Marketing Is Your Best Friend

As I put together my business cards (custom-made from Shutterfly—I ought to make a note about having my cards glossy in the future, instead of matte), it reminded me of how I came to actually thinking about having business cards.

When you think about it, as a writer, I plan to make a living on my writing. And one of the ways of doing that is writing a book and selling it. So, I have my product—my book Dolphin Princess (with another book on the way).

Getting the Word Out

From what I've learned since I had successfully brought my books to life with Barnes and Noble Press, it's important to market your product. This means that just talking to people (ex. your friends and family) about your product isn't enough to get you sales. (Now, don't get me wrong—I don't merely write books for money—creativity always comes first, in my world.) You would have to go even further.

In January of 2019, I decided to take that big step in selling my book. I launched a blog based on my book series. One of the blogging platforms that I'm very familiar with is Blogger.com, which is part of Google. This means that the algorithmic data comes from Google Adsense (which tells you the costs-per-click in a day, month, and lifetime-span). What "costs-per-click," or CPC for short, means is that whenever someone clicks on an AD that's there on your website, you'll get paid for that click. However, in order to have ADs on your site, you'll have to meet certain requirements and, mostly important, your blog must be active. With that said, I was able to have ADs on my site a couple of months after launch.

With Blogger.com, you can see how many views and/or comments you're on each post you make on your blog. However, in order to get those views, you're going to have to come up with good content. A lot of marketing sites/blogging experts will tell you to have a catchy (or attention-grabbing) title. Well, there are pros and cons to that: the pros being that you're grab more and more people's attention that way. However, the downside is that if you choose to write down a misleading title (or click-bait), then that can scare your readers/viewers away, or at least annoy them to where they won't want to read/hear what you have to say. By the way, I've always hated click-baiting, because it sucks the fun out of creating a really good title for a blog post, or story, etc.

As I scratched at the surface of what marketing was supposed to be about, it got me more and more curious as to how I could get more people to see my product.

Once I had my website going via Blogger.com, I then decided to have a Facebook page for my book series. And as soon as I had a Facebook page going, there would be times when Facebook would ask me if whether or not I would like to "boost" a post. Now, to "boost" a post means to get more people to see your post. I was a little skeptical at first, because you have to pay to get more viewership, versus getting views solely on whoever you're lucky enough to attract on your own. I was thinking: doesn't that defeat the purpose of having a Facebook page for your product to begin with? That's the whole point, is to promote your product through social media! So, why spend money on getting people to see what you're selling?

Nonetheless, "boosting" your social media postings can get you more viewership.

So, how did I get to having business cards?

Well, this idea had stemmed from what my twin sister was doing with her jewelry consultant job. For her business, she has to sell and promote jewelry. (Yeah, she too has a business page on Facebook.)

One time, we were eating at a Golden Coral with our dad. When we were done eating, my sister had left a small goodie bag that contained a business card and a piece of jewelry (I forgot if it was a bracelet or necklace, or something like that). She said that that was also how she was promoting her jewelry gig. So, after thinking about it for two weeks, I decided to do the same thing with my book: have business cards.

Moral: Marketing is your best friend.

When you have a product to sell, the main goal is to make that sale. And in order to make that sale, you have to tell people about it. And with today's world relying heavily on the use of social media, it takes more than word-of-mouth to advertise your product.

To be perfectly honest, I've been a starving artist for a good while. However, marketing has introduced me to different avenues on how to escape that undesirable status of "starving artist." I may not be a marketing expert, but simply learning the basics of it is vital, because again (I can't stress this enough), advertising your product is important. If you're like me, you don't need to earn a marketing degree to know that promotion is important for your product/business. If you know the gist of how the algorithms work (creating eye-catching titles, slogans, etc., posting on a regular basis, etc.), then you'll get somewhere. And if you utilize social media to your advantage, then more people you see what you have to offer.

In short: Marketing can help you go places. If you keep at it, and keep up with it, it'll help your business/product thrive.