Part 3 of the marketing for Authors Series with Khalid Muhammad
I was challenged one day by some of my soon to be
fraternity brothers to pick up a woman in a bar one night. I was a headstrong,
full of confidence nineteen year old that couldn’t lose. I had the charm to be
able to smooth my way into any relationship I wanted, but my brothers knew
that, so they added one condition.
“Put a bag over your head and find her,” they said to
me laughing. Well, that made things a bit harder…
That night, after being liquefied at the fraternity
house, we all left for the bar and found our way inside. I was allowed to take
one long look around the bar before the bag was placed over my head and pushed
into the crowds of drunken students. Over the course of the next few hours, I
stumbled into many people, making apologies, trying to explain why I was
wearing a bag in a bar, but nothing seemed to guide me towards a woman that I
could even talk to much less get a phone number from.
Sadly, this is also how many authors go about
marketing their books to potential readers. They are not looking for the
audience that would be interested, rather they are looking for anyone who reads
a book. And when they find that reader, they spend the rest of their time
talking about… well… the book and why they should read it. Most of us walk away
from these encounters with the same thing that I got at the bar… nothing to
show for it and nothing gained in terms of interest. The mistake that we are
all making is forgetting how to seduce someone.
Marketing is truly the art of seduction. We have to
take someone who may not be interested in our product, and catch their
attention. Then, draw them in with flirtatious glances, only to bring them to
the table to offer them the proposition that they have been dreaming about.
It’s about touching readers where they need to be touched, how they want to be
caressed and coaxing them with that voice that makes them obey every word we
say.
Someone, a few years back, when social media was just
getting started, said that social media marketing was all about presence - just
be there and people will find you. But that isn’t completely true. You can’t
sell steaks to vegans, so just being there isn’t going to work anymore. If we
look at social media as a 24-hour pickup bar for authors to find readers, we
have to learn how to work the room in the right bars.
Let’s get started.
We don’t go to biker bars and expect to talk about our
feelings, well not unless we expect to get beaten up pretty badly. Finding our
crowd is the first part of the seduction. As authors, we need to understand
that every book has a specific audience. Sure, we would like to believe that
our books will be read far and wide, by people from all walks of life, but that
must start somewhere and that’s the target audience. If you go and create a
profile on every social media platform and book marketing website, you’ll find
two things to be true. First, you won’t have time for anything other than
posting and waiting for people to reply. Second, you’ll be screaming along with
thousands of other authors for the same group of readers… all of them, which
will never work.
When we pick the right bar, we already have people
that are interested in what we have to offer so making a connection to them is
easier. That flirtatious glance, as I like to call it. Once we get the target
to respond to our glance, we need to speak the language of the bar to be able
to communicate with them.
Language, as anyone who as traveled knows, is the
hardest part of getting people to understand and the same is true of social
media. Go to China and speak English, no joy. Go to America and speak French,
no joy. Try to use Facebook lingo on twitter, no joy. We can’t use tumblr lingo
on Facebook, nor can we use Facebook lingo on twitter. Each platform has their
own language that we must be well versed in other people will call us noobs or
interlopers, which is never good for trying to seduce someone. You can’t just
walk up to everyone, open our trench coats and say… wanna buy a book? We’re not
drug dealers ;)
The last thing that we need to learn in this art of
seduction is the closing touch. When we are in a bar, we know when we have
sealed the deal. We get the gentle touch from the person we have been trying to
seduce, the caress that tells us “mission accomplished.” How do you know on
social media? You don’t. That’s the hard part. People will tell you, promise
you, that they will buy your book, but you won’t know until they actually have
read it. We can only lead them to the oasis, we can’t force them to drink. They
might have been looking for a free copy, playing their own game of seduction
with you. So we can never know until they take the drink. Think about the
morning after the seduction at the bar - one person wants to get out as quickly
as possible, the other wants to share their intimate secrets. Either way, no
one is getting called for a date. Don’t be that guy!
So how do we know if the seduction worked? It’s not
from sales reports, no those are just numbers. It’s not from reviews that they
write, no those are just words. No, it’s what they say about the book and the
author. If they recommend you to other people, the seduction worked. The game
is not getting one person to buy, but getting tens, hundreds and thousands to
buy, which only happens when people talk about the experience. The experience
will get you from the single sale a day to the bestseller list.
So the next time you decide to go out and market your
book, think back to your days in the pickup bar, remember how you seduced your
mark and focus on giving them the best experience both in their interaction
with you and when they read your book, so that they go out and tell the world
how awesome you are. That’s the art of marketing for authors wrapped up in the
art of seduction.
Now, if you’ll excuse me.. I see someone I know over
there…
Khalid Muhammad recently published his first novel,
Agency Rules – Never an Easy Day at the Office, a spy thriller based in
Pakistan, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes. In his professional life, he owns and
manages a marketing services company that specializes in digital and social
media marketing. Find out more about him at agencyrules.com, Facebook or @AgencyRulesPK.
