Knowing how to market an ebook to a niche audience can help you run more effective promotions. This way, you can spend your money and time on channels that reach the readers most likely to purchase your books!
First, you need to learn about your target audience, how they find books, and what kinds of books they’re searching for. Then you should cater your marketing copy — retailer descriptions, synopsis on your website, blog posts and interviews, tweets, etc. — to these search queries. Finally, you should push these promotions where your audience spends their time online. This will make it easier for your target audience to find and choose your book as their next read.
In this post, we’ll cover how to market an ebook to the right readers. These strategies can help you gain exposure to the people who could become your most loyal fans.
1. Choose the correct subcategory for your book on retailer sites
If you don’t categorize your book correctly on retailer sites, you could miss out on exposure to the most relevant potential readers. While you should consider what kind of books your target audience reads, you should also aim for as accurate a subgenre as possible to avoid disappointing readers who might have expected something different.
You may typically think of a book broadly as a Romance, Young Adult, or History, for example. But each of these categories has a wide array of subgenres you can choose from on retailer sites like Amazon.
By targeting a sub-genre correctly, you also increase your chances of being on the retailer bestseller charts for a specific category, which could drive a higher volume of sales.
2. Optimize your ebook’s metadata
It’s also important to get an ebook’s metadata right so readers actively seeking related content will find the book at the top of their search results, whether they’re looking on Google search or an online book retailer. If you did keyword research as part of your target audience identification process, you’ll know which queries your audience is entering most often on search engines, and which keywords are less competitive than others.
Once you’ve narrowed the list down to 5–7 keywords you want to target, try to include these on the book’s retailer product pages in the following locations:
- Description headline. When adding a description for the book, you can use header stylings. Search engines give headers more weight when determining what a web page is all about, so be sure to include your top keyword term in this space.
- Description. Don’t simply stuff your description with keywords. Instead, elegantly weave these terms into the book’s pitch, or include blurbs and endorsements you’ve received that include these terms.
- Keywords. Certain retailers let you enter keywords you want to target. For example, Amazon allows you to enter seven keywords at the Target Your Book to Customers step in the Search Keywords text field.
Here are some excellent resources to help you learn more about how to optimize an ebook’s metadata:
- The Metadata Handbook by Digital Book World
- How to Improve Your Amazon Book Description & Metadata
- Metadata is the new most important thing to know about
3. Run targeted price promotion campaigns
By discounting your ebook for a limited time, you’ll be eligible to promote your book through services like BookBub, which sends a daily email of price promotions to millions of members who’ve specified which genres they like to read. This allows authors and publishers to reach readers they know are likely to be interested in their book.
Each genre has anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of subscribers, and books that are selected as Featured Deals get sent to these massive and highly engaged email lists. BookBub also regularly launches new categories to meet growing demands, allowing for even finer targeting.
4. Run social ad campaigns to a targeted audience
Sites like Facebook and Twitter let you target ads to a fine-tuned audience based on preferences users have expressed on those social platforms. This lets you advertise the book to people interested in similar books or genres. Here are a few examples of ways you can segment your audience when creating social media ads:
Demographics:
- The age range of your target audience (e.g., 45–65)
- The gender of your target audience (e.g., female for Contemporary Romance)
- Language (e.g., choose English if your book is only available in English)
Interests:
Enter anything relevant in the interests section, and get as specific as you can. Targeting terms that are too broad (e.g. “romance”) will make your ad reach a wider audience that may not be interested in reading at all, let alone your book. Here are a few ideas for target demographics:
- People interested in authors who write similar books
- People interested in similar books or films
- People who follow Twitter accounts of fictional characters from similar books
- People who’ve indicated they are interested in relevant genres
Friend connections:
Social endorsement is highly persuasive, and sites like Facebook and Twitter let you specifically target people who are friends with your existing fans, or fans of similar authors. If their friends have similar tastes, these are people you’d want to reach, and the ads will specify the social connection.
- Friends of people who like a book’s or an author’s Facebook page
- People similar to your followers on Twitter
- Followers of similar authors on Twitter
5. Find relevant reviewers and bloggers
Coordinating with relevant blogs to promote giveaways or publish reviews or author interviews can help launch new releases or reinvigorate backlist titles. Bestselling author H.M. Ward, for example, has successfully launched several new books and celebrated a number of major sales milestones through blog promotions.
Compile a list of book bloggers and reviewers who regularly review books, interview authors, or feature guest posts from authors in your genre. This will require some research, since every genre and subgenre has its own unique set of relevant sites.
However, targeting all the blogs in your genre can be a time suck. Limit your efforts to those with the most relevant and engaged audience. To make sure you spend your valuable marketing time wisely, here are a few criteria to look for in each site you consider:
- What is the site’s target audience? Does it match yours, or is it too loosely related to be relevant to your marketing needs?
- What is the size of its audience? Does it display how many subscribers it has?
- How many social shares is each post getting? If it doesn’t have social media counters on each blog post, use a tool like ShareTally to see how many social shares a specific page on that site has received.
- How engaged is its audience? Are users commenting on many of the site’s blog posts? Do readers seem appreciative of the bloggers’ time?
- Does it write about books like yours or feature authors like you? Have you heard of any of these books and authors before?
6. Seek relevant (and free) PR opportunities
Publishing articles about your niche across relevant websites is a great way to gain exposure to your target audience. While this is an excellent strategy for promoting nonfiction books, you can also find opportunities to promote fiction works. Instead of spending hours seeking out websites and pitching your way into guest post opportunities, let publishers and reporters come to you for relevant quotes.
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a sourcing service connecting journalists with relevant experts. And you are the expert of your niche! If you sign up for a free HARO account, you’ll receive an email three times per day that includes media opportunities in which you could be quoted. Since HARO’s category options are so broad, it’s best to sign up for the Master HARO list and set up your own email filters so you only get alerts for relevant queries or from publications you know your target audience reads. For example, in Gmail you could set up a filter like this to delete HARO emails that don’t include relevant terms:
from: haro@helpareporter.com -{“term one” OR “term two” OR “term three”}
Once you receive an email, search for the terms that let the email get through your filter.
Reporters often quote from the first responses they receive, so if it’s a relevant query where you have some expertise, don’t hesitate.. This is a fantastic way to get free publicity for yourself and your books on publications your target audience reads.
7. Get creative, and have fun!
Your unique marketing strategy will vary based on your subgenre and the content of your book. So it’s up to you to understand how to market an ebook to your unique audience. Here are a few examples:
- For a Middle Grade book, coordinate with local PTAs to organize a school reading during a bake sale or book fair.
- For a Thriller about racecar drivers, reserve ad space on the tickets or run a promotion with the nearest track.
- For a Science Fiction book, arrange for signings or giveaways at popular sci-fi conventions.
- For a Chick Lit book featuring a hairdresser protagonist, create a cute series of hair tutorial YouTube videos featuring hairstyles from the book.
In these few examples, you can see how limitless targeted marketing can be! Many authors make the mistake of thinking “if you build it, they will come.” But hitting “publish” and waiting for readers to find your book isn’t enough anymore. You need to learn how to market an ebook to the right audience, with the right messaging, at the right time!
What advice would you give on how to market an ebook to the right audience? Let us know in the comments below!
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