Hi there! Duolit is on hiatus, but please feel free to explore our extensive archive of posts and our free Weekend Book Marketing Makeover. Thanks for visiting!

How to Get to Know Your Reader (Even if You’ve Never Met) [Lesson 4]

[printvers]

Today, I want you to meet someone very important.

Your reader.

That was a very specifically singular word, did you notice?

I want you to focus on one person, one single individual who doesn’t just like to read your book, she (or he) loves it—loves it so much that when she finishes your book at 2:00 a.m. she immediately jumps on her Kindle to download another.

Now, I realize that you’re not going to make back the investment you put into your book with one reader. But getting to know the needs, wants, fears and goals of one crazy-dedicated reader will help you focus your marketing and so it appeals to even more crazy-dedicated readers with similar backgrounds.

What’s the biggest flaw with target markets?

In the first half of our Week 2 lesson we talked about target markets, which is a good place to start when you’re trying to identify your readers.

photo by victoriapeckham

But target markets are no longer the end-all, be-all of the marketing world.

The problem many frustrated marketers discovered is that even after identifying the primary characteristics of their target market (age, race, location, education level, etc.) they still didn’t know who they were speaking to.

How do you talk to a nameless, faceless blob of college educated people ages 25-35 who live in an urban setting? What e-mail subject lines will speak to them? What blog posts will they read? Which social media outlets do they use?

Target market data doesn’t really give you an accurate picture of your reader, which in turn leaves you to take shots in the dark with your marketing plan and hope for the best.

You don’t have to do that anymore.

Instead, take a magnifying glass to your target market and find just one person within it who really loves your writing and create your entire marketing plan to appeal to that one person.

An alarm just went off in your head, don’t panic. I will answer the question that’s making your heart palpitate…

What if you get it wrong?

You cannot get your reader profile wrong.

If you learn one thing from all of Lesson 2, let it be this – your marketing campaign needs focus.

It is not by accident that we have used the word focus many times in recent posts. One of the biggest problems we’ve noticed in authors’ marketing campaigns is a total lack of focus (and truthfully, we’ve been guilty of that, too when promoting Duolit). It’s also no surprise that your marketing would become a little sloppy when all you have to go off of is the generic data from your target market research.

But if you have one specific reader, a real person you can picture in your mind and cater all of your marketing to appeal to, you will suddenly find that your marketing goes in a straight line instead of a pointless circle.

This is why you can’t go wrong with your reader profile.

Because even if it’s a little off from who your true reader really is, it will help you establish a pattern and a plan, which in turn will make you a more effective and efficient marketer. Period.

But what if you want to be 100% certain you’re targeting the right fan?

Two ways to find your crazy-dedicated fan.

#1: Use your target market data to create the profile of a fictional fan.

This method of identifying your reader is part science, part creativity, but entirely easy to do. Once you’ve gone through our target market exercise (part of your homework from the last lesson), you’ll need to fill out a detailed profile of a person who would fall within those specific target market demographics.

You know what it’s like when you’re getting to know the main character in your novel? Have you ever filled out a detailed character profile to iron out all the specifics of your character’s background—from their motives and history to their favorite cereal and band? A reader profile is just about the same.

photo by jaywphotos

Instead of a generic person age 25-35 living in the city, you want your fan to be a 26 year-old who shares an apartment in Brooklyn. Or a 32 year-old who owns a condo with her husband in Hyde Park.

Forget college educated, you need to know if your reader went to Oberlin or Clemson. Did she graduate with honors? What degree did he pursue? Did she change majors? Did he pledge a fraternity?

Don’t stop on the surface—push into the depths of what really makes your reader who she/he is. What are the fears that keep her up at night? What is his five year plan? Who has let her down in the past? Who does he look up to?

The more detail you can come up with, the more focused your marketing campaign will be.

#2: Interview a real living, breathing fan to create a reader profile.

If you’d rather go with more science and less art, find a real fan of yours (not a reader, a true fan) and interview them to take the guess work out of the picture.

This will only work if you’ve already been working on your marketing strategy, released a book and connected with a few fans. In other words, you can’t interview your family or friends.

Kindly approach a fan and ask if he/she would mind answering a few questions about themselves for your marketing research. Assure them that you will only use the data internally, strictly for your marketing purposes.

You can conduct the interview via phone, Skype or e-mail, whatever you and your reader are most comfortable with (or in person if you happen to live close by). If it’s an oral interview, make sure you have a recording device so you can transcribe the data later.

Use the same questions from the reader profile, but be prepared for honest answers without any of the guesswork.

Once you have the information at hand, you’ll have an exact outline of your crazy-dedicated fan and you can start identifying the best marketing plan to reach that person.

How do you know what will appeal your fan?

After you’ve gotten to know your crazy-dedicated fan, you have to start thinking like him. Or her.

When you watch TV, surf online, read blogs, and open e-mails you need to take everything in from your reader’s perspective. What would she like to read about in a blog? What TV ads appeal to him? What links would she click on? What websites does he like? What are her favorite pins on Pinterest?

Start a collection of the things you think your fan would like most. Pay special attention to written content. Keep bookmarks and copies of the things you think your reader would love and respond to.

Before long, you’ll find that you have a valuable database of headlines, subject lines, blog content, ad copy and other pieces already prepared and already geared to your fan. Now all you have to do is repurpose that information to fit your book and you have most of the marketing elements within your campaign ready to go.

Homework:

  • If you want to get a headstart, you can fill out the reader profile we included on the Duolit blog (we will be providing a much more detailed profile/interview questions with your worksheet tomorrow).
  • Read this great post about getting to know your readers from our friend Matthew Turner (a.k.a. Turndog Millionaire) on our other friend Nick Thacker’s blog (thanks friends!).
  • Watch this awesome video of the 10 Worst Infomercials Ever (and know that you will NEVER sound like this to your fans because you’re going to be an indie author marketing rockstar!)

Discussion:

If you could have a sit down meeting with your biggest fan, what question would you most want to ask? I’ll start us off by saying that I would love to ask my fan how/where they heard about me.

[printvers]

  • Kristie Cook

    Drilling down to a specific ideal customer is basic marketing (my degree is in marketing and, oh, boy, did we harp on this). However, here’s the problem: I can think of 10 very big fans of mine (not friends and family) who are often begging for the next book, talking my series up to their friends and followers, jumping in on every opportunity for swag, participating in blog tours, etc. They are each the IDEAL customer. But they are not the same. Some have college degrees; some don’t. Some have kids; some don’t. They are spread in age from 17 to 80, have varying interests, priorities, beliefs and fears. If I were to target just one, I’d be missing out on a huge portion of my target audience. And if I “guessed” (fictionalized) a fan, I could be even further off because I’d be making up their beliefs, values, priorities and fears and could be way off.

    I personally think the important part of drilling down is to find out what they all have IN COMMON, and not just “they love [my genre]” because I get lots of new fans who don’t normally read my genre. Your question of finding out how/where they heard of you is a great one because those will probably overlap – say many of them say “so-and-so tweeted about your book” and now you know your fans hang out on Twitter and who they follow, which may often be the same people. Then you get others who say they found your book on a listing of freebies (NOT pirate, but saying your book was free for a while) – now you know your readers like to try new authors by reading a free work before purchasing. So you combine those and you have someone who tweets and follows the freebie blogs/newsletters. This is simplified, but with other questions, you can get to that specific person and know their hopes, fears, values and beliefs, and, most importantly, how to reach them.

    So all that to say my question would be: What do you do when you’re not reading? OR Where do you hang out online and off?

    • Great points Kristie! Finding a common thread among your readers can be really helpful, but I think there may be some circumstances where you don’t always have that because like you pointed out with some of your readers, you can have a variety of followers who are all passionate about your book but not from the same background (wow, horrible run on sentence, my bad!). I would say you’re really fortunate to have 10 big fans and I would use them for a resource as much as possible! Find out what they do have in common (aside from knowing you!) and what really makes them fans of your book.

      Some of our advice might be redundant for you as a marketing grad, but we want to try to help the folks who need a starting base. I’m with you though, I feel a little harpy on the target market stuff but it’s so so sooo important to have a focus. Even if at first it’s more specific than you’d like, at least it gives you a direction to go in and a group to cater to, then as your audience grows you can expand your target accordingly.
      And I love your question — it would be helpful to know what our readers do beyond reading, what interests they have that we can share with them as we engage with them. We might have to add that one to our reader questionnaire! :-)

    • Kristie Cook

      Just want to say that you inspired me to create a survey for my fans and I’m getting excellent feedback. I just posted the link today and already have 40+ responses. I can already tell the results will be useful. So, for those who have somewhat of an established platform, even if it’s still small, don’t shy away from creating a quick survey to get the basic demographics duolit is recommending. Oh, I also want to say that you’re doing a great job with this course! I expected redundancy for myself, knowing it’s targeted to authors less knowledgeable in marketing, but sometimes we need to be reminded of past lessons and sometimes hearing it again is just plain inspiring. Refreshers never hurt!

    • That’s awesome Kristie!! Thank you for sharing that with us, maybe when you get all the results in you can write a guest blog for us on how you learned more about your target market with a survey!

  • I’d love to know the 2-3 most important things my readers consider when buying a book, especially a novel from a “new” author: Is it title, blurb, and cover art? Is it a recommendation from a friend? Is it the genre? Reviews on Amazon? All really valuable information!!! xx, Lauren

    • That would be really valuable insight, Lauren! I’ve found myself buying certain books because they have a recommendation from an author I know I like already, or I have certain family members whose opinions I trust implicitly when it comes to recommending good books (and others I don’t…) Maybe you could take a survey of a few readers on your mailing list or blog and see what kind of response you get!

  • My wife pointed out to me last night that I wrote my novel to please myself. No market testing went into the effort. That is good, hard info. I am my best reader, perhaps. I also have two others who have read all and enjoyed my writing in general and the novel in particular, and asked for more. Both are highly educated men — 50+ — of lively intellect and deep faith. Neither uses social media to any great extent but they do some stuff online. Just not social media. One is a total motorhead (Unix, etc.) who barely has a net connection at home.

    I will enjoy doing the three interviews that I put on my short list after reading this most excellent post.

    • Hey Jon, I think it’s pretty normal for authors to find that their target market/reader profile is very familiar. I definitely have a lot in common with my target market, too. But I would take advantage of those other two fans you know of to try and get more information out of them about what they liked about your book, where they do spend their online time, etc. And if they’re not online, we’re going to be providing some suggestions for reaching people off the web, too!

  • monica4567

    Wow! Finally got to finish this exercise (you’ve already posted the next one!) and it was really enlightening. It was weird at first, picking traits — it did feel like I was creating a character. And yeah, I knew I wasn’t picking the traits of ALL my potential readers. But this helps with visualization and focus — kind of your point.
    As far as a question for my reader, I’d like to know what they think is the biggest part in what gets them “hooked” on a character or a series?

    • Great, Monica! You’re right on track. I’m glad you got something out of the exercise — it definitely helps to have that focus when you’re just getting started. Your question is perfect, right in line with what we found with the discussion in Lesson 3 — it seems like we are fans of a lot of authors because we love their characters more than anything else.

  • I would ask a couple of questions. Who was your favorite character? What most interssted you in my novel?

    • Great questions Cherley! You might find your fans love your antagonist’s story line more than that of your protagonist, which could lead to a spin off series or alternate POV short story on your website, both valuable marketing tips.:-)

  • Haythem Bastawy

    I would also ask what they liked the most in the novel? Why they are actually fans?

    • Excellent point, Haythem. We just heard from one of our author friends who reached out to her biggest fan and after talking to her about what she wanted to read, the author decided to scrap her current work in progress and start on something totally different. Knowing what our fans want in our writing is really valuable, but at the same time I do still believe you can find fans for almost any novel. This is more of an important step once you have a few books to make sure you’re staying in line with what your readers want.

  • Ke-Yana Drake

    To sit my greatest fan down and ask them one question, I would probably need to talk to them long enough and get to know them well enough to understand what motivates them as a fan. As in, what about my writing is it that they love so much that it keeps them coming back. I doubt any person is self-aware enough to answer that question directly, but that’s exactly what I want to know, so I can keep on doing that thing.

    • That’s very true, Ke-Yana. It’s more about having a quality relationship with your fan to get to know real, deep down answers rather than going for quantity and just trying to move through things quickly. If any of us got to sit down with our biggest fan, we surely would like more than a few minutes of their time :-)

    • Ke-Yana Drake

      Oh very certainly! I’d love one day to have a group of dedicated fans who are also friends. I imagine after a certain number of folks a personal relationship with fans could be difficult, but I’d love to have a core group of awesomeness to discuss issues with, have beta readers and perhaps have input on what future projects I can add for their interest and future squee. I’d love to be a fan with that kind of interaction with my favourite reader, and many people I know feel the same way. I want to figure out how to make that kind of vision work… it makes me all excited just to think about it! XD

    • That would be perfect — an inner circle of fans would be a great sounding board for sharing new ideas, getting reviews, etc. You should give them special privileges, too, and share swag whenever possible to keep them motivated and loyal. That would be a very valuable group to have — I don’t know any author who wouldn’t be super excited about that :-)

  • Since I’m writing a MG series, I would ask my fan what he would most like to see my main character do. What places would he want the MC to visit? What adventures would he most like to see the MC have? I know how I want my MC to grow, but I want to make sure it also appeals to my fans.

    • That’s a great way to get people excited about a series, Will! Once you’ve established a character people love, that would be a great time to ask your fans via mailing list, Facebook, or blog post where they could like to see your character go next!

  • Carol

    I, too, would like to know how they heard about my book. Then I’d like to know why they kept reading it after the first sentence.

    • Great advice, Carol! Especially the part of how they heard about your book. It’s a thread that could lead you to where readers like your fan hang out on the internet, or where they get their recommendation.

    • Great point Carol, knowing how fans found out about you not only helps you find more fans like them, it helps you figure out where you’re getting the most return on your investment (whether it’s time or money). If you find you’re getting 10 readers a month from Facebook and 1 from Twitter, you’ll know to invest more of your time in managing your Facebook account, right? The valuable information to know!

  • Reading this gave me an idea that I could add to this exercise. I’m an avid reader myself, and I’ve found that books from certain authors that appeal to me, also appeal to many others as well. It got me thinking, what attracted me to their books? Why did I pick a particular book instead of the other? What got me so excited that after discovering the book, I couldn’t wait to read it? What did i like about the book and why did i go back to that author? How did I discover this author and whose recommendation did I listen to? And so on. I’m looking at it through the eyes of the reader that I am. The answers are already laying out a trail for me to follow. Putting it together with an interview of a fan would create a marvelous marketing plan.

    • That is great Miranda! Separating your author side and just looking at how you make decisions as a reader is a GENIUS way to figure out how readers choose books/authors. I don’t care how many times I’ve heard it said, I definitely judge a book by its cover. Although I will say, one of my favorite books of the last couple years (Clay’s Quilt) was recommended to me by my aunt (a librarian) and though I didn’t like the cover, I read it anyway and LOVED it, so maybe I need to pass judgment a little less :-) But other things that keep you coming back to a certain author, whether it’s writing style, characters, setting, etc. are important as well to identifying what your readers want from you. Excellent Advice! Thank you so much for sharing!!!

  • The lesson preview and comments are helpful even though I’m writing children’s books. Mostly friends and family have read so far, but I think I get the picture: Ask questions and get to KNOW everything you can about your fans! Bettte

    • Yes Bette, our tips work for children’s books, too! Knowing what piques a kid’s interest and also what their parents (who are actually buying the books) look for when purchasing a book for their kid is definitely good to know. Glad you’ve joined us and I hope you’re getting a lot out of the course! :-)

  • Jenny

    How do you find your readers in the first place, especially when you hardly have any?

    • Hey Jenny! Next week in Lessons 5 & 6, Toni will give you some tips on actually finding your readers. There are more methods than you’d think! She should be able to help you get going in the right direction.

  • Here I am, needing more. I have identified a true fan and I am sure an interview would be fine, but I would like to know what questions to ask during the interview that would actually help me to develop a marketing plan.

    • Hey William — did you get the interview questions in the Week 2 Homework post? Those should help you interview your reader and get some critical info on who your one fan is. After that you can use what you learned to target more readers like that by crafting all your messages to appeal to that person. Hope that helps! Stick with the course and we’ll help you put all the pieces together :-)