Monday: Accidental Advertising

07 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by robertatrahan in Marketing Monday

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Accidental Advertising, Book Marketing, Dillon Josephson, Marketing Monday, Marketing Tips, Promotion, Roberta Trahan, Social Media Marketing, Stairfaces & Josephson, Twitter, Viral Threads

Authors, like every other person or company plugging their products, are constantly refining their marketing message and dry-running new social media strategies, trying to figure out how to engage our potential readers – whoever they are. It’s all a very frustrating exercise in futility, most of the time, because who knows? No one, really.

There are paid services and books and blogs with tips-o-plenty, but the truth is no one knows what makes a video or photo or post or tweet go viral, just like no one knows which books will hit the best-seller lists or get made into blockbuster films. The only thing we know for sure is that there IS a cultural stream of consciousness out there that everyone is tuned into on some level, and if you’re lucky enough to accidentally tap that vein, anything is possible.

Accidental advertising is just what the term implies – unintentional. You can’t plan for it or pay for it or pick the place or time to show up. It happens organically, but oddly enough, not necessarily randomly.

One of the universal truths in marketing is that people respond to messaging with their emotional right brains more than their practical left brains – even when making a perfunctory purchase. They respond to things based on how those things make them feel more than anything.

Take as study the most amazing example of accidental marketing I’ve seen in years – the case of Dillon Josephsen, who inadvertently blew up the internet last week by tweeting something kinda silly-sweet he noticed about his dad’s business Facebook page. Dillon discovered that his dad, a flooring guy in New Jersey, had been taking pics of dogs he met on the job (in his clients’ homes) and posting them on the page as his “employee of the week”. Super cute, right? Dillon innocently tweeted a collage of the photos to his friends, and inadvertently staged a mega marketing coup.

EVERYONE LOVES DOGS! Who knew right? I know *I* do. When I saw that tweet retweeted in my feed by someone I follow, I clicked on it SO FAST. And then I clicked through to Dillon’s dad’s Facebook page because I just had to see it for myself.

And now, like over 14,000 (!) other people across the globe, I am a fan of Stairfaces & Josephsen Hardwood Floors for no good reason, except DOGS, and of course one day I might move to New Jersey and need some reclaimed barn door planks refinished and installed as flooring in my home office. It could happen, right?

But, even if it doesn’t, my heart has been warmed by some guy I’ll never meet and the pets he posts on his business page. I’m ALSO now following his college-age son on Twitter, because this kid? He’s trying to make something of himself, maybe in the media/entertainment industry, and I’ve got a daughter his age who is trying to make her mark as a vocalist. ABN (always be networking), people!

See how this works? Sometimes it’s just about being yourself and sharing information that matters or moves YOU. If it makes YOU happy or sad or mad, odds are pretty good it will affect others the same way. Being a member of the audience you are trying to reach and engaging in honest dialogue without contrivance or artifice or hidden agenda is the easiest form of social media marketing and networking there is. And it works surprisingly well!

To learn more about Dillon and his dad, here’s a great article (one of many) that popped up after that tweet went viral:

Fox 5 Employee of the Week

 

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Marketing Monday: Measurable Results

31 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by robertatrahan in Marketing Monday

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Advertising, Audience Capture, Book Marketing, Book Promotion, Increased Visibility, Marketing Monday, Marketing Tips, Referral Business, Roberta Trahan, Social Media, Social Networking, writing life, Writing tips

A measurable result is one of the touchstones of any successful marketing campaign. But how do you define it? Most folks look at number trends before, during and after a promotion and look for an uptick in sales. Metrics are an obvious measurement of whether or not our marketing efforts (and investment) have paid off. But, they are not the only yardstick of success.

Increasing your sales, and ultimately your bottom line, is the prime objective. However, specific marketing efforts rarely correspond directly to an increase in units sold. A lack of a sales spike, however, does not necessarily mean your ad plan has failed. There is more than one way to measure success. For example:

Increased Visibility in the marketplace – every campaign or promo you run will at the very least garner you attention. Most of the people who see a sponsored post, tweet or Instagram ad respond impulsively to the concept if it interests or appeals to them. They will “like” your promo, but don’t click through to purchase. They aren’t actually shopping. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t make an impact. The hope here is that when they are looking to buy, they’ll remember you. There are sales conversion formulas that calculate how many impressions (number of times someone sees your ad) it takes to convert a sale. It varies, but every person who notices you gets you one click closer to that purchase. In  the long run, how many “likes” you get matters.

Audience Capture is just a sexy term for saying followers or fans, and is another important measurable result. These are folks who aren’t yet ready to buy, but have more than just a passing interest in what you have to offer. They take the extra step of connecting with you – becoming a fan of your FB page, following your blog or Twitter or Instagram account – in order to keep you and your offerings in their que for later reference.

Referrals (or “shares”) are also a powerful measure of a successful ad or promotion. It’s harder to track these results directly because there’s no way to follow the sale back to the source, but every time someone retweets your Tweet or shares you FB ad or blog post, you are reaching a new potential market you had no way of reaching otherwise. It’s essentially free advertising, and should be counted as a win.

The biggest mistake you can make when it comes to evaluating your marketing plan is to expect a dollar for dollar return on your investment. Factor the long term payoffs from increased visibility, audience capture, and referrals into the equation. In other words, don’t sell yourself short. Building a customer base or audience takes consistent effort over time. And remember, sales metrics are not the only measurable result that matters.

 

Marketing Monday – Ask the Author! Marketing Tips from Valerie Bowman

20 Monday May 2013

Posted by robertatrahan in Marketing Monday

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Amazon Publishing, Author Branding, author marketing, historical fiction, Marketing Tips, Roberta Trahan, Social Media, Valerie Bowman

So we authors all know we need to market ourselves and our work, but so many of us don’t know where to start. I recommend that writers build a marketing plan – a list of select tasks within a limited (and/or regular) time frame – for each book. Sounds easy enough, but before you can build a marketing plan you have to identify your audience, and then find marketing opportunities that will reach that audience. Sounds a lot easier than it is.

Well, today I’m going to help you out with that, at least a little. My internet author friend Valerie Bowman recently published a great how-to guide that has a lot of helpful tips. While Valerie’s experience is largely with the Romance genre, most of her advice is genre non-specific.

Valerie’s guide to “Painless Marketing for Busy Authors” is well worth the small investment and is a great place to start planning your marketing efforts. Valerie’s book includes the same savvy suggestions you’ve read on this blog (and others) like build a website, brand yourself (not your books), don’t bite off more than you can chew, and set a realistic budget and goals. All of this is sound advice and bears repeating.

Valerie also offers some resources and cost-saving ideas like:

  • Author-Author.net – where you can buy copies of your books at cost. If you buy them here, you can resell them and keep 100% of the revenue. I’ll add that some publishers (like the Amazon Publishing imprints) often offer special pricing   to their authors for purchasing their own books.
  • Worldcat.com – tells you which libraries ordered your book
  • FreeBookFriday.com – a great website to get Twitter followers and Author Page likes for a minimal cost
  • Novelrank.com – you have to sign up for this on release day but it tracks your sales
  • Ninth Moon – great promotional products for authors
  • AuthorCentral.com – Amazon sales tracking site. You can see your rank and sales but only for print books (unless you self-publish) as reported by Nielsen BookScan. Updated Friday mornings.
  • Tweetchat.com/hashtag – site where you can see all tweets related to a certain hashtag.
  • Hootsuite – an application that can analyze when your Twitter followers are online the most. You can then schedule your promo tweets accordingly. You want to tweet about promotion sparingly.
  • Mailchimp.com – manages email subscriptions for newsletters. Free up to first 2,000 subscribers.

And that’s not all. If you’re looking for a basic how-to guide to help you get your marketing plan off the ground, you might give Valerie Bowman’s “Painless Marketing for Busy Authors” a try. Blurb and links to buy below.

Got questions? ASK VALERIE! Just include your question in your comment to this post. Valerie has graciously offered to stop by and respond!

***

PainlessMarketingCov2“Painless Marketing for Busy Authors”

by Valerie Bowman

The A-Zs of book marketing covering the good, the bad, and the surprising!
  • Why promotion really is your problem even if you have a publisher
  • What is the goal of all marketing and promotion?
  • Why negative reviews don’t matter and why you should welcome them!
  • How to find your readers
  • What is branding and why should you do it?
  • Specific things you can do to promote your books…and more!

***

ValerieBowmanauthorphotohires

About the Author

Valerie Bowman is an award-winning author who writes Regency-set historical romance novels aka Racy Regency Romps!

Valerie’s debut novel, SECRETS OF A WEDDING NIGHT, is the first in the Secret Brides series. Book two, SECRETS OF A RUNAWAY BRIDE, was released March 26, 2013 and SECRETS OF A SCANDALOUS MARRIAGE will be released Oct 1, 2013. A SECRET PROPOSAL, a related novella, was released 1/1/13.

Valerie has a B.A. in English Language and Literature with a minor in history from Smith College. By day, she is a technical editor at a computer software company. By night, she combines her love of writing, history, and romance to craft stories about people falling in love.

Want to buy the book? Find links to Amazon, B&N, and Kobo at http://www.valeriegbowman.com/for-writers/

Want to learn more about Valerie? Visit her website for more info and links to her Twitter and FB accounts: www.valeriebowmanbooks.com

***

Does Blogging Sell Books? — 3 Marketing Strategies Every Author Can (and Should) Use

04 Sunday Dec 2011

Posted by robertatrahan in Marketing Monday

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

author marketing, Blogging, Marketing Tips, New Media, Roberta Trahan, Social Media, Social Networking

Turns out last week’s post on the New Media Melee resonated with a lot of folks. Apparently most of you are just like me, trying to do everything I can to kick start and sustain my writing career. The discussion that followed the post raised a really good question for which I have found no simple or definitive answer — How do we know what works?

Most of us need to budget our resources carefully — we have neither the money to spend on a multi-platform advertising campaign nor the time to invest in endless hours of social media marketing in the webiverse. Out of necessity, and also to preserve our sanity, we need to target our efforts. The good news is that focusing on a handful of well-selected strategies is much more likely to yield the results you want than the scattershot approach. This is not new thinking–targeted marketing is an age-old advertising principle, and it works.

Build a Marketing Map

No matter where you are in your writing career — whether you are already published, or yet to be published — every author should have some semblance of a marketing plan. I know, the forethought and research this requires can be daunting. But, if your goal is to sell your work, there’s really no choice but to suck it up and give it a go. It’s really not as hard as it sounds. Start by defining your readership,

Every book has a single core reader group–this is where you should start. First off, and although this sounds obvious many authors either can’t or won’t define their work this way — what genre are you writing? In the case of memoir and non-fiction, this can be fairly simple to discern. Topical non-fiction like self-help or cooking is self-defining. Genre fiction such as thriller, mystery, sci-fi, and so on, targets a fairly well-defined group of readers. However, current consumer research indicates that there is a certain amount of cross-over between these reader groups. Thus, you will want to include them in your marketing plan.

Deciding on what category your core reader group falls under is only the first step. Next , you will need to examine who those readers are. This is essentially the definition of the term ‘demographics‘. Are they male or female, young or old, highly educated, affluent? What are their interests? How are they likely to spend their time and money, and where?

Finding the answers to these questions requires two things — research, and a bit of armchair psychology. Start by analyzing your own buying habits, and those of people you know. Spend some time trawling the web, searching for like-minded individuals. You’ll be amazed at what you find. More than you want, most likely, so take note of the best of it. Look for common ground and behavior. But don’t limit yourself to Google searches. There are also some great books and blogs on author marketing out there–read them.

Once you’ve done your research and settled on two or three reader profiles, it’s time to choose your tactics. By this I mean, decide on how and where to reach your readers. There are likely to be a number of worthwhile choices, but no one can do it all. Use your best judgment and be selective about what options you add to your plan. My advice to you is to choose two or three marketing strategies that you can a) afford, b) manage on your own, and c) sustain for the long haul.

No matter what other marketing you decide to undertake, there are three basic tools I believe every author can, and should, employ.

Blogging

There are several reasons I advocate blogging. First, it is a proven way to bolster a public profile and credentials for an author’s expertise. I’m not going to get into a discussion of branding or platform building here, but the most oft overlooked aspect of author marketing is author identity. This is primarily because many people find it uncomfortable to draw attention to themselves. Authors, especially, prefer to focus the attention on the book. Understandable as this is, it is a HUGE mistake to avoid self-promotion. The success or failure of your work depends a great deal upon your merits–as a writing expert, as well as your expertise in your subject matter. An author blog is the single most effective forum for building a bridge between you and your audience. You have a soap box, and your readers have a way to interact with you.

It is essential to make yourself accessible, at least in some limited way. Readers, just as fans of all the entertainment arts, desire a relationship with the person behind the art. Being willing to engage directly with your readers is essential to creating a following.

Second, blogging does indeed sell books. The proof of this will show, in time. The more people who are interested in what you have to say on your blog, the more people there will be talking about you and what you do. It also serves as a way to keep your readership engaged with you between book releases. Ultimately, blogging ABSOLUTELY translates to increased individual book sales. It ‘s just plain common sense.

The one caveat I offer, however, is that blabbering through your blog is the quickest way to be dismissed by your readers, colleagues, and just about everyone else. Keep your blog posts specific to your books, your subject matter, and/or any specific areas of expertise you possess. Try to refrain from blogging about personal matters or your daily life–unless it pertains, in at least some loosely connected way, to your creative process. Your blog articles must be of interest to your audience, but you should avoid exposing too much of your personal life to the world at large. When you have nothing of your own to share, it is always considered good form (and good karma) to promote other authors whose works you respect.

For a fun ‘tutorial’ and some good advice on blogging, read Anne R Allen’s article “How to Blog –A Beginner’s Guide for Authors” .

Social Networking

There are two primary social networking utilities that every author should learn how to use — Facebook fan pages and Twitter. This post is intended to advocate these tools, not as a ‘how-to’ tutorial. I am still learning to use them myself, and despite all the reading and research I have done, it still boils down to a trial and error process.

What I can say is that Facebook and Twitter both create essential community for authors. These additional portals also create a relatively easy way to cross-market by giving you instant access to gigantic data bases–for free.

Let me just reiterate that when I say Facebook, I am referring to a Facebook Fan Page — this is NOT the same as the general Facebook friends page that most everyone has. A Facebook Fan Page is a linked but separate application utilized by businesses, organizations, celebrities, and artists like yourself–people who have something to sell or promote. Take the time to learn the difference and then get one set one up for yourself.

Admittedly, using Twitter can feel a bit like you’ve linked into the collective global consciousness of the human race. It takes some study and practice to find your niche and get comfortable being in the constant stream of conversation. I spent several weeks searching and observing the activity of others (publishers and successful authors in my genre) before I started tweeting myself. I began by ‘following’ the tweet streams of people I thought were using the utility well.

No matter what your personal feelings may be about social networking, it isn’t going away. It’s your choice, of course, but if you don’t join in, you run the risk of being left behind.

Author Websites

Makes me feel old when I hear this, but many internet marketing gurus are saying that the website is an outmoded platform. In point of fact, blogging utilities like WordPress and Blogspot have become so sophisticated that many folks (authors included) have started setting up their entire internet identities from their blog.

This single-source approach can make sense on a lot of levels — technologically and economically. However, no marketing expert I trust would ever tell a client to put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. Having multiple ‘homes’ on the internet gives your audience more than one way to find you. Hosting a web page at your own domain (your NAME, people, not your book title) is the very first thing you should do. Link your blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts to it and create your own multi-media marketing network.

Agents and publishers will expect you to have both your own website and a blog. Technologically speaking, it is completely desirable and possible to integrate the two. I recommend you hire a web designer to help you do this–by and large, do-it-yourself websites are not a good idea.

So there you have it, your own min-marketing map. By utilizing these three basic tools, you can effectively market yourself and your books to the audience you desire. It is a huge commitment, no doubt, but then, so was writing the damn book in the first place! You can do it, I know you can.

One last caveat–and this is a pet peeve of mine: NO AUTHOR NEEDS SEO services (aka Search Engine Optimization). It is an absolute waste of your money. Readers simply DO NOT do a search for ‘book’, or “spy novel” or “memoir” or “historical fiction”, and then shop the first 10 titles that show up. Don’t let anyone tell you they do-it’s an out and out lie. Readers shop for books in BOOKSTORES — whether they be brick-and-mortar shops or online retailers like Amazon. The one and only possible exception to this would be some non-fiction books, largely business or self-help titles. But that is not my area of expertise, so that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Alrighty then, fellow authors, go forth and market!!

Best-selling author of the quasi-historical epic fantasy and post-apocalyptic science fiction. Dragon Seeker, Myth Maker, Coffeechocoholic & Antique Jewelry Hoarder.

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