3 Steps To A Wicked Easy Non Fiction Marketing Plan

Your book is finished and final edits complete. While you are waiting for the final copy it would be a good time to get your marketing plan in place. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, you can make it wicked easy and successful!

So first things first…who is your audience?

You need to know who you are marketing to, meaning: define your audience. What is your niche? You can figure it out by starting with what you wrote about. That will tell you what the audience will be.

Basically it’s who you want to reach and how you can help them with your book. Here’s how it looks…

Your book is about corporate leadership. That will give you a very wide audience and that will make marketing it difficult. Narrowing the focus of your audience to something like women in corporate leadership or leadership in the training industry you will have an easier time finding and connecting with your audience.

The great thing is that there is no limit to the number of these “niche audiences” that you can target in your marketing!

One of the top selling books on Amazon today is the The Magnolia Story by Chip and Joanna Gaines. (promo link)

If you have not heard about them then you might not know that they have a hit HGTV design show and live in Waco TX. But their potential audience for marketing extends way beyond that little slice of the United States.

1. They are a Christian family who doesn’t mind talking about their faith so they could target that in their marketing.
2. They are a funny couple with 4 cute kids so they could target the Mommy groups and sites.
3. They do home design so all the decorating gals would be a great audience.
4. They love Baylor football so could hit some sports analogies easily.
5. She loves antiques and retro which is a huge audience in itself.

That is just the tip of the iceberg for audiences that this couple could start interacting and posting for!

Next, don’t forget your competition

There are a lot of reasons to do this. One, you can use some of their marketing ideas. Another is that looking at and reading four or five of your competitors books and marketing will be a huge help in figuring out how your book is different from the rest. That will give you a marketing edge over them.

If you want to get your book noticed setting it apart from the rest is really important. That said, their groups and followers could be a “ready made” target to start shooting for!

For example, say you have written a railroad history book. The first thing I would do is a quick search on Amazon for “railroads” and then sort by publication date. You want to find current authors and see what kinds of marketing they are doing!

So I found Michael Williams who is a writer of train stories on Amazon.

He did not have an author page so I went to google and typed in “michael williams railroad” and found that he had a Twitter account. He shares other railroad tweets and pictures of his family life.

Followers On Twitter

So now how do find people who might want to read your book? Check the followers of other authors like Michael on Twitter! Just a quick peek showed that 5 of 9 people have some relation to railroads and would be good people to connect with!

You can do this same thing for Pinterest followers, Instagram and Facebook business page followers.

Please note! Making connections doesn’t mean making sales!

You need to follow people, share things they will like, give them info about your topic, and generally make a connection and a relationship with them BEFORE they will buy your book!

Have great sales copy ready

Last but not least, make sure to have great sales copy ready for all of the places where you market your book. Having it ready to go will save you time and also save you from looking like you are disorganized.

Your copy should describe the book and how it will benefit your reader. What this means is how will that book help them solve problems in their lives, how will it make their lives improve?

In other words, how will your book help them?

A great way to figure this out is to add “so that” to the end of your chapter titles.

Heading back to Amazon, I found a book that I would never read, “Survival Medicine: Handbook to the Prepper’s Long Term Survival Guide“. I am not preparing for long-term destruction of civilization and also I tend to pack minutes before I walk out the door so my real life isn’t conducive to this planning anyways! BUT maybe I could be persuaded to take a peek with these benefits (I wrote them from the chapter titles!)

• A Preppers List of Over The Counter Medicine and Medical Supplies … so that you can easily find out what you need and get from local stores or online
• Wild Medicinal Plants A Prepper Can Use … so that you can use your gardening skills to save your family in case of emergency
• Tips A Prepper Can Use To Stay Calm … so that you can be the ones who survive and thrive in the new world

Each of these touch on a “why” of buying the book. Triggering fear or happiness, confusion or doubt will all help your potential reader pick your book out of all the other ones out there!

Edit your words into a short blurb, a medium blurb and a longer one. That gives you a version for every need you’ll have.

Use the brainstorming words as posts for social media and other times you need quick comments!

Marketing Ideas For Non Fiction Books Wrapup

Marketing your non fiction book doesn’t have to be horrible chore. You love your topic and finding people to buy your book should not be as hard as you might think!

Take a little time, put a little thought into how you will be positioning your book and the whole thing can feel a lot more like fun and a lot less like work!