As a romance author, you’ve poured your heart and soul into your book. Now that it’s time to promote it, you’ll want to ensure your message is reaching your target readers and resonating with them.
Let’s dive into how you can use storytelling techniques as a content marketing strategy and maybe, just maybe, help you sell more books!
Steps to Mastering Storytelling for Your Author Business
While the essence of any story used in marketing differs, the end goals are almost the same – engaging with your target audience in a manner that guarantees the business with improved engagement, conversions, high sales, and better return on investment (ROI).
Your story should have a target audience, the right message to share, and on the right medium to reach those readers.
Understand Your Target Readers
While you may have a message in mind that you want to pass to your readers and loyal customers, it’s not just any message that’ll give you the necessary engagement and results. Your message needs to align with the needs and pain points of the readers you’re planning on targeting.
Learning about your readers is the first step towards mastering effective storytelling for your author business. The rationale is that get to know what their tastes and preferences are so that you can customize your story around such aspects for a higher chance of success.
You can personalize your book marketing efforts by understanding your readers’ needs. Create a reader persona, and develop content that speaks to their specific interests and concerns.
You could create a blog series on writing tips and tricks, or on how each of your stories came to be, do a live Q&A session on your fav social media platform, or even offer additional resources such as a storybook guide or checklists that can help your readers understand your book better or even be better writers themselves.
Establish Your Purposes for Telling Your Story
Your marketing story should have a definite purpose. Usually, many marketers miss the point by being overly promotional and salesy. The modern customer is someone who doesn’t want fancy anything that promotes a brand.
That’s why it’s necessary to establish your story’s purpose.
Your sole purpose should revolve around offering solutions to some of the problems your readers and potential readers are facing. That’s the only way your readers are likely to associate with your brand.
However, make sure that you have a worthy character to help in creating a memorable aspect in the audience. A great approach is to use the audience themselves as the character as evident in the case of Nike’s Find Your Greatness campaign from several years ago.
Craft an Engaging Message
A winning marketing story is about your brand. It should contain an emotion-evoking message. Make sure the story you have in your story hooks your readers. All the elements of your story should resonate with them. If it’s a piece of music, let it have the same effect on your readers as the video and the message itself.
Avoid using computer-generated voices. Remember, you want to relate with your readers as much as possible and the only way to achieve this is assuming human characteristics in every aspect of your story.
Your storyline should evoke an emotion: happy, sad, pity, pain, which are essential elements that define a great story.
Be Persuasive
While you’re trying to overly promotional, your end goal is for your readers to take some action. Whether is’t to subscribe to your email list, read the next book in the series, or buy a program you’ve written, you need to put in the extra effort that’ll make it hard for them to deny your call to action.
Therefore, your story should motivate readers as this guarantees a positive response.
Storytelling is an effective and powerful tool to use to generate leads and promote engagement. However, you’ll not get any engagement if you keep tell readers about things they already know. Share issues they don’t know, and which can have a positive impact on them.
Remember to use a call to action that most readers will want to take. Your story should carry a positive voice and be empathic. This triggers trusting feelings in your audience.
Use Your Book as a Marketing Tool
And finally, use your book itself as a marketing tool. Include a call to action at the end of yoru book that encourges readers to leave a review, share it on social media, or sign up to your newsletter.
Give them an incentive, such as your community map, or your character’s profile of their favorite character they can take home with them.
Be Consistent
While being consistent isn’t really a marketing strategy, it is a marketing strategy, or a way to make sure your strategy comes to be. By being consistent in your posting, in your blog articles, and in reaching out and connecting with your readers, in a manner that tells them you’re around for good, is just good business practice.
Some still need to see it to understand.
So here are seven storytelling examples you can implement in your marketing efforts. Let’s dive in!
Share the Story of Your Story!
As an author, you can use your own story to establish a connection with your readers. Share your journey of writing your book. Talk about the inspiration behind it, the struggles you faced as you tried writing everyday, and what kept you motivated and trying each day.
People love to know the story behind the story, and sharing your own story can make your readers feel connected to you on a personal level.
Your Character’s Profile
Create a character profile of your protagonist. Think of it as a dating profile for your book’s lead character.
Mention what they look like, what personality traits you gave them, and what makes this character unique.
By doing this, you’re giving your readers a reason to invest in your characters and become invested in you and your book.
Use Visuals
Use visual storytelling to promote your book. Create a book trailer or a short video that showcases the essence of your story.
Use visuals and sounds to set the mood and evoke emotions in your readers. Videos are a more engaging and attention-grabbing medium that can help your book stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Use Short Snippets
Use social media to tell your story in snippets. Share quotes from your book facts about your characters, character interviews, and behind-the-scenes glimpses of your writing process.
Use hashtags, create contests, and engage with your readers to increase your reach and impact.
Collaborate with Others
Collaborate with other authors and industry experts to create content that tells your collective stories. Host a podcast or video series, where you share your experiences, talk about your writing processes, and give tips to aspiring writers.
By collaborating, you can tap into each other’s networks and audiences, and grow your fan base together.
Offer Incentives for Readers to Take Home
Creating a sign up form (or maybe even mor than one), and offering something for your readers to take home with them, is a good business practice.
Offering content they want, is plain good sense!
Conclusion
Storytelling is a powerful tool that can help you sell more books and establish a connection with your readers. By implementing the techniques here, you can create a compelling narrative around your book and bring it to life.
Remember, marketing is not just about selling a product; it’s about creating a memorable experience for your readers. By using storytelling as a content marketing strategy, you can make your book stand out in a crowded market and ensure that it reaches your target readers. Happy writing!
What’s Next…
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Learn the best places to use storytelling techniques in your marketing.
