A Framework for Digital Marketing Success

Successful digital marketing is about reaching and influencing potential buyers throughout their book buying journey. Identifying and successfully executing on the best tactics to do that requires a thoughtful and strategic approach that ensures all of your marketing tactics reinforce one another and work in concert with your publicity and sales activities.  

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Build Your Foundation Content + Context		Develop Your Audience Connectivity + Community		Expand Your Reach Capture + Convert

Build Your Foundation

Content + Context
Establish core title and author presences so that search engines and potential fans and buyers understand what the book is, who the author is, what they’re all about, and how they’re connected.

You can’t build a house without a foundation, and the same is true for marketing a book. It is tempting to start with outbound marketing tactics, such as email, social posting, or price promotions – but the way to ensure the greatest likelihood of success of any tactic is to have a solid foundation in place first. Establish these core presences and link between and among them whenever possible.

• Core book metadata: Your title and author metadata powers online discovery and sales. Create accurate, detailed, and compelling product data and book descriptions to feed out to retailers and other channels. Keep in mind that title metadata is often the first discovery mechanism for any book – whether print or digital – online, and it is also frequently the last thing potential buyers see before they decide whether or not to buy a book.
• Book and author profiles: Develop, manage, and maintain rich book and author presences on leading consumer-facing sites and authority platforms like Goodreads (title and author), Wikipedia, Amazon, social networks, and more. These contribute to author branding and search engine optimization, and they help to establish connections between works, authors, and all of the other people, places, and "things" they are associated with.
• Publisher and author websites: Your site should be the central hub for the most up-to-date, authoritative information about any book, author, or series you manage. The other profiles and presences we covered above are important, but ultimately they're all rented space. Build out your sites to own and control your information and your relationships with your readers.

Once you have these core foundational elements in place, you can focus on your inbound and outbound marketing efforts confident that your potential buyers will find rich, compelling information about your book and author as they navigate the path to purchase online.

Read more in the Marketing Insights blog post on How to Build a Strong Book Marketing Foundation.

Develop Your Audience

Connectivity + Community
Generate engagement and direct relationships with readers and influencers via owned and earned media to build an audience base and establish brand recognition and authority.

Identify the right channels and the right content to help you build meaningful author and publisher brands, grow your organic reach, and develop a deeper understanding of your audience. 

• Social media: Social networks are increasingly a primary source of news, brand engagement, and content and product discovery for consumers. Develop active presences on good-fit social channels to build relationships with readers and influencers in your niches. Include a balanced mix of on-brand informational, educational, entertaining, and promotional content, and engage with, like, share, and comment on content from authors and influencers.
• Content marketing: Create and share content that will interest and engage your target audiences. Share book previews to introduce new readers to your books and get people interested in buying. Write blog posts about timely or popular topics that will help bring new visitors to your site. Consider videos, podcasts, webinars and other content types that can expand your reach into new channels. Use your content to develop your brand, establish yourself as an authority or leader in your niche, and develop direct relationships with readers.
• Email: Email marketing is powerful because the people on your list have chosen to sign up. They’ve expressed interest and given you permission to come into their inbox. Make sure you have an easy way to opt-in to your email list prominently on your website, and offer attractive incentives like exclusive content, free previews, or giveaways to encourage people to sign up. Email them on a predictable basis with your latest blog posts, special offers, and news, and monitor unsubscribes to see how subscribers react to new emails.
• Publicity and influencer engagement: Build organic relationships with book bloggers, news outlets, and popular influencers in your niche. Their engagement with your content and brand will help to broaden your audience and grow awareness, and the more you understand audience affinities, the more you can inform and support publicity and other efforts. 

Expand Your Reach

Capture + Convert
Use targeted paid media and promotions to reach new audiences, boost your signal in a crowded marketplace, and make the sale.

When organic and earned efforts are unlikely to cut through the noise, advertising and special promotions can amplify your reach to the right audience. The key to successful – and cost-effective – digital advertising is knowing when, where, and if it makes sense to spend.

• Pre-order sales: If early buzz is not picking up as expected, that could be a sign other marketing and publicity efforts have not yet had time to reach likely buyers. Consider a pre-order campaign targeting fans of the author (to make sure they're aware of the new book) and close comp authors (perhaps featuring a great review quote from a known name) to drive pre-order awareness and purchase.
• Maintain (or regain) momentum: Recent success is a great predictor of future success. For successful titles past their peak, you may find untapped sales potential among price-sensitive buyers (a promotional offer could get them to finally buy) and other adjacent audiences who might not have been the primary targets for your launch campaign (perhaps fans of similarly-themed TV or movies who also shop at Barnes & Noble).
• Break through the noise: You may wish to advertise if you are competing against other big books, online media (e.g., blog posts, articles, videos), or other products in search. Targeted keyword ads in Google and Amazon can improve discoverability in a crowded field  – and if successful will improve your organic rankings as well.
• Make some noise: It is also important to pay attention to the absence of certain leading indicators that would tell you people are becoming aware of the book—media attention, reviews and ratings, search interest, and website traffic. If any or all of these are low, advertising may be a good idea.
• Testing ground: Advertising can also give you a relatively low-risk way of testing a hypothesis. If you think a book could resonate with a certain audience, it may well be worth testing that theory with a small advertising spend before launching a more resource-intensive campaign.

Ads can and should be targeted, controllable, and measurable.

For any ads, make sure you can create a targetable audience that is a fit for the book, author, or series. The key here is specificity and granularity of consumer attributes. For advertising to be cost-effective, it needs to be narrowly aimed at a very specific audience. Social ads in particular are great for granular narrow-targeting and multidimensional targeting (combining demographics, psychographics, and behavioral traits to form a target audience).

Be aware of competitors advertising in the same space, especially if they have deep pockets. Keep in mind that these competitors may not necessarily be other book publishers, but could be travel companies, media companies, or others in the same general topic area.