If you dream of getting your book in the hands of lots of readers, you need to be proactive in the how, when and why of marketing your book.
To get the greatest results, your marketing efforts need to begin long before your book is published. Don’t wait until you have the book in hand to create a plan for marketing. The sooner you start, the better.
Three guidelines that will get lots of traction are:
- Gear your marketing to specific groups rather than general readership
- Be consistent in your efforts
- Focus on building a subscriber list of buyers
Specific groups
The more targeted you are in your efforts, the better. After all, when someone does a Google search on a specific topic, if you have fine-tuned your message, it’s easier for a potential reader to find you.
Example: If you write a book about older women’s fitness, you will get a greater result by using terms specific to older women such as “women over 60 fitness” rather than “women’s fitness.”
What search terms are your potential readers using? Put yourself in the shoes of the reader as you develop your messaging. The more targeted you are, the better.
Consistent effort
To get the greatest result, it’s necessary to market every day. Rather than a hit and miss effort, create a checklist of marketing activities for your book. Each day, do at least two or three things to gain traction for your book.
Most authors do very little, if anything, to market their books. Imagine if you did something each day to gain visibility for your book(s). It takes more than sending out an occasional email, tweet, blog post or social media post to succeed in marketing your book.
Keep in mind that marketing every day is not marketing all day. As little as 15 minutes a day will get you results far better than authors who do nothing.
Subscriber list
Your marketing plan should include a strategy for building your subscriber list. One way is to include 
something inside of your book encouraging readers to visit a landing page for a special gift in exchange for their name and email address. This allows you to keep in touch with readers.
Another way is to create an independent landing page in which you encourage people to visit Amazon, buy the book and then return to the landing page to input their name, email and order number. In return, they receive a report, video or audio file.
Once the landing page is created, drive traffic to the page via social media, blog posts, and sending emails to your current subscribers.
Marketing your book doesn’t have to be a long, drawn out process. However, it does need to be a process.
Obviously, by planning out what you will do, you will achieve better results. Of course, it takes more than simply creating a plan. You must work the plan on a consistent basis to realize the greatest results.
