{"id":2951,"date":"2010-10-08T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2010-10-08T06:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/?p=2951"},"modified":"2014-12-23T16:35:17","modified_gmt":"2014-12-23T11:05:17","slug":"ten-ways-to-know-if-your-internet-marketing-is-paying-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/ten-ways-to-know-if-your-internet-marketing-is-paying-off\/","title":{"rendered":"TGIF Book Marketing Tips: Ten Ways to Know if Your (Internet) Marketing is Paying Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Expert: Penny C. Sansevieri<\/a><\/p>\n

So you\u2019re out there marketing. You\u2019re doing all the right things (or so you think). You\u2019re following the book marketing advice of some leaders in the industry. You\u2019ve got a checklist and you\u2019re methodically checking off your goals. But how do you know you\u2019re doing everything right? The fact is, most of us don\u2019t. Yet we forge ahead, keeping pace with our marketing plan, without ever knowing if it\u2019s paying off. We don\u2019t see it in sales. Does that mean it\u2019s not working? Not at all. You could be seeing the effects in other places but just aren\u2019t keeping track of it.<\/p>\n

I find that especially in social media you need to keep a close eye on what\u2019s working and what\u2019s not. If you\u2019ve spent *any* kind of time online you know that you can be in front of your computer for what seems like 20 minutes and yet three hours have gone by. If the three hours of marketing is paying off, then it\u2019s fine to spend the time. But you need to know the difference. Here are a few things you can review to measure the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of your marketing.<\/p>\n

1. Jumping in without a plan: <\/strong>Set clear, measureable goals because most marketing is invisible. Let\u2019s face it, you send an email and wonder half the time if the intended recipient got it or if it ended up in a spam filter, never to be seen again. That\u2019s the power behind goals. You need them and you need to run your campaign by them. So what are your goals? And no, you may not say sell books. Yes, that factors in – but there are a million small steps along the way before you even get to sales. Consider these goals and see if any of them fit your book, topic, and future:<\/p>\n

a. Establish yourself as an expert or get known in your particular field. Hey, maybe you just want to be known as the go-to person for everything related to paranormal romance. That\u2019s great and it\u2019s a realistic, attainable goal.<\/p>\n

b. Increase the visibility of your brand. OK, sort of the same as the bullet before this one but more geared to the non-fiction author.<\/p>\n

c. Increase traffic and incoming links to your website. This is a great goal. Whether you are fiction or non-fiction it\u2019s a great focus.<\/p>\n

d. Do what makes sense for your book: if your followers aren\u2019t on Twitter then why have you spent the last month or so promoting yourself on there? Mind you, Twitter works for most of the books we manage, but there are a few that don\u2019t make sense. Twitter skews older than most people think so don\u2019t be surprised if your YA reader isn\u2019t on there. Before you launch head first into a campaign, make sure it fits your demographic.<\/p>\n

2. Neglecting other marketing: <\/strong>I know it\u2019s easy to get all a-twitter about Twitter but what else are you doing to promote yourself and your book? If you\u2019re good at events and speaking are you still focused on that? Don\u2019t get too myopic on doing just one thing for your marketing. The truth is, you need to do a lot of different things, balanced out over a week or a month for your marketing to really make sense.<\/p>\n

3. Set goals:<\/strong> be clear on what you hope to achieve in social media: What are your goals for Twitter? If it\u2019s just about gathering followers then you are missing a big piece of this social networking tool. For many marketing people it\u2019s all about the number, but numbers don\u2019t make as much sense unless they are driving interest to you and your book. If the numbers keep growing along with traffic to your website then you\u2019re on the right track. But if you\u2019re just growing numbers for the sake of being able to say that you have 10,000 followers then it makes no sense. That\u2019s like buying a fancy car you can\u2019t really afford. Eventually the debt of it will drag you down. It\u2019s the same with Twitter and Facebook and any other social media site. It\u2019s not about the numbers. It\u2019s about the activity.<\/p>\n

4. Be clear on who you are trying to reach: <\/strong>many of you say you\u2019re trying to reach readers but is that really true? We all want to sell books, but who are you really going after? In all likelihood you will have a variety of different targets you are going after. Consider these: booksellers, speaking opportunities, interviews, bulk sale targets, reviewers, and readers to name a few.<\/p>\n

5. Measure effectively: <\/strong>in order to know if stuff is working you\u2019ll need to measure effectively. As I pointed out earlier on in this article you may not want to do that by fans or followers – instead consider these ideas as ways to measure your success:<\/p>\n

a. Retweets on Twitter:<\/strong> the best sign of success on Twitter is the amount of retweets. Are you getting them and if so, how often? If your tweets are good and your followers are active, you should see a few a week at least (depending on the amount of followers you have). If you\u2019re curious about the amount of Tweets that get RT\u2019d \u2013 check out retweetrank.com. Twitter Analyzer (twitteranalyzer.com) is another great tool for determining how far tweets have traveled.<\/p>\n

b. Site hits:<\/strong> are the hits to your site increasing? Are you watching your analytics to be sure? If you\u2019re not, you should be. Watch your site stats closely and monitor the increase in traffic and where it\u2019s coming from.<\/p>\n

c. Inbound links: <\/strong>how many new ones are you getting? Did you do a vanity search before you started this campaign? If not, do that now. Make sure you know how many new incoming links you\u2019re getting as a result of your efforts.<\/p>\n

d. Sign-ups to your mailing list<\/strong>: are they increasing? If you\u2019re doing the right stuff in your social media they should be increasing weekly.<\/p>\n

6. Increasing the contacts in your industry:<\/strong> remember that social media marketing is just like going to a networking meeting. You want to expand your reach and get to know others in your industry. If you\u2019re not increasing your reach and contact base then you need to be. This is another great way to gauge how effective your marketing is.<\/p>\n

We always want to make progress in our marketing but we\u2019re not always sure how to do it or if what we\u2019re doing is making a difference. Follow these steps and see if it doesn\u2019t help your marketing momentum. If it\u2019s paying off, you\u2019ll know sooner rather than later and you can keep doing the good stuff, and punt the bad.<\/p>\n

Bonus: additional tools for tracking marketing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bit.ly:<\/span> this site serves as both a URL shortener and also as a measurement tool. Bit.ly can help get you real time results on clicks to links you are posting to Facebook and Twitter.
\n Google Analytics:<\/span> if you don\u2019t have any back end web analytics (and even if you do) Google gives you a lot of valuable data.
\n Trackur:<\/span> this is a great monitoring site to see what\u2019s being featured on you online and off. It\u2019s not free like Google Alerts but much more comprehensive. Their basic package is $18 a month.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author, an internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert, and an Adjunct Instructor teaching publishing and marketing for NYU. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. She is the author of five books, including Book to Bestseller which has been called the “road map to publishing success.” AME is the first marketing and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through The Virtual Author Tour\u2122, which strategically works with social networking sites, blogs, micro-blogs, ezines, video sites, and relevant sites to push an authors message into the virtual community and connect with sites related to the book’s topic, positioning the author in his or her market. To learn more about Penny\u2019s books or her promotional services, you can visit her website<\/a>. To subscribe to her free ezine, send a blank email to: subscribe@amarketingexpert.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Expert: Penny C. Sansevieri So you\u2019re out there marketing. You\u2019re doing all the right things (or so you think). You\u2019re following the book marketing advice of some leaders in the industry. You\u2019ve got a checklist and you\u2019re methodically checking off your goals. But how do you know you\u2019re doing everything right? The fact is, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,718,174],"tags":[9,3,18,315,316],"class_list":["post-2951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-marketing","category-how-to-guides","category-tgif-book-marketing-tips","tag-authors","tag-book-marketing","tag-book-promotion","tag-internet-marketing","tag-roi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}