Infographic: Online Book Marketing vs Traditional Book Marketing

Having trouble deciding whether or not you should market your book online or through traditional methods? Luckily for you, we put together this reference guide which examines differences so you can make the best decision when it comes to marketing your book.

Digital and Traditional Book Marketing Work Together

Gone are the days when you could choose either online or traditional book marketing and expect success. With the exponential increase in the number of books published every year, competition is fierce. Your needs every advantage to become a success — and when it comes to marketing, you’ll need a combination approach that leverages to best of both worlds to help readers discover your book. The articles and interviews appearing in traditional media become outstanding content online. In turn, having a blog and social media coverage to help promote your appearances on radio and television are sure-fire ways to help them reach broader audiences.

Its’ also crucial to consider the unique aspects of your book — and your strengths as an author. Each of these feeds into the kind of publicity you can generate for yourself and your book. Readers today are bombarded with a never-ending list of choices, and there needs to be something one-of-a-kind about you to make sure you and your book stick in their minds. At the same time, novel approaches the publicity are garnering the most attention, and if there ever were rules for the process, they are more open to interpretation than ever. Wherever you choose to engage potential readers, you need to offer them compelling reasons to take in the conversation about your book.

Target Your Audience No Matter What the Approach

As more book marketing moves online, it’s crucial to bring over methods from traditional marketing that continue to have value. One of the most significant is keeping a focus on target audiences. It’s always more productive to reach people who have an interest in, or connections to, your book and its topic. When people in either of these groups discover your book, there is a much higher chance they will become interested and go on to become book buyers. From a sales standpoint, initiatives to reach and engage target audiences have a much higher return on investment. So this is an area where both online and traditional marketing has overlap and work the same.

One of the built-in advantages of digital marketing is easy sorting and segmentation. It’s naturally targeted to specific user groups, unlike the mass media of years ago. It means higher efficiency and the ability to do more with smaller budgets. At the same time, even smaller self-published authors can benefit from scaling up to campaigns focused on traditional media. Interviews and articles can reach larger groups and help new and potentially more substantial audiences discover their book. But even these media need to be approached based on the topic and interests of their audiences.  People today have high expectations, and they focus on the things they like.

What Strengths Do Traditional Media Bring to the Table?

Interviews on radio and TV, along with articles in newspapers and magazines, continue to have value. Although the internet has shrunk the size of their audiences, these media continue to have considerable influence and visibility. Because professional journalists exist at these media, their decision to cover you and your book confer an endorsement of sorts that you cannot generate on your own. Also, their articles often feature your web address or a link where interested readers can find out more about your book. Most traditional media operate websites that repurpose their content, so any article printed in a newspaper or magazine ends up also online.

Producers and hosts are hungry for content, and your book gives them a platform around which they can build an episode of their shows. Authors are among the most frequent guests on talk shows, and audiences arrive interested in your topic. Rather than needing to build an audience of followers on your own, you can count on these media to introduce you to thousands of potential readers for your book. If you have an excellent rapport with an interviewer or host, their enthusiasm will carry over to the audience and give you an added boost. It is a give-and-take process where you and your book provide show content, and they, in turn, provide you with visibility with their audience.

Contact Us for Professional Book Marketing and Publicity

Navigating the world of book marketing and publicity, whether it be online or working with traditional media, might feel overwhelming at first. But it’s important to stay focused and keep in mind the tremendous opportunities for those authors who do it well.  It’s also wise to consider retaining professional book marketing services like the ones we offer at Smith Publicity. We’re always available to answer questions and provide more information about how we can help you. We accept traditionally and self-published books. If you’d like to know more, don’t hesitate to reach out today.