There is one marketing tool I am not using at all like I could/should be.
Most digital marketing focus is on social media.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the like have the potential to reach ginormous audiences to spread your message, promote your work, and get you seen. They can be tremendously helpful on multiple levels.
Writers and other artists employ social media to do marketing. This can take many different forms, and there are endless resources available to discuss the pros and cons. Also, there are tons of how-to videos, blogs, and the like.
Need help with that? There are digital marketing companies all over the place that offer lots of options to get you seen. These cater to businesses of every size, shape, and configuration. Many are also small businesses. Employing one can be a great help to the up-and-coming writer, painter, artist, or entrepreneur.
I’ve utilized social media in various ways. Articles such as this, sharing the link to my Amazon author page and new books when I publish them, and the occasional haiku gets shared by me to multiple platforms.
Yet one thing I have read time and again in various marketing books is that email marketing is still an effective means to grow a business. Particularly an artistic business such as being a professional author.
Guess what marketing tool I make little use of?
If you said YouTube – you are correct! But more than that – I don’t use email marketing much at all.
That’s not to say I haven’t taken a stab at it. I have. To that end, I even set up an account with Mailchimp to collect emails and do marketing.
Initially, this was mostly tied to my The Ramblings of The Titanium Don blog. I connected that to my Medium.com account and also made it the connection to my author’s website.
But here are the problems with that.
- You can argue that my blog/conscious reality creation/mindfulness audience is not the same as my sci-fi/fantasy author audience.
- Offering a free eBook catering to the former rather than the latter could be a cause for confusion.
- Though I initially didn’t split myself into these two different variations of myself – now that I have, it’s counterproductive to that.
Just to add insult to injury – I rarely do anything with my mailing list. I don’t do updates, offer any special deals, or in any way incentivize people with it. It’s there, it lives in the ethers – and I tend to ignore it and its existence.
Why? Partially because I give as much attention to blogging as I do. I write a post to a blog 5 days a week. Plus, I do a podcast once a week. Where does creating an email to my audience fit in with that?
It might be time for me to answer that question.
The email marketing tool
There are countless books, blogs, videos, and even online courses available to go over employing email marketing as a tool to increase sales, get more notice, and grow your audience.
Yes, I have read a few. Or in reading other marketing-centric books, I’ve seen that email marketing was a part of it. Yet I’ve only armed my quiver with social media marketing arrows.
Why? To some degree – I abhor email marketing. I have signed up for more than one list or to follow another author. Some of what I get is good and useful. Much of it, however, I ignore. Feeling that way about it – why should I add to the noise and employ email marketing?
As arrows in my marketing quiver go, I view email as screamers. They make a ton of noise as they fly to their target. That noise turns me off – so I’ve focused most of my attention on social media marketing.
Following my brief day in Facebook jail (FYI, my account was cloned and/or hacked – and that’s caused some much bigger problems with my business account) I’m questioning that tool. And I have more than at least double or triple the number of connections on Facebook as I do on Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn.
Thus, I need to seek new marketing outlets. There are two I can think of to explore.
The first is the Metaverse. There are a ton of tools being developed in the Metaverse beyond cryptocurrency, such as NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Somewhere within these developments, there are surely new marketing avenues to be found or even created anew. But this is full-to-overflowing of unknowns.
The second is more old school – but still considered effective. That’s email marketing.
How do I start using this marketing tool more effectively?
That’s the challenge. I know what it is, I even have some idea how to make use of it. But knowing is not the same as doing.
With my appearance at Farpoint con this coming weekend – I am going to use this opportunity to collect emails and make new connections. Then I will use this to expand my marketing.
How? First – I am going to create a FREE download offering that is more along the lines of my sci-fi and fantasy work. I have already written a couple of things I could share.
- The initial Vapor Rogues short story that was published in the Spells and Swashbucklers anthology
- An unpublished Source Chronicles short story I need to get edited called The King and the Thief
- The A Treacherous Stone short story published in the Rum and Runestones Anthology
- One of my other short stories I could edit and share
That provides something of value to entice people to sign up for my mailing list initially.
THEN – I need to keep offering value. Regular posts about progress on upcoming work. Special offers on my existing books. Maybe even contests and offering to sell signed copies of books.
The point is that this is a marketing tool I have not utilized. The time has come for me to recognize and acknowledge that. And then – make use of this tool.
I need to learn to stop resisting and employ this option. My quiver of marketing arrows is not empty – I have new arrows to launch to hit the target and score a bullseye.
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