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Rewriting The Rules of Marketing, by Kevin Kaiser

In today's electronic age, anyone can be a published author -- and anyone can reach practically anyone else on Earth with their art. "All you need is something to say and a computer with internet access. Infinite possibilities exist."

This can also be a huge problem. In the time it's taken you to read this far, more than 100 new websites have been created!

"Creating meaningful work isn't the biggest challenge for most authors anymore. Getting it into the world -- one way or another -- is no longer a mountainous challenge either. These days, the toughest obstacle you may face is finding a way to rise above the noise so that your work can be discovered."

Getting noticed, Kaiser says, begins with three key strategies that seem very simple, but often go widely neglected.

1. Know who's on the other end.

As an author, you're connected with people, not demographics -- yet "most authors who fail at promoting themselves fail first at this point." They spend more time generating character profiles for their fiction than they do understanding their audience.

Instead of trying to speak to a nameless, faceless demographic, imagine that you have one reader. Create one person who is representative of what you believe to be your target audience. Give that reader a name -- yes, really! -- and bring him or her to life in your mind.

Take the time to write down your reader's profile, just as if he or she is a character in your writing. Create a personality profile sketch. Research who this person really is, where he or she goes, and how he or she interacts with the stories he or she likes.

All of your commercial success starts with this, yet so few authors (and publishers) are doing it well. Base every decision you make on speaking to your Target Reader, and everything else will be easier.

2. Forsake the millions.

The days of reaching consumers efficiently through mass media are over -- technology has fragmented the market. "What's exciting is that you don't need to sell millions of books to make a living by writing. Small is the new big."

Kaiser introduces the theory of Dunbar's Number -- named after British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. Dunbar suggested that there's a limit to the number of people with whom we can maintain a meaningful relationship, and that number is probably somewhere around 150. Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine, also theorized (in "1,000 True Fans") that an artist who would like to make a living creating art needs only 1,000 true, passionate fans to make that a reality.

"Think as narrowly as you can and find a pocket of readers who are passionate about the same things you are."

3. Stop marketing.

You read that right.

Each of us encounters 3.500-5.000 marketing messages daily. Kaiser says that this dawned on him over lunch. "If I wasn't looking at a label on a bottle or a sign on the restaurant's wall, it was a message out the window -- on the sidewalk, across the street and even driving by."

The readers you're trying to reach -- people in general -- aren't sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for the great ideas you have to share with the world, or for the insight you offer. "They are, however, starved for something else: relationships."

Kaiser experimented over a six-month period with one of his authors on a Facebook site. For that time frame, they had one rule: no marketing messages at all. Instead, they made every interaction about the reader -- they reached out individually and talked to them like people. Not only did the readers notice, but they reported feeling more valued, and that created authentic connections between them and the author. By the time the marketing message came down the pipeline, that author's readers were much more receptive than they would have been otherwise.

Find a way to interact with your readers as people before you start trying to market yourself to them.

"The time to change how you think is when everyone else is thinking the same way."

Kevin Kaiser is a writer, speaker and brand strategist who advises international bestselling authors and publishers on effective marketing. Follow @KevinSKaiser on Twitter - from Writer's Digest, July/August, 2012

Source: http://t-w-w-s.livejournal.com/101846.html

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