Finding your audience

In the previous blog we discussed how to attract subscribers to our mailing list by using incentives such as reader magnets. If you missed it you can find a copy here: https://www.publicious.com.au/blog.html

Before we discuss how to find subscribers, let’s have a look at who these people who are willing to join your mailing list are. Although there will be a minority of those signing up who are doing it just for the freebies, the majority of your subscribers are there because they are interested in you, your writing, and what you have to share. These people are called your audience. Ideally, once they have read a couple of your books, they’ll become superfans but we’ll discuss this in a later edition.

Regardless of what genre you write, you have an audience out there. In some cases, millions or even billions. Romance, thrillers, detective, and murder-mystery are the biggies and although these genres are extremely competitive this is actually a good thing because many of the readers you want to attract are vivacious, binge readers. They’ll read a book in a weekend or a day, then want more. The important thing to make sure is that you have all your ducks in a row before you begin marketing; make sure you have content to share and at least one finished book (preferably more).

So, your audience is there, how do you find them? Many successful six-figure Indie authors agree that Facebook paid advertising is a great way of attracting subscribers to their lists. Using a simple ad, an author can easily target their audience by choosing the categories under which their potential readers fall. For example, I write murder-mystery, so the obvious categories would be murder-mystery, detective stories, thrillers, adventure, crime, etc. For these categories alone there is the potential for your ad to be viewed by literally millions of Facebook users, but only those who are interested in the categories you chose. This means you won’t be wasting your time and money by creating a nice eye-catching ad then just posting it to your Facebook page where it will be viewed by a handful of people who have no interest in murder-mystery. We’ve all done it, right?

By using categories you can instantly find and reach your target audience. Make sure your ad is simple and to the point. Let them know about your reader magnets and include links where they can sign up and access them. Yes, there is a cost involved but it will be well worth it once your list begins to grow.

As well as categories, you can also piggyback well-known authors who write in the same genre and tap into their audience – cheeky, eh? But completely legitimate! For instance, if I were to enter authors similar to my genre such as: James Paterson, Lee Childs, and Jane Harper, etc. I could choose to have my ad viewed by the same audience who views these authors. So, as you can imagine, my advertising dollar is allowing me to get right to my potential audience rather than it being wasted on Facebook users who are interested in pig farming or learning Spanish in a day.

Obviously, Facebook is just one of the many social media platforms available to us. In future editions we’ll look at Amazon advertising, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, among others.

In our next blog, we’ll discuss the importance of welcoming new subscribers to your list and engaging with your audience.

Until then, keep an eye out for our next newsletter, and have a great month.

Write on …

Andy