Today in publishing, if you don’t know how to market an e-book effectively, you might as well say sayonara to your book sales. The key to marketing your e-book successfully is having a plan. Planning out your marketing campaign is essential to making a profit.

Let’s face it; we live in an age where virtually anyone can write and produce an e-book at the touch a button. The number of books we have access to is skyrocketing daily, and there is a rapidly growing e-book database online. If you want to stay ahead of the curve and attract an audience to your book, not someone else’s with similar content, you need to focus on a marketing campaign.

What is a Marketing Campaign? 

A marketing campaign is designed to create customers out of strangers. Take a minute to think about your favorite brands. Do you have them? Good. Now, try to think about what all of those brands have in common. They all have effective marketing campaigns. All of their campaigns exemplify the four marketing R’s that you should live by to achieve success: Recall, Relate, Revenue, and Repeat.

#1: Recall

This is the first step towards understanding what a marketing campaign is. An effective campaign will make the audience remember the company, product, or service being offered. If you create a campaign that causes the audience to remember, you are kicking off a successful strategy.

#2: Relate

Create a campaign that will be relatable for customers. If your marketing campaign doesn’t have a target demographic, it will fail. Great campaigns ensure that your product is not only easy to recall, but it’s also easy to relate to. This doesn’t mean that you have to tailor your product, but rather that you have to properly strategize your campaign to create memorable connections with consumers. Most of the time, relatability focuses on emotional impact.

#3: Revenue

Once your campaign ensures that customers will recall your product and relate to the campaign itself, you need to focus on creating revenue. A successful marketing campaign sells. If you aren’t making money, your marketing strategy is usually to blame. The purpose of any campaign is always to make money, not lose it.

#4: Repeat

Repetition is crucial to the success of your campaign. Your strategy not only has to create customers, but it also has to create raving customers. You want people to return for more. Your biggest tool is utilizing the base of dedicated that you already have. Repeat customers who give great word-of-mouth referrals are your ultimate goal. A smart campaign will take advantage of tools like social media, email, and word of mouth. Including these tools in your campaign plan is crucial to reaching success.  

Marketing campaigns include advertising, social media, demographic research, and a lot of trial and error. There is no secret to success when it comes to planning a strong campaign, other than hard work and research. If you understand your product, your target audience, and what you want your brand to say, you are well on your way to creating a successful campaign.

An E-Book Marketing Campaign 

Now that we’ve established the basics of what a marketing campaign is, it’s time to learn how it applies to your e-book. In order to create a marketing campaign for e-books, you must understand, in depth, your audience and your book.

A book, even if it has outstanding content, won’t sell on its own. You need to create a campaign to market the text to your audience. If you have a well-planned movement that showcases the most relatable material from the text, you should see a rise in sales. With such a growing library of e-books now online, it is imperative that you cater to your specific audience. You need to make potential readers feel like they are missing out by not reading. This is all accomplished through a successful marketing campaign.

What are the Benefits of a Well-Planned Campaign? 

A well-planned campaign is going to be much more successful in the long run than a poorly constructed one. The work you put into perfecting your strategy will show. You will not only see an increase in your book sales, but you will also see an increase in reviews. This is key to having a successful, repeatable experience. A well-planned campaign will expose viewers to powerful messages concerning the book you are selling. Increased exposure to the campaign will increase awareness about the book, which will, in turn, increase book sales further. You will be able to see these results statistically if you utilize your resources appropriately.

What do I use to Market my E-Book? 

You have access to a vast array of tools, and they are all at your fingertips. It is essential that you take to the online market space and utilize everything from marketplace author pages to social media.

Marketing an e-book is about catering to the needs of a specific audience, and this applies regardless of genre. Fiction needs to cater to the wants and needs of the reader just as much as a documentary. For readers, a careful balance exists between “I feel overwhelmed” and “I’ve never heard of that.” You must strike it.

You must carefully expose potential readers to the contents of your book and draw them into purchasing it. This can be done through several different mediums. The key is to create a balanced array of advertisements across several different platforms.

Email 

The first platform to focus on is email. People might think that email advertisements are going away, but they are really evolving. There are so many new ways to utilize emails for a marketing campaign, including different formats. Create an advertisement that is appealing and inviting. It should have a sentence or paragraph from the e-book that stands out or a review that is exceptional. It should showcase the best parts of the book while also maintaining a classy aesthetic that corresponds with the cover art.

Blogging Communities 

Another popular platform to use is blogging communities. You will need to create an author website to house your work in one central location. Having a website or a blog will invite people to get to know you as a person, which is appealing for future readers. It’s important for them to connect on a deeper level with authors in order to relate to the material the author produces. After all, relatability is key to having a successful marketing campaign.

One major benefit of having a website or a blog is the ability to interact with and gain personal feedback from readers. If your blog has a comment section, always keep an eye on it and be sure to respond when a reader reaches out. It’s important to maintain relatability in order to create a lasting impression and ultimately a relationship between author and reader. Blogging communities found on social media are also a strong place to campaign for new readers. 

Social Media 

The most essential, platform to utilize for your marketing campaign is social media. Social media has become the giant of advertising today. It has revolutionized how we market altogether. It’s imperative that you pay special attention to advertising through this medium. There are many different social mediums through which you can market. You should focus on the three most important ones: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. These three are the most popular and have proven to be the most persuasive in terms of sales.

Think about designating a purpose for each of the three social media you want to focus on. Twitter could be exclusively used for posting snippets from the book to tease your audience into buying the whole book. You can also use Twitter for live Q&A’s and fan interaction.

Facebook can be leveraged for interviews and larger content, such as links to your website or blog. Always make sure there is a link that brings readers to your product, whether it is by way of your website or a direct link to your book on its marketplace.

Instagram is the best medium to show your human side and showcase any specific artwork that you think is important to increasing the book’s sales. Posting about your daily activities and challenges will make you (and ultimately yours work) more relatable to present and future readers. Remember, social media is best used to build relationships. If you as the author become reachable and relatable, people are more likely to trust you. Trust builds lasting relationships for the buyer and seller.

Old Fashioned Advertisements 

The last platform you should explore is paid advertisements. Yes, they cost money but they are always effective in creating a new fan base. It is essential that you consider these advertisements when creating your marketing campaign in order to make it as effective as possible. I would caution you to check with who you advertise with, though. Make sure your ads will be seen on sites that your readers will be visiting. We all know that the best advertisements are free. Paid advertisements are handy, but nothing is as effective as having others talk about your book. Encourage your readers to talk about your book on social media, verbally, and any other way you can think of. The more discussion that is generated, the more free advertising you and your book can get.

There are so many tools online that you can utilize in order to increase your sales. The key to a successful marketing campaign is understanding how to utilize those tools to your advantage. Once you have grasped this concept, your marketing campaign will begin to improve.

How to Create a Strong E-Book Marketing Campaign 

There are no magic tips to creating a strong marketing campaign. There is only what works for your specific book and what doesn’t. The thing to remember when planning your campaign is to remain consistent. You want your potential readers to grasp your voice clearly on whatever platform you are reading. Consistency will allow your work to appear more professional as well, which will, in turn, come across as more trustworthy and reliable.

Trust is important to maintain when marketing anything, especially books. Books connect with people in special ways, which means the marketing material needs to connect with people in similar special ways.

Another tip to creating a strong campaign is to make sure it’s safe from being stolen. There is nothing worse than publishing an e-book, creating an awesome marketing campaign for it, and having the material stolen due to a lack of a proper copyright. You should make sure that your book is safe from theft, especially on the Internet.

Many self-published e-books, or just e-books in general, are not expected to turn a sizeable profit. It is essential that you don’t cave and start giving your e-book away for free. According to DigitalBookWorld.com, it’s okay to run a limited time free giveaway, but it must be a limited time offer to produce positive results. Avoid running a long-term freebie or reverting back to freebies and instead wait for the materials you have promoted to take hold of potential readers. Book sales do not skyrocket overnight, even for exceptionally well-known authors; they take time to ripen.

Finally, according to Unbounce.com, one of the best ways to make your e-book marketing campaign almost perfect is to tap into the power of a team. Marketing an e-book is not always a one person job. It will require teamwork in order to be effective. Ensuring that everything you use from visuals to text is top quality, including the e-book itself, will make your rise to the top that much smoother. 

Enlist Professional Help 

The process of creating and strategically planning a marketing campaign is a challenging job.  It starts with an awesome book, which is why hiring the right editor is vital.

Your marketing plan should start before your book is even published, and it will continue long after it releases. If you don’t know where to start, or just need to bounce ideas off an experienced pro, we can help.

We assist independent authors with publishing their best work. Our services include manuscript and concept critiques, developmental editing, proofreading, cover art creation, and marketing campaign consultations. Contact us today for more information!