Here’s a little exercise I’d like you to do (it’ll only take a minute)…

Get out a piece of paper and, just off the top of your head, list the things you did last month to market your book.

It doesn’t have to be absolutely everything, just list the things you spent the most time on. Once you have it, just hold on to it and we’ll come back to it later on.

Today I want to talk about something called “Direct Response Marketing” and how it can help you sell yourself, your books, your service, your expertise, your knowledge…YOUR INFORMATION.

(Note: If you’re new here and haven’t yet read the “What is The Author’s Edge post, please stop, click here to read that first, and then come back for the fun.)

There’s one place in the world, in my opinion, that’s better than ANY other for getting in front of people most likely to be ready to buy your information. Any guesses?

It’s NOT a bookstore. It’s not Wal-Mart. It’s not Oprah’s audience. It’s not a book review in the New York Times.

It’s on an Internet search engine — Google, Bing, etc.

Let’s look at why…

First of all, if you’ve done your research you can find the exact people who are looking for the information you’re selling, at the exact moment they’re ready to buy it. We’re going to cover the steps to doing that research starting next week, but I wanted to show you WHY it’s important first.

Let’s take dog training as an example. If I get my dog training book reviewed in a newspaper or magazine, or even if I get on a radio or TV talk show to talk about it, chances are only a very small percentage of people who ever read, hear, or see that story are going to care.

But if my website, or my ad, shows up in front of people who are searching for something like “how to get my dog to stop barking” or “how to house train my dog,” then I’ve already won half the battle.

I know with near certainty that those people would be interested in my dog training product. And I also know with near certainty that they have a problem they’re looking to solve NOW.

And I know one other incredibly powerful thing — I know EXACTLY what their problem is. I mean EXACTLY, down to the most minute detail.

Now all I have to do is present them with a solution.

It’s a slam dunk that any marketer or salesman would drool over, and this is why The Author’s Edge is dedicated almost solely to teaching this approach.

The problem I have with spending time going after the other, non-direct-response channels mentioned above is that it’s just not time- or cost-effective. Don’t get me wrong, I know they have their place. They help you build credibility, and they help “get your name out there” (another vague benefit that may, or may not, help you sell your information).

But that’s BRANDING.

Now, branding isn’t bad per se. It’s only bad when it’s the ONLY form of marketing you do, or even when it’s simply the majority of marketing that you do.

Coke and Pepsi and Budweiser and McDonald’s spend billions running ads to keep their BRAND in front of consumers. They very rarely know if the ads work or not, because they have no way to directly measure their effectiveness.

On the flip side, if I run an ad on Google, and someone clicks on it and goes to my website, and they buy what I’m offering or they don’t, I have a laser-focused MEASURE of how effective that marketing effort was.

That’s direct response. I’m reaching you directly, and you’re going to respond by buying or not buying. It’s THAT simple.

Elsewhere here on the site I wrote a post about one of the true legends in the advertising business — a man by the name of David Ogilvy. (David’s book, Ogilvy on Advertising, is on my “List of Books Every Author Needs to Read.” You can find the post here if you’re interested in “extra credit.”)

Now, David Ogilvy was a man who made millions doing the very same kind of brand advertising we talked about above, so he did not at all come from a direct response background.

And yet, in his book he advises EVERYONE who wants to be successful in advertising to study one group of people — the direct response guys. Why? Because they’re the only ones who know what works, and what doesn’t.

Because they can measure. Because they can test.

There’s another old saying that “you can’t improve what you can’t measure.” And it’s so darn important to understand that — both as an author and as someone who, if you’re reading this, presumably wants to get better at marketing yourself and your information.

If you’re going to spend money or time on ANYTHING, you need to be able to measure the results from those efforts or you CAN”T IMPROVE them, so you don’t know if it’s worth doing them again, doing them even more, or scrapping it and trying something else — unless it happens by sheer blind luck. And luck is not a marketing plan.

So what I want to show you here on The Author’s Edge are things you can do NOW that, if done properly, can literally get instant results.

And by instant, I mean instant. I can put up a new ad on Google right now and have traffic coming to my site within a couple minutes. Within a few hours or a day, I can have the results I need to know if the approach was effective.

I can measure it, I can tweak it, or if it goes over really well, I can leave it alone (and then I can try and beat it by testing an another approach against it, and maybe stumble on something even BETTER).

This is why it’s so important that you look at your marketing as something that solves a problem. Heck, even a novel can solve a problem, even if it’s as mundane as offering your Harry Potteresque fantasy novel to someone who’s read through the whole Potter series and wants more books like them.

Ninety nine percent of the time, your information can solve SOMEONE’S problem. Now you just have to find out who that person is, and start thinking of good direct-response ways to approach them.

Now, go back and look at the list you came up with, and tick off how many of those things could be called BRANDING, and how many of those things could be called DIRECT RESPONSE?

How many times did your marketing efforts put someone to a decision?

How many times did you actually MAKE AN OFFER to someone, whether that’s to buy your book, hire you as a speaker, join your mailing list, or buy one of your other information products?

Unless you’re in the very small minority of authors, I’d bet close to 100% of the things you did fall under the branding umbrella, and that’s why I wanted to “prime the pump” by introducing you to the concept of direct response before we start talking about how it actually works, and how it can make you more successful.

That’s what we’re going to start covering next week.

I’d love to hear what you think. Am I nuts? Is this making sense? Should I shut up and let you market your information the way you want?

Let me know below.

Tagged as: author promotion, book marketing, direct response marketing, How to Market a Book