Market Planning for Our Book

"There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."

Sam Walton, Walmart

Do I Need a Marketing Plan?

Marketing plans typically outline a target audience, goals, timelines, the message to the audience, possibly a creative treatment, and the detailed plans and budgets for each tactic in the campaign.  Even as a small company or independent author, it is very helpful to think through these things.  There are a myriad of choices and you need to select only the best things to work on…the ones with the most potential at the least cost (i.e. money or time investment)…you cannot do it all!  No one can.  Picking the first thing that comes to mind is probably risky.  Come up with a bunch of potential ideas; quickly weigh the pros and cons of results and costs, then keep moving the ball forward!

Who’s Our Audience?

Of course, it’s really important to understand your audience, their behavior, and what influences them.  For authors, this means that we have to understand book reviewers.  These are a very influential and passionate segment…we love them because they are typically more passionate about books than anyone on the planet!  Once we know who they are, we need to figure out how to help them accomplish their goals and line our goals up with theirs.

Creating the List of Reviewers

Typing “book reviews” in Google brings up 97,000,000 results and checking adwords shows 368,000  global monthly searches and 201,000 in the US.  So, every month (according to Google), a bunch of searches are done…and adding all related keywords and sub-searches would likely show that there are millions of searches on this topic per month.  It’s our job as marketers to try and hone this list down.  Every marketer has limited time, resources, and budget…one key is finding the optimal way to reach your audience.  Clearly, we cannot address 97 million websites or pretend we can be a top search result for all of these.  We may only have 5 days to spend trying to reach reviewers, and it’s probably better to spend a day getting the best , most targeted, most relevant list possible than 5 days on a random list.

What We are Doing

For our book, we are going to hone our list down by relevance and reach, then balance this list with the cost it takes us to engage with them.  For example, reaching the NY Times might be very difficult and take a lot of energy or money…but reaching the top 10 psychology book reviewers might not be.  Then again, getting on the NY Times review list would probably reach a ton of people and sell a lot of books.  There is always a balance, always trade-offs, and always a time to just do the work and quit thinking about it.

Generating a list of relevant book reviewers is one of my goals for this week.  I’ll probably group and catgegorize the list a few different ways.  Depending on how search savvy and comprehensive you are, this could take you an hour or a day.  Once I get a template that I like, I’ll eventually publish it…please let me know what questions, comments, or thoughts you have on this or if you’d like to collaborate!

Why Are My Articles Worth Reading?

“Information is NOT knowledge” 

– Albert Einstein

The Answer In One Point

The article you are reading right now is written to explain one thing to “digital media authors” – why is this author, Adam Bloom (not the comedian), a qualified, credible source for knowledge about internet, content, and social marketing strategies that I can learn from and use?  If you just want to stop reading after one answer, I’d say, “You should probably read what I have to say because the last company to recruit me was Google.” Otherwise, I appreciate you wanting to dig in a bit more…

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Credibility Matters

While it is not my intent to come across egotistically in the description below, whenever I read information out there on the internet, I am always curious who wrote it.  Are they credible?  Are they reputable?  Can I trust what they are writing?  In doing research for our own book about stupid corporate decisions, we would only cite credible, valid sources and authors (often on brain science related research) because there is a lot of junk, untrustworthy information out there.  Use of propaganda has been around forever, and even authors and researchers with the best of intentions can mislead or even accidently lie.  So, when there is something important in my life that I am reading about...I always want to know about the author and the supporting facts…and I typically want to triangulate sources and find different perspectives.

My Relevant Qualifications in Three Points:

1) Personally, I am highly motivated to teach on the topic of helping digital authors' and content producers grow their businesses because I make a living from being a “digital author” and “software producer” myself.

2) Professionally, I've produced a lot of successful media/content and associated online programs for well known companies.

3) As well, I know internet marketing and marketing operations measurement really, really, really well...and social media just as well…I’ve spent my career in software and media.

While I haven’t done it yet, numerous people could provide references on these three statements…and I have over 60 recommendations/references on LinkedIn in general.

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Details on these Three Points for those who want Detail

1) Personal Motivation

- My life coach (at the time), George Fleming, and I reconfirmed in 2009 that my passions are entreprenuership, design, and psychology/learning.  And, in 2011, I am helping to complete, market, and promote a book written by my father that is directly related to these three areas.  I love these topics, they are not work, and they are fun!

- My dad and I have talked about being in business together since I was a kid, and his book has taken 4 years of research to complete.  It is about how the human brain works in corporate environments and why businesses and people often make really, really stupid decisions.  The topic is his passion (and mine), and we are both extremely exicted to share it with others.  By the way, my dad was the CEO of an $800M company for over a decade...and he believes this book will help companies and people more than anything he ever tried or read about.  We've talked to over 100 people about the book, and, literally, every person we've spoken to wants to read it!  Wow, how grateful, joyful, and thankful am I for this opportunity!?!?!

- I absolutely love learning and helping others learn...so, as we come up with strategies and execute programs to promote and market our own book, I will be sharing our thoughts with the world...mainly because I enjoy the teaching and sharing aspects of helping others become more successful.  Also, I love feedback and questions…so, drop me a line!

- My personal mission is basically a “stand” for liberty, life, and happiness (don’t think the cliché…there is a bit more to it ;-)...and I particularly love authors who help people achieve better lives, more freedom, and greater happiness in work and personally.  There is no question why I am here on this planet, and I try to live this every day.

2) Successful Media/Content

- As a web producer, I led the team who launched the first two versions of WebMD for both the consumer portal and the doctor's desktop (back in the late 90s).  Interestingly, I hired their first doctor as a staff writer and our team even did their logo…not to mention that our site worked on all browsers as well as WebTV and Network Computers!  (For you web geeks, this was an SSO webtop before LDAP!)

- As a multimedia producer, I have won two national awards for television programming kits that promoted XFiles and NYPD Blue.

- As a product marketer I have written and/or published numerous, revenue-generating white papers and videos for leading software companies such as Siebel Systems and Unica (now IBM).

- In one of my start-up side projects, I built a web presence that helped a band get their music and media downloaded in over 60 countries with over 1 million downloads (mainly through SEO and social networking).  I’ve also worked closely on programs successful digital media authors like CC Chapman, Julien Smith, Jim Brazell, and countless marketing and media groups in corporate America.  I’ve also achieved (and kept) a #1 and top-5 Google rank for search keywords on several occasions.

- Across companies like Siebel and Oracle, I've led the launch, production, and/or operations of numerous online education (LMS) programs, help systems, community, and support programs.

- While at Podshow/Mevio, I led the planning and execution for social networking, partner programming, advertorial, and advertising in over 20 campaigns for companies like Coca-Cola, GoDaddy, Sony Music/Playstation, Partida Tequila, and more.

- Again, I don’t mean to come off as tooting my own horn, but I make these points because I am here to help other people…and want you to feel confident in what I share…trust is earned, it’s not given.

3) Internet/Social/Marketing Operations

- Socially, I started using IRC chat rooms about 17 years ago...I've been an internet junkie and web professional since then and have seen the “social market” progress from IRC to BBS, then online community forums, and now social networks.  I've launched online communities from scratch several times and run dozens of social media programs.

- With internet marketing, it's very easy to say that I've been involved in over 100 internet or CRM-oriented projects in my career from designing custom online trading systems to implementing and managing web analytics to designing and creating SEO/PPC programs as well as online viral videos and web-based video programming/seminars.

- Since I spent so much time at Siebel, Oracle, and Unica in marketing operations related roles, I am considered an expert in marketing operations and measurement.  As Director of Marketing Operations, I was responsible for measuring the ROI of every piece of content that Siebel Systems had put on the internet along with measuring the return on every dollar of the marketing budget...both Oracle and Unica asked me to help them do the same thing not to mention clients and job opportunities that I have turned down from Lexis Nexis, Microsoft, and others.

Well, hopefully, this sheds some light on my qualifications.

Again, I am here on this planet to help others…and thank you for reading!

Kindly,

ab