Marketing Tuesday Tip #174: Data Dives & Perfect Marketing
Marketing for writers can be broken into 3 primary parts: The book, the author, & the business. The info in this post affects all 3 areas.
We are in a field where it’s difficult to get info on our customers. Unless you’re selling directly to your readers, you miss out on scads of pertinent reader info. We end up guessing & making assumptions which is bad for business. Very bad. Guessing costs us money and time. But what if you didn’t need to guess? Imagine how much easier marketing would become!
You can get the data. You can bridge the gap and collect info. You can then use that info for the purpose of doing an intense data dive to better understand your reader, who they are, and why they buy.
Knowing all this info, along with demographics, is the key to successful marketing. Imagine aiming your ad at the perfect reader, the kind of person who is trying to find your type of book. Your purchase rates rapidly rise b/c it’s easier to sell. Your marketing pieces & ad copy will be spot on. You won’t be in hell trying to get the ad right while losing tons of cash & time. All that frustration goes away b/c you know exact info.
How do we do this? Amazon doesn’t release anything on our buyers. Neither do the other platforms. So how do we come by this data?
This is an easy method that I’ve used myself several times. Make up some bookplates (pictured) or bookmarks. Sign them and offer them for FREE if the reader pays postage. You now have the info you would have had with a direct purchase.
Use Clickfunnels if you want a deep data dive, or Shopify for basic data. You need to use a physical item b/c you need an address. I’ve made it a $1 flat S&H fee to cover the cc processing & other fees. You now have a buyers database of your diehard fans.
Clickfunnels can use all the info to glean exactly who your readers are, from socioeconomic info, occupation, to income, social status, and even whether or not they have a book blog. (If you’d like a link for a free trial of CF, look below). That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
This method—data diving—has so much potential and is seldom used by authors. The cost is minimal and will allow your business to grow by leaps & bounds, once you understand how important it is to know who your reader is & what they want.
Demographic info from social media sites is better than nothing, but it’s not the whole picture. There are also inaccuracies on social media, due to vanity or other reasons such as lying about age, that are more common than you’d think. People make themselves older or younger. Incorrect info will make your marketing clunky and create a poor return on investment (ROI).
Not knowing EXACTLY who is buying from you affects everything from how you write your next book, to the cover image, to ad copy, etc.
Example: You write YA PNR ghost stories at historical landmarks. Data dive shows your main body of readers are rural men age 39-42 in the medical field, followed closely by females ages 25-27 in nursing school. You realize they’re following your main characters—a nurse & a med student. The locations are secondary and not the main pull that they appear to be according to social media. <— This type of thing is common when only using social media.
We are in the digital age. This is one very inexpensive method of collecting data to make your marketing easier and increase ROI.
Data makes your marketing better. Better marketing makes your author career less stressful & more fun.