Marketing your book online

The Internet and is neatly arranged into 80,000 special interest groups, and is lends itself to specialized book marketing. The web offers a unique opportunity to book marketers of the 90's in its ability to reach focused niche audiences. Marketing is about more than just creating a web site for a specific book, it is about offering useful information and useful tools to book-interested browsers. Online marketing is about building relationships, linking to other web sites, getting a good search engine ranking, posting in appropriate newsgroups and mailing lists, hosting author forums and a whole lot more.

Resources for finding your audience:

The following outbound marketing acitvities (proactive) make up a successful campaign.

AFFINITY LINKING:
Creating a campaign of contacting sites in aligned fields with the offer of creating reciprocal linking relationships. A page on your site called "favorite links" is easily updated and will facilitate your site being seen
and accessed by visitors to other sites. This win/win strategy is most effective.

TARGETED E-MAIL CAMPAIGNS:
This is a campaign of sending individually personalized e-mail to all members of your targeted audience. The
initial correspondence must be well written, to the point and include an invitation to visit your www site. The
offer of a free newsletter, contest or useful information are things which will attract visitors.

NEWSGROUP POSTINGS:
There are many search engines which point to newsgroups where topics related to your site are discussed.
Careful monitoring of these newsgroups, with the thought of "how can I add value" can create a posting
program which can bring many new visitors to your site. A simple signature file with your URL will point the
way.

DISCUSSION GROUP PARTICIPATION:
For this technique to be successful, the list members must be part of your target market. You must add value tothe list through direct participation with the group. This approach will keep your name/company name in front of your target market on a regular basis. This can be a powerful tool in creating contacts and bringing new visitors your site.

AUTORESPONDERS:
An auto-responder is an automated computer generated response to a request for information via e-mail. This response may consist of a sales letter, price list, or any information that would be useful to a potential customer. This service can be a very powerful tool if you intend to market a product or service on the internet. They are also known as "mailbots"or "infobots".

Here’s how an autoresponder works. Upon reading your online marketing material, an interested party
decides to reply by email and get "more information". As soon as any message is received by the autoresponder, it automatically sends out your "more information".

ADVERTISING BANNERS:
Banners advertisements are an excellent and cost effective way of getting visitors to your site. The selection ofsites on which to place your banner and negotiating for a fair price is essential. Today there are many sites who offer inexpensive rates either on a per view or "click through" basis. Sites looking for a niche audience should always investigate advertising rates at aligned sites with in their industry.

PRESS RELEASES:
A press release is a brief document generally 1-3 double spaced type written pages, which announces news
about your company, product or service to media professionals. The key to obtaining media coverage is to
properly format and organize the information contained in your release and come up with a good "angle" or
"spin" that you put on your news to make it exciting.

MODERATED DISCUSSION GROUP SPONSORSHIP:
There are over 80,000 email groups covering the gamut of issues open for discussion. You can find a directory
listing and search capabilities at E-mail Discussion Groups. There are two kinds of these groups; moderated
and unmoderated. Moderated groups are directed by the moderator and usually follow an orderly path..
Unmoderated groups send you each piece of mail that any group member sends and can be quite "noisy"

Sponsorship of a moderated discussion group of the audience you wish to reach can be a powerful and
effective way of gaining new contacts and getting the word out about your site.

YOUR SIGNATURE FILE:
Your "sig file" is a short "footer" (usually 2-5 lines) that you configure yourself. This is an excellent way for
potential customers to learn about your products and services. Since it shows up on the end of every message
you send, the signature can constantly advertise what you have to offer.

The typical signature file can consists of your company name, a brief description of your products or servicesand webaddress, email address, phone and fax number. This is a creative exercise, use your imagination.