Many nonfiction books are created to solve a problem or teach prevention of a specific outcome; often doing both. When marketing you need to know what problems your book can solve or what it is designed to prevent.
Take a book on health and nutrition; some are designed to help the reader lose weight thus solve a problem. Others are intended to help the reader avoid strokes, heart problems, cancer or any number of life altering diseases thus preventing a problem at some point in the future.
A sales book may teach selling principles on how to close more deals. While another book of the same genre may be designed to help someone avoid the loss of their job due to low performance in sales.
Whatever the solution or prevention your book addresses you need to know how to position your message in all the marketing you do. That is if you want to sell lots of books.
One of the simplest ways to determine this is notice the most commonly asked questions people have about your book or your subject matter. Take the top three or four questions and develop your marketing message using the answers.
Not only can you use this formula for books, you can use it for virtually any other product or service you offer your customers and clients.
For example, I have a course where I teach authors how to market their books online with the desired result to become a bestselling author by way of Amazon or other online distribution points. When developing promotional material such as a sales page it is necessary to address the areas of interest and need my readers have. The more I can do this the more sales I will realize.
With the book marketing course the top three questions I am asked are:
- How many books do I need to sell to become a bestseller?
- How long does it take to do a successful launch?
- What if I don’t like to market my books?
By answering these (and other commonly asked questions) I increase sales.
If you don’t know what the top concerns your readers have you need to find out. The more you know the more you will address these areas in your marketing material. The more you address these areas the quicker a potential buyer can make their choice to click the “Add to Cart” button.
And “Add to Cart” is a beautiful thing.