May 14, 2021-For the record, the American part in the title of this post is irrelevant, I simply thought I was being clever and these techniques can be used everywhere around the globe when it comes to reaching your audience. As we continue on with our theme this month of Children’s Book Writing, we need to touch on one of my FAVOURITE topics, which is marketing. I’ve said this a million times and I’ll say it again, it’s one thing to write a book, it’s quite another to sell it. Psychographics go hand in hand with demographics and narrowing down/niching our target markets.
Demographics are what people usually focus on when it comes to marketing efforts, but it’s not enough. To clarify, demographics include- age, gender, marital status, income, occupation, income level, and education. All of these things are must know for targeting your audience, but the psychographics are where it gets interesting!
Psychographics are buying habits, hobbies, spending habits, values, interests, activities, and opinions. Knowing these things about our readers helps us to identify their beliefs and emotions which is WHY PEOPLE BUY!
So, let’s say that you wrote a children’s picture book about Easter and it has religious elements within. Your target would not only be parents and grandparents but people who believe in religion, who go to places of worship each week, perhaps their children are enrolled in Sunday school or some kind of after-school care or camp and they read stories each night that focus on lessons and parables.
Demographics combined with psychographics allow us to better reach our targeted audience and when we target our audience as specifically as possible, a few things happen:
- Time. We don’t waste our time or other people’s. If we market to random people who don’t need our products it’s a huge waste of time and effort on everyone’s part.
- Money. We save money. Marketing with a shot-gun approach is the best way to waste your money! When we don’t target who we spend our money on at least 60% of those marketing dollars go to waste. Save your money and only spend it on your SPECIFIC audience.
- Frustration. When we market to our niche target, people are receptive to what we’re talking about. If we’re marketing to the wrong people, we get frustrated when there is no response.
This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using market segmentation to sell your children’s book, but you can find out more by checking out our course here that dives into marketing: Course: Get Your Book Noticed and Increase Your Sales – Pandamonium Publishing House