At the recent ACP mid-winter conference in Toronto, I presented to book publishers on the marketing steps they can take to improve their online presence. The slides offer insights on benchmark data for Canadian book publishers.
Slide Notes
Book publishers have been doing a lot of things right for a long time. In particular building an audience for their authors and promoting themselves to the trade and to consumers. The challenge is that the expectation of the public is that publishers become experts in the online tools and digital publishing platforms at the same speed with which the public adopts those tools and devices. Yes, publishers should be nimble, but we are talking about a digital space that is between 5 and 20 years old. We didn't get the iPhone and iPad in Canada until 2008 and 2010. My sympathies are with publishers, who I think are burning the candle at both ends in order to stay on top of everything with limited resources. So what are can they do to move from data zero to data hero?
Stepping back for a second, consumer data supports publishers' gut instinct that they should be active online. BookNet Canada data says that 56% of Canadians become aware of a book online. So, how can publishers optimize for online discoverability and connectivity with readers, what benchmark data is available and what options are there for publishers with budgets of $500-1000 per title?
The key takeaways
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Online marketing is an ecosystem comprising Owned Channels (publisher email lists and websites that are desktop and mobile optimized, that have at least basic SEO best practices), Rented Channels (social media), Earned (publicity, referrals, ratings and reviews) and Paid (ads).
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Publishers need expertise at press-level marketing to create enough of an audience base in order to realize the benefits of title-specific marketing. The foundation is the publisher website and email lists. If you're not actively marketing via email, then start here.
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Advertising a title or promoting via social media isn't effective without an established audience that is large enough and engaged enough to help spread the word and create hype about the title. Make sure you are building up your social media audience, and don't just track number of followers. Pay attention to your growth rate and engagement rate.
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Measuring success in analytics can be distilled into three areas: the ABCs. Acquisition (eyeballs, attention, awareness), Behaviour (engagement, applause and amplification–likes, comments, shares, retweets, referrals) and Conversion (revenue).
- When marketing a title, focus on 3 things: positioning, platform and sales. Publishers who attended my LPG webinar in December will have familiarity with the insights here. The basics are that the first 40 words of your book description are the most important marketing copy you write. Put the sales handle here. Author Platform is a familiar topic for publishers but, again for the LPG attendees, the key is to craft the best possible author bio because that is also content that is key to discoverability and interest in a title. And Sales Track, no need to discuss this further with those in the industry, but my take is that the comp titles are helpful resources and can be used for ad targeting and understanding buyer motivations.
If you attended my LPG webinar or saw my presentation at the ACP mid-winter conference then please say hello in the comments! And if we're not connected online then consider signing up for the Underwire Newsletter for more marketing tips for publishers or connecting on LinkedIn.
