Writers’ Marketing Mistakes (3) – Token marketing

Token marketing is something that lots of people in business do.  They know they need to market. They know they ought to market.  They know their business success depends on their commitment to marketing.

They feel guilty when they fail to market – and yet they’d rather not.  Their solution is token marketing.

Are you guilty of token marketing?

Do you force yourself to do some marketing? Do you dabble with marketing, promising yourself that one day your agent or your publicist will handle all this for you?  Do you do a bit of blogging every now and then, or add a page to your website occasionally, when you feel you really must do something? Have you had a postcard or a bookmark printed to promote your book, but you haven’t given them out?

If this is your approach to marketing, then you’re definitely involved with token marketing.

Token marketing rarely works.

You already know that token marketing doesn’t work unless you’re very, very lucky.  You know that your efforts won’t pay off, because you’re only putting in a very small amount of time and effort.  You only do any marketing occasionally, and your heart just isn’t in the job.

If you’re honest with yourself you’re actually rather relieved when your marketing doesn’t work because you can now say:

“I tried ………….. and it doesn’t work.”

You don’t want it to work because you don’t want to spend your time marketing.

You’re the marketing manager

Unfortunately for your writing business you’re the marketing manager.  If you are only undertaking token marketing you’re not going to make progress with developing your writing business.  You’re not going to achieve the success you’re looking for.

Therefore, you need to change your approach to marketing.

Instead of token marketing think about the results you want to achieve.  You want subscribers to your blog.  You want visits to your website.  You want people to attend an event at which you’re speaking.  You want to sell books at an event you’re taking part in at your local library or at your local bookshop.

These things don’t just happen.

Think about your token marketing strategies and be honest.  If you put in twice as much time to making them work, would they deliver the results you want?

• What else might work better than the approaches you’ve used thus far?
• If you were to use two or three additional approaches to marketing what could you achieve?
• If you applied your efforts consistently to your marketing, what might you achieve?

You probably know the answer.

Stop token marketing.  Start effective marketing.

Marketing for beginners

Here’s the list of things to do.

• Allocate a budget of time to marketing.
• Set a target for your marketing achievements.
• Choose two or three marketing methods to try out.  Be prepared to add to them.
• Start a marketing “campaign” that will last for at least two months.

Do the marketing and give it the same level of commitment as you give to your writing.

Then check the results.  How much better are you doing with your new approach to marketing . . . and what else could you try now?

See also:

I’d rather not . . .

Writers’ Marketing Mistakes (1) Not doing any marketing

Writers’ Marketing Mistakes (2) Telling yourself marketing can wait