Targeting Your Audience

Who do you think would be the perfect audience for your book?
Everyone?

Men?

Women?

College students?

If your answer was similar to any of the above, you are on the wrong track. One of the biggest mistakes that authors make is to assume that everyone will be interested in buying their book. If you write your book and try to appeal to everyone, I can promise you that it won’t connect with anyone at all.

So how do you identify your target audience? Here’s an example using one of our latest publications, [amazon_link id=\”1935909487\” target=\”_blank\” ]The Great Last Days Deception[/amazon_link].

Remember: you start off broad and continue to narrow it down until you have a group that you don’t even have to convince to buy it. As soon as they hear about it, they want to buy it.

Courtesy of sxc and 7rains

Everyone is interested in the end of the world. Way too broad.

Men and women who are middle-aged. Long way to go . . . 

Men and women between the ages of 35-65. Still too broad.

Men and women between the ages of 35-65 who are involved in a church. Getting closer . . . 

Men and women between the ages of 35-65 who are involved in an evangelical Baptist or Bible church with a focus on eschatology. They also have purchased at least two other books in the past on the end times and may or may not be a part of an online group devoted to talking about it. There’s your target audience.

The last group of people would be a perfect fit for this type of book. Once you figure out one of your target audiences, you will have gained much more than sales. The people who buy your book immediately will be your biggest fans and your best salespeople.

Practice finding a target audience for your own book, but don’t stop at just one. Do this exercise at least three times and find multiple groups of people that are a perfect fit for your book. Once you have a few target audiences in place, connecting with them is easier than it ever has been. Do an online search and you will be amazed at what you find.

Here are five tips on connecting once you find your target audience:

1. Don’t try to sell your book. Don’t be a cheesy marketer who joined the group just do sell your book and drop out forever. You wrote a book that connects with this audience perfectly – talk about what you know as an expert, the book will come up naturally once you prove yourself to be knowledgable.

2. Offer free resources. Create videos, worksheets, or bonus materials and give them away for free to these groups. You have the content already, use it in new ways.

3. Give away a part of your book. A chapter or a summary or a series of key points. My suggestion is to write a stripped down book that gets your main points across, but does not tell the whole story.

4. Do it again. If this sounds like a lot of work to do with multiple groups, it is. Fortunately you can use the same materials, research, and even expertise for multiple groups of people.

5. Online and off. Try to connect with offline and online groups. You will find that they often travel in very different circles and you will expand your marketing reach by working with two different groups of people.

[amazon_link id=\”159963421X\” target=\”_blank\” ]Sell Your Book Like Wildfire[/amazon_link] is a great resource for targeting your audience and other marketing tips. Highly recommended.

Who is your target audience? Have you been able to connect with them?