Authors (and anyone else who has writing experience): if you’re struggling with figuring out how to speak to your target audience, then come join me in this exercise!
If you’ve written more than one book, start out by sorting your books into groups that you think the same type of person would want to read. For example, if you’ve written a series, then you can group all of the books in it together. If you have multiple books in their own unique genres, then they’ll be in their own group by themselves. For 10 books written, you could end up with 1 group or 10 different groups.
Side note: for those of you who aren’t authors, simply change the word “book” to product or service. You can group each of those by who needs it and continue on with this exercise.
Now take a good hard look at each of those groups individually and start to imagine a person that would enjoy reading the books in them. Grab your laptop or notepad and favorite pen and write everything you can think of down. You want to create a character here.
Give that character a name, a description, and a backstory. What are their aspirations? What are their fears? What do they do for a living? Do they like it? Go into as much detail as you would creating a character for one of your books. Bring them to life in your mind. Do this for each group that you have.
Now, when you’re trying to market a specific book, speak directly to the character you’ve created for it. Explain to the character why they’re going to love it. Speak to them in a way that they’ll understand. Talk to them on their level. Don’t think of this as marketing or selling so much as writing a work of fiction.
This is what I mean whenever I’ve talked about creating a buyer persona for your marketing. It’s about creating a character that you can speak to when you’re writing up marketing material, like a social media post or newsletter, for example. Will your entire target market be exactly like your character? Absolutely not. But will they be enough like them to feel like you really understand them? One hundred percent.
And as an added bonus to you, it will be easier to talk and write to one specific person you’ve thought up in your head than it is to a bunch of people you’ve never met.
All the best,
Ryanne Zender
Disclaimer: While marketing is based in part on statistics and psychology, it is not an exact science. Every business and market are unique. What may work for one business, will not necessarily work for another. There are no guarantees in marketing, and this post is for informational and educational purposes only and does not replace professional advice. You can check out the full list of disclaimers and disclosures here.
