Streamline Your Marketing: Utilize Schedules for Efficiency

Marketing schedules are a roadmap for your marketing efforts. They will help you stay organized and on track, so you can reach your target audience and achieve marketing goals. A marketing schedule will include your target audience, marketing goals, marketing channels, and specific marketing activities you’ll employ.

As a writer, you know that marketing is essential to the success of your work. By creating a plan and sticking to it, you can save time, create structure, and improve long term marketing results. Which is really what we all want.

In this article, we’ll show you how to create a marketing schedule that works for you. We’ll cover everything from setting goals to tracking your progress. So whether you’re a new writer or a seasoned pro, read on for tips on how to get the most out of your marketing efforts.

In most cases, people are aware that being consistent with anything is what gets results. When you’re juggling the writing and marketing it’s not uncommon for authors to change up their time doing either task. This leads to disjointed and stilted results.

Additionally, Social Media, paid ads, planning, and a plethora of other marketing efforts can really drain both energy and creativity. Ideally, when we move forward with the business ventures of our author career, we want to eliminate things that drain while paving the way for results driven intentional successes.

This is where leveraging a marketing plan makes a difference. Creating a marketing schedule and the using the scheduling tools social media, websites, and other channels make available has an impact. Scheduling content with intention will help you be both consistent and save you time. This article will go over tools and resources that will allow you to maximize results with minimal effort.

The goal is always to make more time for writing while leveraging the most impactful efforts to minimize time invested.

Having a marketing schedule and plan will allow authors to:

• Save time: When you have a plan, you can avoid the last-minute scramble to get everything done. You can also avoid the stress of forgetting something important.
• Create structure: When you have a plan, you’re less likely to get sidetracked or waste time on things that aren’t important. You can also use your schedule to track your progress and make sure you’re on track to meet your goals.
• Improve results: When you have a plan, you’re more likely to stay focused and consistent. This can lead to better results from your marketing efforts.

Creating Your Marketing Plan

Identify a clear, measurable, obtainable goal for your book marketing.

The specific goals set for your book marketing will depend on your individual objectives. However, by setting clear and achievable goals, achieving them will be far more successful. Ideally, your goals are going to be specific. It’s not going to be that you want to ‘increase book sales’ but that you want to ‘increase book sales by 10% in the next quarter.’ The second goal has a clearly defined objective and timetable. This makes it a measurable goal.

The goal set needs to be both realistic and flexible. If you’re launching your first book setting a goal of a million sales in the first day of release would be unrealistic. Not hitting your goals often leads to discouragement and thus slows progress to success. A good first book launch goal would be to be at the top of the first page of the Amazon search engine page, or to sell 100 books in the first month. Increasing book sales is the most common goal of book marketing.

Buzz is the excitement and anticipation that surrounds a book. When you generate buzz around your book, you can create a sense of urgency and encourage people to buy your book before it’s too late.
A positive review from a major publication can help to boost your book’s sales and visibility. Even if you don’t sell a lot of books, you can still achieve your marketing goals by building brand awareness. When people are aware of your brand, they’re more likely to buy your books.
Build a community of readers around your book. By building a community of readers, you create a loyal following for your books. This community will help promote your books and spread the word about your stories and brand.

Identifying your target audience is key to knowing how to approach the people who will buy your book.

That means you understand your book genre, tropes, and uniqueness. It’s crucial that you understand the purpose and issues your book will tackle if it is a work of nonfiction. Once that’s clear, consider the tone of the book and style. Is this a lighthearted book? Is it serious? Was it written in a formal voice?

These items should be identifiable through your writing.

After this, you need to use the previous information to answer the following questions: What age group is the book written for? Will one gender prefer to read it over another? What socioeconomic level will your ideal reader be at? What experiences might they have encountered to make them the person to reach out to? By the time those questions are answered, you’ll know your target demographic. With this in hand, you’ll be ready to do some research.

Researching provides the information required to build an effective marketing plan.

Identify the platforms the target demographic is on. Find out who they are on those platforms, what groups or hashtags they are using. Clearly define the other books they are reading and authors they are engaging with. Follow those authors. See what those authors do that is working and what they do that isn’t. This will inform your path forward.

Choose your marketing channels. You don’t have to be every where all the time. You only have to be where your readers or ideal readers will be. There are many ways to market a book. Traditional methods like advertising and public events provide a traditional approach to your creations. You can use more modern methods like social media and book blog tours. Every author should have email marketing in their plan. Choose the channels that will be most effective in reaching your target audience. That is what will pave the way to sales and success.

Budgeting ensures the marketing plan fits the goals in an achievable manner.

This key aspect of planning allows you, as an author entrepreneur, to have an understanding of where the plan is starting and what steps can be taken to expand reach. Making sure you understand the budget for your book and your marketing empowers decisions made.

This is just a sample budget, and the actual cost of marketing your book will vary depending on specific needs and goals. However, this budget can give you a starting point for creating your own book marketing budget.

The following is an example of the cost associated with marketing:

• Book cover design: $500
• Book interior design: $1,000
• Editing: $2,000
• Proofreading: $500
• Marketing materials: $500
• Publicity: $1,000 (press release, content distribution, etc)
• Live Book launch party: $2,000
• Book tour: $5,000 (IRL) $500 (BookBlogTours)
• Amazon Advertising: $500 (paid ads)
• Social media marketing: $1,000 (paid ads)
• Book Description: $150
• Email marketing: $50
• Website development and maintenance: $200

Some of the above items may seem like obvious marketing expenses. Others may not. If your book is not high quality, it will not be a sustainable source of income. This alone puts editing, interior and exterior design, and proofreading high on the list of must-do’s for authors. Once you’ve outlined the best items to fit both your budget and your goals, it’s possible to build out the marketing plan.

Set the book launch date.

Create your One Sheet. (we have this book marketing info sheet in the marketing package)

Define how much time is available between ‘now’ and launch date.

Identify the tools for the platforms for your plan.

Learn to use them so you can schedule ahead of time.

Identify what is needed to set the plan in motion – ( do you need content, to fill out interviews, social media content)

Create needed content before you schedule. (Write newsletter sequence, create short images and video, etc)

Craft an email template (or get one from sites like this one) to send to book bloggers and book reviewers.

After prep is done, begin scheduling posts, newsletters, and social media shares.

Next work your way through a list of book bloggers, influencers, book reviewers, or websites you’ve determined to reach out to.

Once the list is complete, contact the sites for reviews (NetGalley, BookSprout, Story Origin, book review sites)

Review your social media schedule and begin scheduling further as needed.

Set up any paid advertisements.

Follow up and see what previous steps are generating results (results can be interaction with your brand, shares, reshares, sales)

Marketing a book can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. By following the tips in this article, you can create a successful book marketing plan that will help you reach your goals.

The most important thing is to start early and be persistent. Marketing a book takes time and effort, but it’s worth it in the end. When you see your book sales increase and your readers enjoying your work, it will all be worth it.

So don’t be afraid to get started. With hard work and dedication, you can achieve your dream of becoming a successful published author.

This has gone over a lot of information. If you have further questions, message us on Facebook and Twitter as InExhaustbleMedia and we’ll be happy to help you navigate for your situation.