Heather Hart's Blog, page 32

Just Be There

Day 109
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.”~ Woody Bennett, 1935
I don’t know about you, but there are days where I just don’t want to work. I long for a day off, and as a self-employed individual, I’m the only one there is to force myself to sit down and my desk and actually get some work done. Taking a day off would be easy... but taking off 5 days would be just as easy. It’s important to schedule at least a little bit of work time every day and not get in the habit of skipping out. It...

AIDA

Day 108
“To generate sales, try following the AIDA principle. Get your customers: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action”~ Heather Hart
AIDA is an old marketing acronym describing the process that the customers go through before making a purchase. To be good at marketing, we have to know how to virtually walk the customers through that process – to take them from just window shopping, to spending the cash. That’s why I wanted to take a minute to walk through that process with you. So here it g...

True Friends

Day 107
“All of marketing consists in creating relationships. Real relationships: friends, lovers, partners, warriors, fans.”~ The Quotable John Kremer
Relationships lead to sales, but they shouldn't be founded on that principle. You shouldn't be building relationships with readers just because you want them to buy your book. It has to be a give and take relationship, not a: “I’ll be your friend if it means you’ll buy my book” kind of thing. Readers will see right through th...

Get Excited!

Day 106“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm”~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I’m assuming that at one point or another you were enthusiastic about your book. But are you just as enthusiastic about selling it? Do you still get stars in your eyes when a new 5 star review comes in? Enthusiasm is important when it comes to marketing your book. If you don’t care if it sells, why should anyone else?
Marketing prompt:
Go back through some of your book reviews and read how your book is affec...

Get Connected

Day 105
“People aren't waiting for the great ideas we have to share with the world, and they aren't starved for our insight. They are, however, starved for something else: relationships.”~ Kevin Kaiser
People need people. Even introverts. We all long to have real relationships with real people. Readers love to read, but more than the books they love the relationships they read about, the way the book helps their relationships, or the way that the books help them feel like th...

Take The Shot

Day 104
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”~ Robert F. Kennedy
It’s hard to put ourselves in the position to fail. We’d much rather put our efforts into sure things. We don’t want to lose money, and we don’t want to waste our time, but going out on limb and putting yourself out there is how you achieve great things. If you want to sell a lot of books, you might have to leave your comfort zone from time to time. You might fail, but you might blow yourself away with wh...

Day #103

“Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows.”~ Michael Landon
Every day that you spend marketing your book is important – even this one. It’s easy to procrastinate when it comes to doing things we aren't looking forward to. We’d much rather spend time doing the things we loved. But if we allowed that to happen, we’d probably never have clean dishes, and we’d never sell any books either. 
Book marketing is important. Don’t put off ‘til tomorrow, that whic...

Time...

Day 102
“The lesson I learned is that my time must be budgeted or bad things will happen.” ~ Sheila Clover English
Ah, Sheila, you and me both, girl! Budgeting your time accordingly is ooberly important (yes, I know that’s not a real word and I don’t care). Yesterday I talked about strategy and timing, but today it’s time management. In order to complete your strategy in a timely manner, you have to manage your time correctly. I failed at that recently. I had a great plan. It was laid out to be...

Looking Ahead

Day 101 “Strategy and timing are the Himalayas of marketing. Everything else is the Catskills.”~ Al Ries
Have you ever thought about how important the timing of your marketing is? Timing your marketing for the right time of the year or timing a press release for the same time as a special sale can make or break your results. That’s why planning ahead is so important – it allows you to use the optimal timing and also to create a winning strategy. Instead of having your marketing efforts flop aro...

Break Out

Day 100“When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.”  ~ George Washington Carver
Did you hear about the author that chained herself to a shopping cart at a supermarket because they refused to shelve her book? She got a lot of publicity for it, but I probably wouldn't have thought about it. Other authors have done some equally as crazy stuff. A fiction author once passed out free copies of her book to everyone on the airp...