Is Your Book Marketing Working? Track the Duds and the Successes

Did you get all the book sales you wanted last year?

Think about the time, effort and money you invested. Which efforts paid off?

Which actions were losers?

One client confessed she bought an expensive program to get her book listed as a top seller on Amazon. She worked hard and long hours to get a lot of bonus products and services offered as a special incentive to entice others to buy. What’s wrong with this picture?

Even if she did get a lot of sales on day one, what about the rest of the year? The next year? Life time sales?

Other past clients tried press releases, book talks, and networking, but found the effort to implement these far outweighed the profits.

7 Steps to Start Tracking Your Book Marketing Effectiveness

An old business maxim is “You have to know what doesn’t work and be willing to do what does work!”

1. At the top of a piece of paper…

Write Book Marketing and the past year’s date.

2. List all of the marketing you did for the year.

List everything from phone calls to email to social media.

3. List the hours of effort for each strategy.

Which method paid off? Take a look at your time investment. Without consistent, continuous marketing, not much happens.

4. List the monetary costs for each effort.

Educating yourself doesn’t have to cost a lot. Don’t fall for the glitzy, expensive offers that don’t focus on your particular needs.

5. Line through the actions that did not pay off.

Say, “I let go of all that doesn’t serve me.”

6. Mark the ones you enjoyed doing and lead to positive results.

Which gave you great resources, contacts, feedback, or sales? It’s good to keep doing what you love because you are more likely to do it.

7. Write down your monthly dollar successes.

It may be just books, or it may also be a service your offer. For myself, my 13 books bring in 1/3 of my business income, while coaching and other products bring the rest.

Yes, visibility and credibility is good, but without sales, so what?

If you really want more effective, easier and cheaper ways to market your book, you need to widen your vision to include all that works with internet marketing. That includes your website, social media, and email contacts.

If you are a reluctant marketer or an introvert, internet marketing works well because you don’t have to “tell and sell.”

Maybe you resist. You barely know about email marketing and have fear of the new world of social media. Or, you may have a website that nobody visits. Most first websites fail because the owners didn’t think about marketing when they hired their first web designer. And many web designers are good with graphics, but don’t know marketing.

Always write your sales copy before you hire a webmaster. If you don’t know how, it’s a good idea to visit websites that have good examples. Plan on investing a little money in copywriting. Take a teleseminar on it; read a book on it; or bite the bullet and get so some professional individual help. That could be a coach who teaches you how to write sales copy, or a copywriter who does it for you.

The solutions?

Just open your mind to it. Thirteen years ago your book coach kicked and screamed because she was a newbie and non-techie. But, little by little, she overcame her fears because she connected with techie and business mentors. Once she got the key steps, skills, and strategies, her business took off.

Sharing is Caring!

Do you have a question for me? Do you have some insight to share with the rest of us? Please feel free to post a comment

Published by Judy Cullins

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(C) 2013 Judy Cullins. Skills Unlimited Publishing.