In the last segment we talked about discuss your competition and how learning from their strengths and weakness and your differences and similarities is an important part of building your brand as an author. In this segment we are going to talk more about establishing your brand.
Once you have determined the differences and similarities between you and your fellow genre authors, and the different segments of readers within your target audience, and you can begin to establish your brand.
There are many things that you need to do to establish your brand, so people will begin to remember your name. These things include getting inside of the customer’s mind, reader reviews and endorsements, finding promotional venues, and maybe even using a public relations firm to your advantage. These things will go a long way when you are making an effort to establish yourself amongst the competition in your market.
Let's start off with establishing a place inside of the customer’s mind.
One of your biggest goals in the branding process is establishing a place inside your customer’s mind. At this point, you have a good idea who your audience is supposed to be. You know what their income level is, their age, and genre specific details. This information is relevant in establishing both your initial and eventually your loyal audience.
Your goal is to gain the attention of your target audience and encourage them to choose to spend their valuable time and money on your book!. The customer needs to find a reason why they should choose you. The branding techniques that you use will answer this question for them, how purchasing and reading your book will resolve an issue for them, fulfill a need they have, or makes their life better in some large life-changing, or even small time-passing way.. There has to be a reason to purchase your book and a positive aspect of why they want to do so.
If you do your job correctly, your target audience/customer will believe they absolutely must read your book--or at least that they are willing to give it a try! Think of infomercials and how they stress benefits--how will become rich if they use a product or how their health--physical or emotional--will be better. To succeed as an author you will need to establish the benefit for the customer so they will buy your book...and actually read it.
This also means that you have to build trust and credibility. With every sale you make, your reputation is at stake, so you want to define and build rapport with your audience. This can most easily be accomplished by setting up a blog targeting your specific sector of your genre and blogging about informational and educational topics specific to your genre that will gain their attention, hold their interest and keep them coming back for more.
Next let's talk about endorsements. You know that the public and consumers listen to public figures, and in the case of authors--other, more well-known authors! When you have the ability to get an endorsement on a book from a well known person, then you need to take advantage of it. However, you cannot wait for an endorsement to come to you. If you are very brave and bold, you can contact some of these figures to see if they are interested in reviewing or endorsing your book. However, don't get your hopes up, chances are you will have much greater success contacting other authors at your level and joining together in a strength in numbers scenario where you help promote one another's books.
On the other hand, if you want to go for it, you can send emails, and letters and attend events where the person you want to endorse/review your book is going to be. This includes writer's conferences and other personal appearances where you can have access to the person. You also can also contact their managers and agents and publishers and talk to them about endorsing a product. But again--don't hold your breath!
One thing to keep in mind about endorsements is that you need to find a public figure or other author that matches your audience. If your target audience is made up of fitness enthusiast then you want to find a celebrity or author that they know and trust. If the person endorsing your book is someone your target audience is unfamiliar with, the endorsement will have little selling power. On the other hand positive book reviews from anyone and everyone are advantageous...and even more so if their is name recognition.
Make sure you look for your next segment soon. We will be talking about brand prospecting and public relations.
See you soon,
Smiles and Good Fortune,
Teresa Thomas Bohannon
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It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s
dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
– W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915
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