For many indie authors, writing the book is the easy part. The difficult part is knowing how to market said book. In the end, it’s challenging to have sales success without a solid marketing plan for a book.
The reality is, unless you have some kind of marketing background, the very thought of marketing and promotion is a cause of instant overwhelm. However, with a little effort and consistency this is actually a lot easier than you might think.
In this article, we’ll help you learn all about book marketing plans and how to make them work for you!
What Is a Book Marketing Plan?
A book marketing plan is a strategic tool used to plan the promotion of a book, and to drive sales. It is an essential part of any successful book sales campaign.
What Are the Benefits of a Book Marketing Plan?
The benefits of a marketing plan for a book are manifold and may include the following:
- It helps to target a specific audience
- It helps to boost the book’s overall visibility
- It takes much of the stress out of the marketing process
- It can help you maximize your book’s sales potential
How To Create a Marketing Plan for Your Book: Step-By-Step
We know that trying to plan a book launch marketing plan may seem daunting at first. To remove some of the stress and mysticism, we’ve created a step-by-step guide to creating a book marketing plan.
Step 1 – Decide on the Basics
Before you can really start creating a book marketing plan, there are a few things you need to determine.
For example, you’ll need to choose tools that can help you construct your plan. A duplicate word finder is one great tool since it helps you to avoid repetition. A text case changer can also be helpful when you’re writing marketing materials.
Let’s take a look at the basic considerations that precede creating book marketing plans.
Budgetary Restraints
Any marketing strategy is going to cost money sooner or later. While it may not be right away, you will eventually reach a point where some paid advertising or promotion is required.
Establishing a budget early on will help make your marketing plan a success without pushing you beyond your means.
Target Audience
The next essential thing you need to understand is exactly which audience you’re targeting. Saying something absolutely generic, like 40-50 year olds who like exercise is not going to bring you much fruit.
It’s essential to take the time to analyze your audience and the audience of similar books to help you learn exactly what kind of people you should be targeting.
Take the time to talk to people who read books in your chosen genre. In short, the further you can narrow down your target audience, the more likely your marketing plan is to be successful.
Set Goals
Before taking the time to create a marketing plan for your book, it’s a good idea to set goals. For example, if you want to become a bestselling author on Amazon, your goals will be different than if you just want to use your book as a passive income stream.
Aim for one main goal that you wish to achieve overall, as well as a series of smaller ones you can reach along the way. This approach will help you feel as though you’re making progress. You should also ensure that your goals are practical and achievable. Few things can make you feel like a failure as well as trying (and failing) to reach goals that were always unattainable.
Promotional Materials
Before you start creating your book marketing plan in-depth, you should decide what kind of marketing materials you want to use. It’s also a brilliant idea to start making some of them ahead of time.
You can use free graphic and text editing software to help you craft compelling, impactful marketing materials.
Step 2 – Familiarise Yourself With the Marketing Plan’s Main Components
Every book marketing plan has a few main components, and you need to familiarize yourself with them.
First comes the book launch, followed by various forms of marketing tools like email and social media marketing. Then, you still need to plan the promotional and advertising side of things, as well as outreach through events and other formats.
The Book Launch
The book launch is an integral part of most book marketing plans. You can view it as a sort of launching pad for all your other marketing tools.
This is a long process that’s very involved, so here we’re going to mention only the basics before delving into a more stable long-term marketing strategy.
The book launch is a construct that takes a while to put together, and the buildup to it includes a range of different preparations. Some of these include:
- Building an author website
- Creating a team of beta readers
- Deciding which social media platform to use for promotions
- Building an email marketing list
- Posting teasers on social media and other platforms
- Launch day sale advertising
- And more!
While this is undoubtedly a critical topic, it’s worth discussing in its own right and will be covered in detail at a later time. For now, let’s get into the flesh and bones of creating your marketing plan.
Email Marketing
If you’re going to make a success of marketing your book, email marketing is probably one of the most essential factors. You should consistently work on growing your email mailing list and send out regular reminders to buy your books.
Of course, spam is undesirable, but you want to stay in touch with your readers and remind them that you’re selling books.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is a definite winner when it comes to marketing, but it can be overwhelming. That’s where your preliminary research comes in. You need to choose one or two platforms that you know readers in your genre prefer.
Not only will it cut down on the overwhelm, but it will also make it easier for you to create enough marketing materials. Try to master one or two chosen platforms rather than trying to master every known platform.
Promotions and Advertising
Any book marketing plan will need to include some sort of promotion, as well as a certain amount of advertising.
This is why having a budget is so important. Both promotional sites and advertising are going to require some level of payment.
Advertising is one of the most effective tools at your disposal. It’s a good idea to run different types and styles of advertising till you find the most effective solutions.
Step 3 – Plan Your Promotional Timeline
When planning Book promotional plans, having a timeline is essential. You can do this using something as simple as a calendar or something as complex as a specific timeline creation application.
The important part is that, whichever tool you use, you should be able to use it easily and follow the timeline carefully.
Let’s take a closer look at the different things that should be on your timeline.
Promotional Dates
When you use a book promotion service, the promotions usually run for a limited time period. Typically, this time ranges between 30 and 90 days. These dates should be on your planning calendar. Both the planned lengths of the promotions and when you intend to renew them. This will allow you to stay on top of planned promotions, produce required materials, and avoid missing out on good sales opportunities.
The other side to this is that you need to discount your book to run a promotion. By keeping a carefully scheduled promotion calendar, you know exactly when to sell your book at a discounted price.
Advertising Schedules
It can be tempting to go overboard with advertising, but this isn’t necessarily the best option. It’s better to run small ad campaigns consistently throughout the lifespan of your marketing campaign.
This allows you to consistently use analytics from previous campaigns to tweak and edit your next campaign. Having an ad timeline beforehand will enable you to plan in advance, at least in terms of the broad strokes.
Emails and Social Media
The next thing you need to plan out is when you’re going to send out newsletters and marketing materials on email and social media platforms.
Preferably, you should schedule a daily social media post and weekly emails. If you feel you’ll have the time to manage it, you can send two emails a week. The key is to plan and schedule posts in advance so that you don’t have a great rush daily.
Outreach
You should schedule a certain amount of time for outreach. Whether it’s to book review companies or to specific book reviewers, you’ll need to reach out to them. Start with the people or places that you think are the most likely, and schedule the least likely outreach opportunities later on.
Planning to reach out to two or three reviewers each week is an excellent way to start.
Step 4 – Implement Your Plan
And that’s it. By now, you have all the planning done and all the background information you need to make your book a success. Now get in there and make it happen.
Final Thoughts
Planning a book launch marketing plan isn’t as difficult as you might think, especially not with great writing and editing tools that can help you create compelling marketing copy.
If you follow the steps provided in this article, you’ll be well on your way to selling your book. What are you waiting for? Create your book launch marketing plan, and start learning how to become a bestseller on Amazon and other indie platforms!
Remember, consistency is key. If you put in consistent effort, you’ll see consistent results.
SOURCES
At Voxtury, we prioritize using high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to ensure our articles are accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. To learn more about our commitment to quality and how we fact-check our content, please visit our editorial process page.
- Publish Drive – How to Create a Book Marketing Plan
- Kindlepreneur – How to Create a Book Marketing Plan That Works
- Ingram Spark – The Ultimate Book Marketing Timeline for Indie Authors
