Marketing Plan

Detailed customer segments including competition
Define what products / services best serve those segments
How to reach those customers
What to tell them to woo them away from the competition
How / where they should buy the products / services

-cb

I think that depends on many things.

I'm here more to hear the responses though than offer suggestions. Amazon Marketing Services are essential -for me- right now. And paid ads on Facebook are pretty much throwing away money.

I know that ain't what you're asking for, but that's all I got .

Maze Runner said:

What I'm getting here, please tell me if I'm wrong, is you identify the population first, and then show why they might be readers of this book, instead of starting with the book and trying to find a market? Not sure if that makes sense--grappling...

Click to expand...

Is a this a "I'm having my Heroine write a detailed marketing plan" or a "I'm self-publishing my novel and need to understand how to sell it" thread? I assumed the first.

-cb

Identify your reader demographic (people who read X, Y, and Z would also probably like my book) then list the ways you can think of to market to them. Then step beyond that and identify who might be interested in learning more--for example, if one of your characters is an avid gardener and gardening plays a role in the story, are there gardening blogs or forums to look at for guest posts, or gardening magazines you could contact to offer an ARC for review?

If this is a publisher asking you what you can do to help sell your books they are looking for what kind of social network you have (how many followers, how many likers), what connections you have (are you BFFs with Oprah by chance?), do you have an angle that when you pitch it to news outlets they'll jump on it (ie This book happens to be about the 2018 Olympics just in time for the 2018 Olympics!). Are you part of any communities that have particular publications devoted to them etc. This isn't actually asking you to market the work like you are a professional marketer. Usually this simply is a question a smaller press will ask to see if you as the author might come with some cool extras that will help sell books for them since their own outreach is limited.

I wrote this article several years ago. Some of the information needs to be updated, but essentially a marketing plan for writers includes the info listed: http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Vision47/Marketing101.htm