Session 3 & 4 Workbook 1

Painless Promotion:
STRATEGY
Your Customized Marketing Plan

Cathy Yardley

This workbook covers sessions 3 & 4 of the course.

Part I. Your Calendar

Before you can create your customized marketing plan, you need to see what needs to happen when… and that means using a calendar. You can either use a computerized calendar or a paper-and-pencil system. Ideally, you want to have a series of month calendars or a year calendar for this, so you can get a big-picture view.

 Cross out dates when you won’t be able to promote (family vacation, surgeries, book deadlines, etc.)

 Cross out a buffer. Say, one or two days before and after your no-promo dates.

 Highlight release dates. Highlight a section if you’re not sure of an exact release date, either because you’re self-publishing or because your publisher is waffling.

Part II. Tactics

You’ve already taken care of your foundation elements (see Session 2 and the corresponding workbook.)

Now, you’re going to look at the list of tactics, and cross off those you absolutely will not do.

Please keep in mind: there’s a certain discomfort with any marketing tactic, especially if you’re not comfortable with salesmanship, or you haven’t done that particular tactic before. This is not “I don’t want to do it.” This is “I would rather be shot than do it.”

Also, I’ve included some approximate times that each tactic might take. These are guesses – you may write a blog post in fifteen minutes, or you’ve been designing websites for the past decade and you can whip up a site in half an hour. Or you may be a complete Luddite and barely use a computer, so creating a blog might be terrifying and take you twenty hours. Your results may vary.

Possible Tactics:

Tactic / Approximate time to complete / Lead time needed
Website / (depends on your technological skill level, budgets, etc.) / Should have completed prior to book release… earlier than that if you’re platform building.
Email list / (depends on your technological skill level, budgets, etc.) / Should have completed prior to book release… earlier than that if you’re platform building.
Newsletters / 1 hour. / Send on a regular basis – at least every two months. Send two months prior to release and then send on release.
Author Blog / 30 minutes to 2 hours. / Blogging re: release dates and announcing re: guest posts helps, but need regular writing between as well. Some recommend every week – I’d say at least once a month.
Vlogs / 1 to 4 hours (editing, technology issues.) / Again, regular basis is key.
Podcasts / 1 to 4 hours (editing, technology issues.) / Regular basis.
Blog tour / Set up: 6-10 hours to research targets, 1 hour per15 queries (if you don’t hire a blog tour company.) 30 minutes to 2 hours to write blog posts. / Most blogs need at least two months of lead time to reserve the date, and the blog post at least a week in advance.
Reviews / Set up: 6-20 hours to research targets, 1 hour per 20 queries/responses, and following up. / Review publications need a long lead time. Book blogs tend to need about 3 months. Try to target those who will review during launch month (hopefully), but continue with efforts after release, as well.
Recommendation Engines / More a strategy than a tactic, this means tailoring other tactics – like reviews and your newsletter – to encourage sales and reviews at the same time, to generate traction. It also means your foundation elements (title, cover, category, keywords) need to be honed. / See individual tactics for timing.
Social Media / Variable. / Regular basis.
Advertising / Depends on your tech savvy. Copywriting for an ad, plus design, can take several hours… much longer than you’d think for such a small amount of words! / Research for lead times.
Publicity / If you aren’t hiring a publicist, two-four hours to write a release (assuming no previous experience), hour to target, hour to send queries out (depending on number.) / One to three weeks for daily newspapers; six weeks to two months for trade magazines; five to six months for consumer magazines; three to four months for metro magazines; one to two months for weekly magazines; two weeks to two months for national morning shows; two to six weeks for local talk shows; two days for local news; one week to one month for radio talk shows.
Street team / Varies depending on activities and engagement. / Alert them to plan at least two weeks to one month prior to book release date. Don’t just spring an announcement on them saying “okay, now I need you to go to social media! Announce! Go for it!”
Collateral/”Swag” / If you’re purchasing, simple – give perhaps an hour to research, depending. If you’re creating something personalized (or “crafty”) then estimate your energy/time needs accordingly. / Lead times vary on type of product purchased, and how it’s going to be used. (For example, a four-color bookmark or small stress ball with your logo on it might take three weeks… plus, if you’re planning on distributing it in goody bags at a conference, the organizers might want the collateral several weeks in advance.)
Giveaways/contests / Writing giveaway copy: one hour. Another hour for “figuring out” Rafflecopter if you want to use it and haven’t tried before. Or posting on Goodreads, etc. / No lead time necessary.
Public Speaking/Book signings / One-two hours to research where you’d like to speak and query them. Then, speaking engagement time plus travel time. / Depends on venue.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) / Not recommended.

Now that you’ve crossed off the tactics you absolutely will not use (or added any that aren’t listed), it’s time to think strategy.

What will get your targeted Right Readers through the AIDA cycle?

What tactics could you use to generate Awareness?

Awareness tactic / Transition to Interest / Performance measurement
Example: Guest post. / Example: Call to action, link to blog. / Example: specialized, trackable link in guest post bio for call to action.

What tactics could you use to generate Interest?

Interest tactic / Transition to Desire / Performance measurement
Example: Website / Example: Author quotes and reviews, excerpts on sales page. / Example: page views.

What tactics could you use to generate Desire?

Desire tactic / Transition to Action / Performance measurement
Example: Testimonial quotes / Example: Not applicable – use quote on Amazon book description, possibly on cover, on websites. / Example: you can try using different quotes at different times to test response. For example, switching out different quotes on your sales page every month, if your other efforts remain constant.

What tactics could you use to generate Action?

Action tactic / Specific result: / Performance measurement
Example: Newsletter announcement / Example: link to buy page or sales page. Ask for the sale. / Example: open rate, click-throughs, sales.

Part III. Budgets

Now that you’ve chosen some potential tactics, you want to look at how many resources you have to dedicate to those tactics.

Financial: How much money are you able to spend? It’s better to set a number up front, and stick to it, especially if money’s tight. Having less money can often make you more creative in your promotional efforts.

Your financial budget: $______for the year.

Time: How much time will you be able to spend on promotion – weekly, daily? Remember, you need to take into account writing production time as well as things like day job, family care, social engagements. Also, make sure you’re booking in self-care time!

Your time commitment: approximately ______per day/per week.

Energy: Be realistic about your energy reserves. If you have a ten hour day at work starting at five a.m., then you come home and take care of your kids for a few hours, write for an hour, and then say “I’ve got a full hour, I can write two guest posts a day” – can you, really? Don’t look at your best day’s productivity and then assume you can do that every day.

Your energy level for your promotion time commitment: high/medium/low.

IV. PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER

  1. What are your SMART goals?

______

  1. How will your chosen tactics help you achieve your SMART goals? (Note: if they don’t – don’t choose that tactic.)

______

  1. How are you planning on moving your readers through the AIDA cycle – from Awareness, to Interest, to Desire, to Action? Are all your bases covered?

______

  1. How long will it take for you to carry out each tactic? Do they fit your financial, time, and energy budgets?

______

  1. Put the actions needed for each tactic into your calendar. For example: if you’ve chosen “blog tour” as one of the awareness tactics, budget time to research, query, write the guest posts, and respond to comments. Also, write down time to send out contest winner giveaways – even if it’s only via email. Work backward from your release date, giving enough lead time to set things up.
  2. Put time to capture measurements into your calendar. Each tactic should have a measurable result. For example, if you’re doing a blog tour, you might use a special buy link – and then see how many people clicked through on your tour, to see how effective the tour was. (It’s not a perfect picture – it takes 13 separate exposures, approximately, before many people buy an unknown product – but it will give you an estimate of whether or not it inspired people to take the next step.) You can also measure: page views, emails opened, subscribers added, sales, etc. Make sure you check on this weekly or monthly.
  3. Re-visit your promotion efforts and strategy. Every quarter, six months, or year, look at how you did. Did you overbook yourself and wind up burning out after a few months? Did you spend money on an ad that didn’t do much – but then discovered that your email subscribers bought a lot, so you decide to pay for the email service that’s one level up? Did you find your blog tour helped, so decide to add a few more stops, or simply guest post more? You never hit on the right strategy off the bat – it takes experimentation, measurement, and adjusting your course.