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Week 2: Homework & Checklist

Congratulations!

As of right now you have officially made it halfway through our free marketing course!!

How’s it going so far? Do you feel good? Bad? Scared? Excited? Overwhelmed? Underwhelmed?

Just plain ole whelmed?

We hope you feel empowered to face the road ahead! Marketing your book isn’t always easy, and as we’ve said a few times before there is no magic button that will get it done for you. But it’s a completely do-able task and we know our hardscrabble, bootstrappin’ indie authors can all make it happen!

Now that you’ve covered both of this week’s lessons on the downfalls of target markets and the advantages of reader profiles, you’re ready for your final homework assignment (of this week, sorry, there’s more coming next week!).

Homework

1. Create Your Reader Profile

It’s time to get down to business and create your reader profile –– a single document that will become the foundation of your entire marketing plan.

As we talked about in our last lesson, you have two options for completing the profile:

Create a fictional profile based on your target market data.

– OR – 

Interview a real fan and record your data accordingly.

Either way, we’ve got 20 questions to help you figure out exactly who your crazy-dedicated fan is and how you can create your marketing plans to appeal to him or her. Feel free to add more questions of your own — the more detail you can come up with for your fan, the better!

2. Start thinking like your fans

Create a folder, document or other digital record of marketing copy, advertisements, websites, blogs and other things that your crazy-dedicated fan would like. Pretty soon you’ll have a whole database filled with inspiration for creating your own marketing content!

Checklist

What’s Next

So far we’ve:

  • Learned why this reader-centered marketing stuff rocks.
  • Discussed the seven principles that rule all reader-centered marketing activities.
  • Realized we should find a target market, but go one step further to give our marketing a focus.
  • Started thinking like our readers when we’re surfing the web, watching TV and taking in other forms of media.

Next week we’ll:

  • Figure out where we can find our readers on and off the internet.

Later on in the course we’ll:

  • Decide which locations to target (so we don’t spend tons of time marketing)
  • Create a strategy to drive those readers to you
  • Turn those new readers into dedicated fans

Survey Time!

We really do want to know how things are going — your feedback is more valuable to us than a whole case of Mountain Dew! Whether you’re feeling a little stressed or a little giddy, we want to know!

Once you’ve finished the survey, shoot me an email and I will send you a bonus — 6 Tips for Conducting an Interview!