Do You Have a Marketing Mix?

By Susan Reichert, Editor-in-Chief, Southern Writers Magazine

Most of you know what a marketing mix is. For those who don’t know, it is different forms of marketing used. Some of these are advertising, social media, emailing’s, newsletters, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, word of mouth, book reviews, and speaking engagements to name a few.  If you know of other forms be sure and mention them in the comment section to help other authors.

Readers are everywhere.

But as authors we have what is called our target audience. So, we must identify our target audience in order to choose the correct marketing mix which we need before putting the marketing plan together.

The more defined our target and marketing mix, the better results we receive. Sales are higher, and our reader base will become larger. And these readers will stay with us.

As I have said many times over the past eight years getting an author’s name recognized is most important. One of the easiest, less time consuming and successful marketing tools is commenting on a couple of blogs. Why? It gets the author’s name out to a group of people the author normally does not encounter. Once that group of people start seeing the author’s name, they become familiar with it. They start looking it up. They go to Google and put the author’s name in, read about them, search out and read what they can find about the author. They go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and see what books the author has written. And hopefully the author’s book covers are eye catching, if not, hopefully the author will make sure the next books published will have eye catching covers, the ones with a “Wow” factor.

When people see a name in print…any print, over and over or hear a name repeatedly, they assume that person is important. It is human nature. 

So what blogs? Choose one that has big numbers and then choose one in your genre…preferably an author who has more books than you and is well known.

It is much better to run with the ‘big’ boys as they say.

When you do comment, make sure, along with your author name to include the title of your newest book.

Happy Writing!