As promised, I will quickly cover targeted advertising today. As a recently published novelist, you are likely advertising as much as possible, according to what your budget allows. However, pinpointing your exact demographic is one of the most important, as well as the most overlooked, tasks when it comes to book promotions.
Like most people, you probably receive tons of unsolicited ads for marketing, and trust me, they will ALL look good. Unfortunately, they are a waste of time and a waste of money. The reason is because they are too general. For example, many people who have built tremendous followings on Twitter (X) and Facebook offer to “Tweet your book to 50,000 followers” or “Advertise your book on four different Facebook pages with 65,000 combined followers.” It sounds great at first, but the questions you have to ask are WHO are they posting to? What type of followers do their pages HAVE? For example, if you are like me and you write historical fiction, it will do you little or no good to have it posted to 50,000 people on various social media platforms if they are all under 25 and their primary interest is Fantasy or Sci-Fi.
It’s not just a numbers game, it’s a Who’s Who? game. In another scenario, say you ARE that Fantasy or Sci-Fi writer, and you pay to have your book advertised on several different Facebook pages, but the primary following for those pages are fans of the True Crime genre. Most of you probably know what I’m getting now. Putting your book in front of potential readers is vitally important, but you have to remember that the name of the game is quality over quantity.
It would be far better to run an ad that targeted only several thousand people who are interested in your specific genre than to pay to advertise to 90,000 people in a general audience. You could end up inadvertently bypassing your entire demographic and paying to have your book marketed to people who have absolutely no interest in that genre.
Regardless of which advertising venue you choose, make sure that you can pinpoint the demographic. If it is the type of ad that cannot be targeted, pass it up! It may not be politically correct anymore, but each genre has a specific market, and you need to target that market in order to get the most for your advertising dollars! Write on!
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