Promo Plan In a Month – Step #1: My Goals

If there's one thing I learned in the world of marketing, it's that you need a plan before you run amock with ideas.  As an author, a marketing plan is just as important as it would be for any other business.   But don’t let the idea of a “marketing plan” scare you.  It doesn’t have to be 10 pages with pie charts and slideshow presentations – it’s easier than it may sound to create your plan. The object is to break down what needs to be accomplished into smaller, more manageable chunks of information.  Your marketing plan should include your goals, steps to achieve that, and a budget. It’s there not only to help remind you what you need to do, but make sure that you've thought out your steps beforehand, that each one makes sense for you.

What Is My Goal?

have two goals in mind with my marketing plan.  The first is what I call my book goal: what do I want to accomplish for this book? This is my first book, and as an author for a small publisher, the outreach is not the same as it would be for a NYC house.  Through my publisher, my books will be made available online, at The Wild Rose Press, at Amazon.com, Fictionwise.com, and the online versions of the big bookstores like B&N and Borders.  But it's unlikely they'll make it onto the
shelves of bookstores all by themselves.  It’s not impossible, but if that is part of my goal, then it’s something I need to work into the plan.

My second goal with this marketing plan is a larger one:  I want to build my career as an author and create a name for myself.   It’s a goal many of us have and one often overlooked in the push to get your books sold.  The more someone recognizes your name, the more inclined they are to gravitate toward it when they see your books.  Of course, this also depends on what they think of you when they see your name… This is my first published book and it’s a perfect place to start getting my name more familiar to those in the industry – that includes readers, other authors, etc

So, my Book Goals:

• Get it into the hands of readers.  

• Pursue avenues to get my book onto shelves – whether in local or independent bookstores, larger chains, libraries, etc.  Know my options. 

Career Goals:   

• Increase name recognition   
• Further establish a brand (ie what should readers expect from me and my work)

How Do I Measure Success?

My goals are pretty standard for any author.  But on the flipside of a goal is to determine what success would look like.  This isn’t a standard answer, as we all have levels of success we hope to achieve.  Getting books into the hands of readers…that could be one reader, it could be twenty.  At what level will I feel I succeeded and met my goals for this book?In order to know that, I need to take each of these goals and figure out where the bottom line sits.  From there, I can figure out the steps I need to get from goal to accomplishment.

1. Book Goal: Get the book into the hands of readers.For me, this means making the book available in the most avenues possible.  I don’t have a set number of books sold to feel I succeeded, but I would like to see a few positive reviews.  I’d like to know that someone other than my family and friends bought my book. 
           
2. Book Goal: Avenues to get onto shelves     
   This feeds into Book goal #1 – making it available wherever possible.  There are ways to try to get your small press/independent published book into the stores.   So I plan to seek these ways out, choose what is cost effective and optimal for me and try my best to get the book some store recognition.  Success for this goal would ultimately be seeing my book on a bookshelf somewhere.  It’s a step above what is expected with a small publisher, and one I feel would add to my career.  But in this instance, making the effort is also a success in itself.  How many times do we submit our work to agents and editors and get rejected? It’s all part of the merry-go-round we ride.
3. Career Goal:  Increase/establish name recognition.
   As any writer knows, the absolute best way to build a career and a name is to continue to write good books.  So a very important aspect of my marketing plan is allowing the time to do just that – time to write.  That will be part of creating a successful plan in my eyes – a plan that works but does not overtake my life.   

   The other side of that is to continue to establish a name, a presence in the romance writing community.  If you’ve ever Googled yourself, you have felt that little thrill when you see someone has mentioned your name on a blog or website.  I started on this goal quite some time ago… which any career-minded author should.  It takes a long time and the world of publishing (specifically romance) is a very small world.  The name you make for yourself in the beginning will stick.  So make sure it’s the one you want.

4. Career Goal: Establish my brand.
   An author brand can be the same as a book brand, or it can be different.  In my circumstance, my first book out is a historical romance.  However, I also have designs on writing suspense and have my first suspense novel in the pipeline right now.  So establishing my brand as a historical author would brand this book, but perhaps it's not the brand I should aim for as an author.  I can establish my brand as an author by making sure anyone who learns my name knows what to expect from me, no matter what genre I write in.

Already, I’ve got a strong understanding of what I want to accomplish and what means success to me.  What about you? What measures success to you?  What are some concrete goals you hope to accomplish?

And remember our November Promo contest!  For anyone who comments on each post in
this series, you’ll be entered to win the Romance Junkies ad at the end of the month.  Remember, you can post comments at ANY time in the month of November to qualify. And those in the running currently for the ad:

• Mona Risk 
• Janelle   
• Debra St. John

The next post in this series, I’m going to take my goals and break them down into steps, starting with Book Goal #1: Getting the book into the hands of readers.   How do I do that?