By African American Books Writer Denise Turney

Book marketing analytics are a writer’s best friend. Why? Book marketing can be a challenge for authors. This is due, in part, to the fact that authors, particularly novelists, rely on imagination and creativity, not hard facts, to develop their works. While writing, creativity, imagination and relying on the muse are blessings. They aren’t necessarily blessings during the book marketing process.

Book Marketing Options

In fact, novelists can sink into magical thinking after their books are published. Fortunately, there are doors that lead from fiction writing to book marketing to book sales. The first door sees fiction writers handing the job of marketing books to publicists, marketing specialists and content marketing writers. But those options cost money.

As a fiction writer, you could go through the second door and use marketing analytics to steer your book marketing efforts. Time may be your greatest investment. It takes time, consistent time, to market books. For example, if you use Barnes and Noble, social media, Kobo, Google or Amazon sponsored ads to market your books, download marketing analytics twice a month. But don’t just download the reports.

Content Marketing Analytics

Review the reports. Pay attention to which keywords are getting clicks that turn into book sales. Lower bids on keywords that receive clicks but, no sales. Also, attend free social media and book retailer ad webinars. Keep learning. Book marketing tools and platforms change. Attending webinars can keep you abreast of these changes.

If you use eBook marketing tools like social media automated marketing platforms (e.g. HootSuite, Buffer, Marketo, InfusionSoft), review marketing analytics associated with those platforms. And make changes based on what the analytics show. Do the same with content marketing analytics.

Also, set up a Google Search Console account. Bing is another search engine it’s good to have a search console account with. Submit your author website sitemaps and ensure they are indexed by major search engines. You can check this through your search console accounts.

Content Management Systems

Additionally, you may want to work with content management systems (CMS) that have robust content marketing analytics. SEO keyword analytics, meta tag description analytics, paragraph length, image alt text, excerpt features and keyword headings are a few features to look for in content marketing analytics.

Another thing, when doing content marketing, perform keyword planning before you start writing landing pages and blog articles. Make sure your writing flows, is conversational and reads naturally. Also, focus on providing tips, insight, guidance and entertainment more than focusing on adding SEO keywords to blog articles.

About Digital Marketing Analytics

Digital marketing analytics can keep you from slipping into magical thinking as a novelist. This is an advantage. Why? Magical thinking could find you believing that your novels are going to sell loads of copies simply because you wrote the books.

If you don’t think you’re doing this, ask yourself why you’re not marketing books that you write. And, if you are marketing your books but not receiving lots of book sales, ask yourself why you aren’t doing what it takes to increase your book sales — even while you keep expecting your book sales to suddenly (somehow) pick up.

Marketing analytics can help you to steer clear of magical thinking. The length and depth of this advantage may be unknown. In fact, this advantage, can save you thousands of dollars. Also, it can save you countless hours, frustration and heartache. Really. It can.

But you can’t just have digital marketing analytics. You have to review the analytics. See what you need to change and make adjustments. This is an ongoing process. As you start to understand what works for you and take the right book marketing actions, you should see your book sales increase.