- Marketing and sales are not the same thing.
But a lot of authors get the two things very confused
when it comes to planning their book launch and beyond.
If you aren't sure why you need both
or what the difference is, this video is for you.
(upbeat music)
Hey there, I'm Julie the Book Broad.
I'm an Amazon overall number one best selling author
and founder of a fabulous company called Book Launchers.
Or superpower is caring more about you
and your book than anybody else as we help you write,
publish, and sell a non-fiction book
that will boost your brand and make you money.
One of the mandates at Book Launchers
is that we will help you get your book into readers' hands
but here's where we've struggled with this
just a little bit.
Our clients want us to focus our efforts
on getting them a specific media outlet's attention.
For example, they may want us to focus on
getting a certain radio show to have them as a guest.
Or they wanna be on XYZ TV show.
That's totally fine, having a wishlist,
a dream list is great, but if they don't get it,
or even sometimes when they do,
they often wonder why they aren't seeing
a huge lift in book sales.
Well the challenge is that the thing that markets your book
is not always the same thing that sells your book.
And you need both for a successful book launch and beyond.
Marketing is about awareness,
sales is about asking for the buy.
That's my overly-simple definition but really
marketing is eyeballs and sales is credit cards.
Now you might be thinking, okay, I want book sales
and my book marketing will get that, maybe.
Often the correlation isn't that clear.
Now let me explain.
Book marketing is that media appearance
that looks so good on your social media
and maybe even on your bio.
But just because something looks amazing
and gets eyeballs or ears doesn't mean
it's actually selling books.
Here are three examples of what I'm talking about.
That would be the number three: one, two three.
Here are three examples.
Number one, I was on TV many times for my first book.
Popular morning shows with a lot of eyeballs.
It was super fun and the pictures were really popular
on social media, but the book sales did not change at all.
I got asked back on the show and I'm sure
my coaching clients saw me as a bigger, more credible expert
as a result but book sales did not change at all,
as a result of those TV appearances.
Number two, one of the contractors that we hired
to help with book marketing and PR for our clients
was telling me a story about how she landed
one of her author clients on the Dr. Phil show.
She thought this was gonna be a make or break moment
for her client and she said it had benefits
like making it easier to get other media attention
because her client had the credibility
of being on the Dr. Phil show.
There as no difference between the day before Dr. Phil
and the day of or the day after.
That's not to say that being on Dr. Phil
would not sell books for any author,
she had other success stories
selling lots of books post-media appearance.
But the thing is it's not a guarantee,
it's not a sure thing so you can't count
on the one thing to move a lot of books.
Number three, a colleague of mine
did a ton of podcast interviews
for his book launch and business promotion.
He basically just said yes to every kind of podcast
without regard for what it was or what their audience was.
He found that very few moved the needle on book sales
but one listener of an actually rather small podcast
contacted him three months after the interview
and bought 500 copies of his book for a corporate event.
So that small podcast was a big success for selling books.
But many of the bigger ones
maybe didn't sell that many books.
My point is this, you need to be clear on your goals
and why you're doing what you're doing.
Marketing is important because it builds awareness.
And you create the feeling of you are everywhere
and you need that to be seen and recognized
and as an expert and to be top of mind
when somebody thinks of the problems that you solve.
But for some authors
the most important thing is book sales.
You need that book in the hands of readers
and if that's the case, focusing your efforts
on those marketing things we just talked about
doesn't actually move units.
You need to focus on distribution and retail outlets,
not just book stores but places of business
where it makes sense that someone
might wanna buy your books.
Speaking engagements where you can sell books
to the organizer at the back of the room
or in some other kind of partnership arrangement.
Amazon ads and your email newsletter.
Building it and offering your book as part
of your auto-responder series.
Finally, finding partners in promotion.
Marketing can lead to sales.
But it doesn't always.
Marketing is important because is builds awareness
and the more people that hear you and see you,
the more they will trust you.
And that eventually builds you up as someone
they should pay to learn from, whether it's your book,
your workshop, your service, your product, your talk.
But get clear on what is important because
those big media outlets talking about you might feel good
but it might not be where you really should
be focusing your time, energy and attention.
Have you been surprised by the results or lack of results
from some of the marketing you've done for your book?
Let's talk about it in the comments below.
And when you comment the day a video is released
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And speaking of the next video, have you seen
this brilliant piece of advice, if I say so myself.
If you haven't check it out, or if you're not
feeling the vibe from that one today,
well this one on book award scams to watch out for
is sure to help you as an author.
Go ahead, click one of them, I'm waiting for you.
(upbeat music)