CREATING YOUR AUTHOR MARKETING PLAN: Setting Goals
Where do you see yourself in 3 months, a year? Setting goals…
If you are truly serious about your writing career, then you need to look at it as a business.
The marketing plan is your “plan of action” about what you are selling, who will want to buy it and the measures you’ll take to generate your brand and achieve a sale.
Believe in yourself; Believe in your book
Focus on the goal line…
Unless your plan is to obtain funding, it doesn’t need to be long, or even well-written (don’t worry about typos or grammar.) It just needs to serve as a guide.
In the previous post, “The Author Marketing Plan Guide: 52 Weeks to Publishing”, I detailed a 5-point structure for creating a marketing plan: Goals, Research, Strategies, Analytics, Tactics. Now, let’s delve deeper into each segment so you fully understand the process.
1. List your Goals (Dreams)
Every one desires recognition for their efforts. It’s a fundamental need. Interviews, acolades even sales are all forms of confirmation that we have achieved success. Unfortunately, we live in a world where just one negative word will either push us forward even stronger, or shut us down completely. And the Internet is filled with nay-sayers and trolls.
Your first goal is to believe in yourself. Believe in your work. If you have written a work that you like, then there ARE others that will like it too. Your goal ISN’T to sell to the world. You are only trying to find your own niche of readers that like the same genre, style, story that you offer.
Second, what is your ultimate goal. To sell a few books? How many? To become an international sensation? I get a movie deal? To be a guest on the Ellen DeGeneres show? All are obtainable goals, and shouldn’t be discounted if that is what you truly want to achieve. Write that at the top of the list in bold letters and underline it – three times.
Stepping Goals. Now, it’s time to list what I call stepping goals... the goals you’ll need to achieve to reach the Ultimate Goal. These can be as simple as “Sell 100 books” to “Find Celebrity Endorsements.” For example. Let’s say you want to be on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. What do you need to do to accomplish that?
- Write a great book. Humor is a bonus, but I am sure she reads other types of books.
- Get the book into her hands. This is trickier. If you know someone, who knows someone, who knows Ellen, then your chances improve.
- Show that you and the book are worthy of being on her show. Sales and reviews are a great endorsement in themselves. A book with 10 reviews is less likely to garner attention one with 13,000. So look at ways to grain Sales, Reviews and Interviews.
You see where this is going, right? Each goal has a set of steps to move toward achieving the goal. But now it’s time to set goals that are obtainable, now and in the near future.
- Obtain 100, 500, 1000 reviews
- Get TV and radio interviews in my hometown area (or the geographic location of your book)
- Have the book distributed in multiple languages across the globe
- Obtain a publishing contract
What are your goals?
Please share your deepest desires and goals for you/your book. Be lofty, be bold, shoot for success!
In the next section we’ll talk about Research: Competition, Target Audience and more
