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Your Target Audience is the engine of success for your book[/caption]
(Personal aside: I apologize for missing last week. AlphaGraphics appeared at the 2013 St. Louis Business Expo and I was otherwise occupied. We're back on the horse this week, though!)
By Patrick Donnelly
Account Manager for AlphaGraphics St. Louis
A "target audience" is defined by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) as:
A target audience is people of a certain age, group, gender, marital status and other demographic data. A certain combination, like men from twenty to thirty is often a target audience. Other groups, although not the main focus, may also be interested. Discovering the appropriate target market(s) and determining the target audience is one of the most important activities in marketing management (Niewenhuizen et al 2000). The biggest mistake entrepreneurs are making is trying to reach everybody which ends up appealing to no-one.
I do not have to impress upon you the importance of finding folks who will purchase your book. Suffice it to say that if no one buys your book, it doesn't matter how much it cost you to print it! Books do not sell themselves, we have touched on this many times in the series, almost reaching the point of ad nauseum, but it is the truth. It is a harsh reality that any Entrepreneur Author needs to deal with before a modicum of success can be achieved. That being said, if you have a targeted plan of action and plan of attack like we outline in
Part 2, it does make selling your book INFINITELY easier than if you didn't!
Step 2 in the process is "Target those who are most likely to buy your book." Often times Entrepreneur Authors find themselves falling into the pitfalls of wanting their book to be enjoyable by all demographics and readerships. Unfortunately, this is the ultimate author's pipe dream; it is just not feasible. JK Rowling is the first author to gross 1 Billion Dollars in book sales, and even she does not have a universal readership. At some point during her creative process, Rowling identified her target customers and it shaped the success of one of the most beloved book franchises in the history of the world. Your book is no different.
Identifying your target market is something that should be a part of the writing process itself, but if you are here reading this then most likely that ship has already sailed. Your book is written, maybe even edited. So what now? It is important that we remember all of the steps in the process and how each of them are sequential. In
Part 3 we made a road map and we started to plot what success looks like for our book, and we started to get an idea as to what is expected of the process and what we need to do to insure that an author can at least follow a plan, even when success may not be coming as "easily" as they may have hoped. The next step is identifying the fish who is going to take your bait. What our authors begin to realize that each of these steps compound on themselves and lead them to the promised land that they outlined in
Step 1.
If
Step 1 is the road map for success, than Step 2 is the vehicle that gets you from Point A to Point B. Target customers are critical for your success because not only will they drive sales for your book, but most importantly your target customers will begin to become viral, guerrilla marketers for you as well, and they work for free, and free is a beautiful word for the Entrepreneur Author! Often the Entrepreneur Author has a finite budget they are dealing with, and as such any effort that can be utilized that does not take from the war chest is a bonus.
Target customers are your referrers, your standard bearers. Target customers are the vehicles by which you get to your destination, your
Point B. Most importantly, identifying your target customers and, subsequently, the other groups who will purchase your book is what will ultimately drive your sales. Regardless of what drove you to read this series of pieces, higher sales and increased sales are what gives you the ability to do all of the great things that you outlined on your road map. Your Target Audience will come to your speaking engagements, buy your 10 step program and collateral, wear your t shirts and proudly put your bumper sticker on their car. You see, your target audience and the customers that make it up are the people who will comment on your blog, drive traffic to your website, and recommend you to their friends and family. Willingness to recommend has been identified as the number 1 indicator of success, and your book is no different. Identify your target audience, expand on your target audience, and watch as the rest of your plan starts to fall into place. Put that audience to work, and you have a recipe for success.
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Take Your Book to Market program referenced above?
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