Should Awareness Be the End Goal of Your Promotion Plan?

So, you’ve written a novel, gone through the editing process, purchased cover art, and now you’re ready to publish. Congratulations! Now, comes the hard part: promoting your work.

That’s when you find yourself on Google, looking up the newest tips and tricks. You’ll invariably run into a landslide of articles about the importance of brand awareness and how this one simple marketing trick can put you on the oft-cited path to success. But is this really all you need to do? Put yourself out there and wait for the sales to come rolling in? Not exactly, and the infamous breast cancer meme serves as a cautionary tale about why that’s the case.

If you’ll step aboard my time machine, we’ll go back to the year 2010, when a group of people thought it would be a great idea to generate buzz for breast cancer by having women share cryptic messages on Facebook about their bra colors. Millions of women the world over were in on this stunt. It was confusing for anyone not in the loop, requiring people to ask questions and learn that it was a breast cancer awareness activity. Cue the sensible chuckles.

It seemed to work well and create tons of awareness about breast cancer as a condition, but according to this article, that’s where the good times stopped. The campaign failed to teach anyone anything about breast cancer or to garner donations to any of the major breast cancer foundations. In short, it failed to get people to act based on awareness alone.

Although this is an example of a social campaign, it’s clear that it takes more than awareness to make someone act. Without clear guidance, people often don’t know how to contribute in a meaningful way. This is why many bloggers include calls to action at the bottom of blog posts. 

Even better than a strong call to action, however, is creating a real-life experience. In the book Strategic Social Media: From Marketing to Social Change (not an affiliate link), the authors speak of the importance of real-world experiences in shaping behavior. If you make someone aware of something — for instance, your newly-published book — they’ll take notice and quickly forget about it. However, if you place the book in their hands, they’re more likely to purchase it simply because they’ve interacted with it. This is why book and comic conventions are so important to the publishing industry; it’s a chance for authors to place books into the hands of readers.

With the pandemic still in full swing, many conventions have been canceled or greatly limited. This is where building a strong community on social media can help authors bridge the awareness gap. Rather than just buying ads or posting about new releases, authors can take advantage of live streams, groups, and other interactive social media options. If the local library has canceled author readings, do it over Facebook Live. 

We may have limitations, but we also have tools. We just need to use them wisely. If you want to get your books into the hands of more readers, you’ll have to find ways to engage with them that create a real-world experience in a digital world.