September 1: the first day of InSeMaMo
Today's challenge is defining your target market.

I've seen a lot of hit-and-miss marketing and yes, sometimes if you try enough things, luck kicks in - but not often. So let's use a planned approach, which begins with knowing your audience. When you know who is already looking for a book like yours, you can narrow down which of the thousands of marketing methods will be most worth your time and effort, and focus on those. Not only will you know which to use, you'll know how to use them to attract YOUR readers.

Categories like 'science fiction', 'mystery' or 'romance are too broad. Narrow it down. There's steamy romance and YA romance and historical fiction romance - and the readers for each of these are very different. Be as specific as you can be about the type of book you write.

What is it in your books that makes people get excited about them? These are called "emotional triggers". Look at your themes, type of conflicts, characters, values, emotional/intellectual tone. What kind of readers would get interested in these? In other words, what emotional needs in your readers do your books meet? Now, build a picture of the type of readers who would enjoy a book with the emotional triggers you write about.

• How old are they?
• What gender are they? What do they look like?
• Do they like sentiment or intellectual puzzles?
• What are their interests?
• What level of education are they likely to have?
• What are their other hobbies(besides reading)?
• Are they popular, social, or loners?
• What are their values? What matters to them?

Take time to think about this, and write down as much as you can about the kind of emotional triggers you write into your books, and what kind of readers would find those appealing. Once you know your potential  readers, you will know where to find them. Just follow their hobbies, interests and values. We'll discuss this part more in future challenges.

Example: Catherine Cookson's readers are mostly female, middle-aged or older, sentimental rather than intellectual, and social. They value family and relationships and probably have homey interests and hobbies, like knitting, gardening, cooking, crafts.

Where will you find them? In churches and library reading groups, through magazines, clubs and websites about knitting, crafts, cooking and gardening, and in stores that sell knitting, quilting and gardening supplies. Probably not on newer social media, though they likely have email and may be on facebook.

Now you have the outline for a marketing strategy.

The September Marketing Challenge begins in seven days! I hope you're as excited about it as I am. But if you don't know what the heck I'm talking about, you should go to my previous post where I describe it, HERE.

In this post I'm going to discuss your website. Because every author needs a website - it's the central axis of your entire marketing campaign - I'm going to assume when we begin on September 1st that you have one. So I thought I should give you some warning.  :-)

The most important thing I learned about websites  from marketing guru Thomas Umstattd is that your blog must be on your website. If your blog is at a separate URL - or through a different provider - every time you write a new post and send people to it, you're sending them AWAY from your website, AWAY from the place where they can see your books and click to buy them.

Why have a blog at all? Why not just a website? A blog does two things. It creates interest and it makes your website interactive - and both of these draw people.

Imagine you owned a store, and very rarely got in any new merchandise. People would stop coming, right? Well, it takes months, if not years, to write a book, but it takes hours to write a post. You're providing new things to look at, and people will come in to see them.

The second advantage of a blog is, it gives visitors to your site a place where they can talk to you, by leaving comments and seeing your responses. Imagine you invited someone to your home, but refused to let them talk to you. They'd leave, and might not come back.

Some of September's challenges will involve your website and your blog, which is why I'm making this suggestion before we begin.

There is a wonderful variety of authors taking this challenge, and we can all learn a lot from each other.
If you already have a website, please share it with us. Leave a short comment introducing yourself and add your website URL. Then, over this next week, drop back here, read through the comments and check out each others' sites. If there's a place on their site to leave a comment, say hello, tell them you're taking this challenge too, and comment on their site.