Julie Broad (Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers) explains that many authors misalign marketing tactics with their strategic goals. She advises authors to define their primary strategic goal (example: start or expand a speaking business), choose metrics that measure that goal (e.g., booked gigs, proposals sent, exposures), and select tactics that directly move those metrics rather than focusing only on book sales. The video gives concrete tactics for using a book to secure speaking engagements and contrasts tactics for authors focused primarily on sales.
Chapters
Book marketing is a massive subject and many authors are doing book marketing that doesn't get results. There's a simple fix for a lot of authors. So if you're doing book marketing and you want to avoid the mistake that messes many authors up, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, a fabulous self publishing services firm where you're getting the service of a publisher, but you're the CEO and control the content, keep all rights and all royalties. One of the big things with our service is providing marketing strategy and marketing tactical execution. And in doing that and in speaking with a lot of authors who need help, I can tell you one of the big challenges authors face is matching their marketing tactics with their marketing strategy. Many authors are doing the all important work of brand and platform building. They're getting on podcasts, they're doing outreach to get speaking gigs, they're connecting with reviewers on. All of these tactics are vitally important in the long run for your book and your brand's success. If you're like most nonfiction authors, you're writing the book with a bigger purpose than just book sales. At least let's be real. I hope your singular goal isn't to make a living off one book. There are very few authors that generate most of their income from one book. Even the ones that have written many books, they are almost always making money in other ways. When whether it's from the sale of rights in other formats, consulting, coaching, writing books for other people, and so many other ways. Well, I am sure there are the odd unicorns out there that have done it. For almost every nonfiction author and even fiction, one book is not going to generate an income that you can live comfortably off of year after year. So the first thing you need to do is get clear on the strategic goal you've got. And then you want to get clear on the metrics you'll use to measure that goal and then the tactics you' use to achieve that goal. Let's use the very common goal of starting or expanding a speaking business from a book. The goal right here is speaking gigs. Sure, the more books you sell, the more likely you'll uncover speaking gigs. But if the goal is speaking gigs, you need to use the book to get those gigs. What does that mean? Well, first, your number one metric shouldn't be book sales. It's booked gigs. Or even before that, you should be measuring number of speaking proposals sent or or number of exposures to people who can book speakers. Do you see how That's a different metric than book sales. What you measure matters, because if I'm measuring exposures, speaking proposals, and booked gigs, my tactics and efforts are going to be put more towards using my book to get those numbers up versus focusing on book sales. In other words, I'm going to be looking for podcasts that focus on the problem I'm solving or the audience I'm helping. But I'm also going to be looking for associations or groups to spend speak locally or virtually in front of possibly using a chapter from your book that may open up that opportunity. I'm going to be looking around for conferences that have breakout room speakers, and I'm going to be using the content in my book as opportunities to speak and credibility for my proposals. If I'm an established speaker, I'm using the book as a reason to reach out to places that have booked me in the past. I'm refreshing my speaking materials with the book. I'm contacting places that paid me in the past with an offer to get a copy of my book for everyone in their organization or at their event in exchange for webinar or zoom training. I'm mailing copies of my book to people I've worked with in the past with a short note. Book sales can get you the speaking engagements you want, but if you aren't doing all these things, you're leaving it up to luck. Now, if you're focused on book sales, you're more interested in making sure the metadata is on point to drive success with Amazon ads and bookbub ads, you are pursuing promotional opportunities in ebook sales. Most authors need a combination approach where you're doing marketing tactics that drive towards the most important result. Build your brand and your audience and doing some tactical work to drive some sales to your book. Ultimately, you need your book to have reviews and you need as many people as possible to know your book exists in order to achieve overall success. So sales do give you some indicator of how these tactics are performing, as do reviews. But here's where I find A lot of authors get frustrated. They don't have an audience or a platform and they need to build that. And so they're doing all the things they need to do to build the brand and the platform. They are creating consistent content and putting it into the world. They're getting in front of other audiences with articles, video, audio interviews, newsletter swaps, and they're networking as much as they can. But they're watching book sales, wondering why the needle is only moving slowly. Each month. Measure the thing that matters the most and focus on the tactics that will move the needle on those things. For most nonfiction authors, book sales are a bonus. What matters are reviews, new clients, new leads, influencer connections, opportunity to get in front of other audiences through media speaking, podcast interviews, articles, platform growth, whether that is your email list, your social media or more. Do a variety of things drive sales to your book, but measure success on what's going to matter the most in two to five years. When books launch to a large boom, it's always, almost always because of five to 10 years of audience building before that happened, before the book launch. When you haven't done that, you're using the book to build it. Having the book is a bit of a shortcut, but don't mistake shortcut with instant. The authors that launch a book with a specific goal need to invest in making that something, that specific goal happen and matching the marketing tactics with that goal. That's the key to success. What tactics are you using to achieve your marketing strategy goal? Let's chat about that in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is really released, you'll be entered to win some sweet noboringbook swag. Now you might be thinking okay Julie, but I really do want book sales, so what do I do? Well, how about an ebook promotion? Well this video right here will help you do that. And if you're thinking okay this is great for post launch but my book hasn't launched yet so what is my pre launch strategy? Well I've got a video for you on that over here. Either way, I would be absolutely delighted to spend more time with you. So go ahead and click on over to the next video. You need to.
