Congratulations: your nonfiction book is coming out. You’re ready to hire a PR agency that specializes in book marketing — a firm with a great reputation, experience and a strong track record. You’re looking forward to getting off and running.
You and the firm will forge a digital marketing strategy, building a brand, creating (or refining) a website and social media channels, establishing a tone and continuity for your messaging, and adding appropriate, appealing images, videos, interviews, and other relevant content. There will be a timeline established, with targets, and all the material will have to be maintained so nothing goes stale. The website will have to be updated; the blog refreshed regularly with resourceful and informative content; social media properties vibrant with daily posts, engagement responses, and updates. If you’re incorporating digital advertising, additional appropriate content will be created for that, including images, videos, cinemagraphics, and copy.
Measuring the Success of Your Strategy
Not only does everything have to be in the right place, constantly addressed, added to, and improved upon, it also has to be tracked. While there is no one-to-one measurement available to display the actual value of creating and maintaining all of these necessary assets, there are plenty of indicators that can be measured:
- Digital Property Traffic: to your website, your blog, your social media channels
- Interactions and Engagement: by influencers and on social media
- Attendance at events or speaking engagements
- Coverage in the media
- Leads, such as gaining brand ambassadors and getting requests to be on mailing lists for more information
- And, of course, Sales, including Internet sales and distribution.
Sales and the Reality of Book PR
Sales are certainly the bottom-line metric for success, and that number can be seen daily. But with authors and books, there’s far more to it. Each month of a campaign builds a stronger foundation for future success, and combines both measurable and unmeasurable results — and both are key.
Within that sales funnel are often multiple touch points. For instance, your PR agency books you an author appearance on an influential radio program, and thousands of listeners tune in. A few may go and purchase your book immediately. But for many others, the broadcast creates an initial awareness and interest. Some may wind up at a party, or at the water cooler, and mention the book in conversation — expanding the awareness of you as an author as well as a net of potential, tangible sales. Of those, some may immediately purchase the book, while still others may need an additional nudge — a reminder or message on social media, or further word of mouth — to prompt a sale.
It’s a difficult path to measure, much like the path of a dollar bill over the course of a few months. It may seem random, but it’s a controlled randomness. And it’s all based on the foundational strategy and the actions taken to further that strategy, all combining to get the intended and planned results.
Marketing Your Book Is a Team Effort
The relationship between you and your PR team should be collaborative, and based on trust, love, ambition and confidence. As an author, you should be in on the discussion of the marketing strategies and tactics — so you have not only have confidence in them but understand them enough to pitch in. That means being in on the discussions about measurements, communicating frequently, and staying coordinated on everything happening.
Together, you and the PR firm can celebrate the achievement of marketing goals, understanding the necessity and function of all the components — whether you can gauge their tangible, immediate impact or not. And don’t discount the groundwork being laid to establish your brand as an author – your persona and presence — not just for this current book, but for your work to come. There may not be a way to measure the value of that, but all the same, it’s valuable indeed.