Avoiding the Paper Cuts of Book Marketing:
Digital Marketing Strategies for Financial Professionals
Writing a book is one of the greatest ways to showcase your expertise in the financial industry. Digital marketing is also one of the best ways to promote your work. Digital marketing can be started with a click of the mouse; so many people don’t start planning until too late and miss out on maximizing their impact. To get the most out of your digital book marketing and to support your other initiatives, you need to have a documented strategy and timeline.
AS SOON AS YOU FINALIZE YOUR COVER
OWN THE SPACE. If you are not planning to have your book on your company website, you need to purchase a domain that includes a version of the title as soon as possible (www.booktitle.com – www.author.com). This may be something you want to include within the book manuscript itself to drive readers to your site for additional resources, the latest information, or other calls-to-action that can serve as lead generation for your business. If you are also planning to create unique social media profiles, Google Adwords accounts, email platforms or other spaces you want to stake your claim to usernames as soon as possible. It is also important to keep as much consistency as possible across these spaces.
DESIGN YOUR WEBSITE. Whether you are promoting your book through your current website or creating a new one, make time to have the content built out and designed. Especially if you are starting from scratch, this process can take weeks or months, and you want to have your website in place for a considerable amount of time—several months if possible–prior to your first digital marketing campaign. Analytics along with tracking codes and cookies need to be in place for some time for best results. This is now the time to decide on fonts, colors, images, video, audio and any unique deliverables you may want to create keeping consistent with the book design.
RESEARCH KEYWORDS. Keywords, especially long tail keywords, are a great jumping off point for most digital marketing. Knowing the issues and problems your readers are searching to solve can help you connect with them in the most efficient way. Integrate these into your website content, emails, targeting and any digital ads you create. These keywords can also help your traditional marketing and PR efforts as well by creating campaigns and media pitches around the issues you find with potential readers.
PLAN. Decide where your want to focus your digital marketing efforts. Knowing where your target audience goes online will help define this. Do some research and interviews to gather as much information as you can. You will want to start planning social media campaigns, ad themes and set your desired budget. Your themes can focus on various topics beyond the publication of the book, like your experience, the importance of the book and tying into timely topics.
ONE-MONTH BEFORE YOU PUBLISH
BUILD OUT ACCOUNTS. Your website or pages should be established. Use this time to pull design and key elements into the other aspects of your digital marketing strategy, including:
- Design an email signature with images or quote that links to your website
- Build email marketing templates seeking advanced online reviews from clients, driving pre-sales, announcing the launch, and other pre-planned promotional activities.
- Finalize all your image or video pay-per-click campaigns
- Add content to your Amazon author profile
- Ensure your AdWords account is properly established and
- Review your marketing and PR efforts to include all your applicable digital accounts and website information
SET UP TRACKING. Digital marketing has more analytics and data available than any other promotional program. You need to use this! Add Google URL tracking to your links, establish Facebook Pixels, Google remarketing code, cookies or any other opportunities you wish to peruse. When it comes to analytics and AdWords, the longer you have the tracking in place, the better the results you will have. A little planning can have a significant impact on your later efforts.
WRITE OUT YOUR STRATEGY. Knowing what you want to happen from your digital marketing efforts is the first step, but you need to put pen to paper. Collaborating with other promotional efforts will make any digital marketing more effective. Set qualitative and quantitative goals, plan ad start and stop times to align with media pitches, find some brand ambassadors to spread your message and ensure your whole team is on the same page. Take all your ad themes that you determined when your cover was finalized, and write out the ad content, emails and posts.
WHEN YOUR BOOK PUBLISHES
CONNECT WITH YOUR NETWORK. You know people who work in the financial sector and who would be great advocates for your book. You also know many more people outside of the industry. Connect with all your networks. Your mom might be your biggest fan, which if you are trying to reach an audience in retirement may not be a bad thing. Don’t be afraid to email, inMail, text or talk with your personal network to help gain traffic for your book.
HAVE YOUR BOOK EVERYWHERE. Everyone that you know, should know you wrote a book. Have it the lobby at your office, at home, with you as you travel and everywhere in between. Never push your book on anyone who isn’t interested, but always be prepared for someone who is.
CLICK START ON PPC. Since you have done such great planning, you already have your website, tracking and PPC advertising ready to go. Now it is time to get it going. Advertising should never be left alone for too long, so be sure to check the analytics, test, adjust and re-work around once a week. Don’t waste your advertising dollars; invest smart in PPC.
BE THE BEST. Your book is good; you wrote it. Help everyone else realize it as well. If you are interviewed for radio, podcasts, television or print media add that content to your website. Encourage your new audience to visit your new website any link from the media will increase relevant backlinks and help with SEO. Always promote your upcoming appearances on social media and by email. There are also ways to be listed on Amazon and other sites as a best seller. It is all about the number and timing of books you sell. (For additional PR planning considerations, read our blog post From Advisor to Author.)
ALWAYS BE PROMOTING. The first six months are vital in book marketing and promotion. Be sure to capitalize on your opportunities. Set aside a little time every day to think of new ways to promote your book to a new audience or reposition your book to existing audiences from a new angle. Keep all of your materials up-to-date and add your book to your LinkedIn profile and corporate bio.
All book marketing will be slightly different based on your audience and goals. There are a variety of ways to get your book in front of readers, always make the right choices for your desired audience. Don’t be afraid to reach out and get your book out to the public, but also don’t be afraid to say no to the wrong opportunities. You know your book better than anyone, make sure your story is getting told as you intended.
If you need help getting your book promoted in the digital space call us at (866) 888-5333 or Info@advisorpr.com.
