#321: Marketing Minute: How Do You Prioritize Marketing Tasks?

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

Hey, Kingdom Writers. Shelly hits here. And before we dive in to this week's episode, I am excited to share with you a free event to help you self publish on a budget without compromising quality. You know, as most of you know, self publishing is something I've been passionate about since I published my first book in 2008 and I really became a self publishing expert through my book, self publishing books 101. And I have been mentoring writers now for, um, over 11 years and we have self published 70 books of our own.

But I found that I love helping.

Writers like you learn how to do the same. So, you know what we're going to be doing is we are launching a Kingdom Writers Conference Count the Cost Edition. And this is so exciting. It's completely free. It will run from Tuesday, May 3, 2022 and registration does close on Friday, May 6. So if you're listening to this, after May 6, it is closed. I'm sorry you've missed it. But if you're listening in real time, make sure to go sign up right now to save your ticket, save your spot so that you can be part of this event. You're going to learn from eight amazing speakers who are ready to help you self publish a quality book you're proud of on a budget. So make sure to go and register@dommywritersconference.com and grab your free ticket. Share this with your writing friends and you know, we can't wait to kick this thing off. It's going to be a blast. So. So I will see you on the inside of our Facebook group and in the conference. We will have two live sessions, we'll have prizes and so much more. So make sure to go sign up right now for free at kingdomwriters Conference. Com.

Nancy K. Asked, how do you prioritize marketing tasks? So there's different things and different ways you can prioritize. I'm going to share with you to just a brief way I prioritize and you can do it the way that works best for you. For me personally, I look at it and I'll say, I say, will it produce income? So I have a full time business. We have to be making money and having profit, not just revenue. We have to actually Be making profit to pay our mortgage, to pay our bills, to buy groceries, to put gas in the car. And so I do need to think personally about will it produce income? Now you, as an author, you may be in a different position because this may be something on the side for you and that may not be as much the highest priority. But you know, for me, I'll think, will it produce income long term or short term? And then what's the profit margin? So, you know, even if you are making money, your profit margin may be so small that you're like maybe breaking even, right? So think of, you know, think about those things as well then. I always like to prioritize building my email list. Will it build my email list? Is it manual or is it automated? And then the next thought is, what is the least minimum viable product? So sometimes you don't have to have everything done right now. You want it to be done with excellence, you want it to be done well. But sometimes we don't need to do everything. Right now, for example, we. You could release a Kindle version of your book first. It's cheaper, it's easier, it's faster. The print version, you know, you need the ISBN, you need, you know, a little bit different formatting. And you know, it's just, it takes a little bit more. The book cover is a little bit more expensive, you know, all of that. And so you could start with the ebook only and then add the print book later. I had a book so series A Life of Gratitude and also have a series on faith. And what I did was I broke the book down into three different sections and I published each of those three different sections separately as an ebook. And then I published them all together as one big print book later. So just some thoughts.

You know, some other things to think about, like what's required, you know, will you need to learn a new skill or task or technology? If I can choose something for marketing that's profitable with what I already know and with the tools I already have, I'll often choose that because anything, anytime you get a new tool, it's a new learning curve, it's potentially more money, all of that. And then also think about what has worked well for you in the past. So it's the 80, 20 rule. 20% of your efforts are going to produce 80% of the results. Results. If you can focus on the 20% and get 80% of the results, that is going to be amazing because then you could spend hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours perfecting these social media images that are getting two likes, right? Or you could go live and you get like 50 comments and all this, you know, I mean, and you can see like, what's working well, what is, you know, working with my audience and then finally just take action and figure it out as you go. Very rarely do I have everything figured out before I take action. I didn't know exactly how I was going to do this book launch when I was planning it, but I just started to take action and then God began to lead me.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave the behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom writers.