Knowing your audience is an idea you’re probably familiar with as it’s frequently mentioned in every writing community and on every writing-related website. It is a foundational concept, for sure, but when it comes to marketing your book, it’s only the very first step. You’ve got to not only recognize your target audience, but also segment that audience to get the most bang for your marketing buck. Read on to discover why the importance of audience segmentation for self-published authors cannot be overstated.
Audience segmentation is a method of identifying different subgroups within your target audience in order to create marketing content that particularly suits that group. Divisions are made according to interests, age, gender, location, economic situation, purchase behavior, participation in online communities and more. Knowing these traits about your audience allows you to build a more personal connection with them, and helps you to better understand what type of marketing will be the most impactful for them.
For example, if you’ve written a historical fiction novel set during the Vietnam War it may be a family saga, and it may feature a love story as well as the obvious war aspect.
- Your broad audience would be fans of historical fiction, but you can break that down into segments:
- people who like war stories
- people who like family dramas
- people who like romances
- and people who want to connect with their past
- For each segment of your broad audience, you’d play up a different aspect of your book in your marketing:
- blog posts
- email newsletters
- social media posts
- reels and videos
- and ads, so you can connect with them on a more personal level.
If you segment your audience you can avoid the hazard of trying to appeal to everyone by creating bland content, which ends up attracting no one.
With marketing that speaks more personally to your audience(s), you’ll be able to develop relationships with readers who are more likely to read your next book, and your next. Here are some further benefits of audience segmentation:
- More Effective Targeting: Your marketing content is more likely to be noticed—and clicked on—if it matches the interests and preferences of the people seeing it.
- Boost Efficiency and ROI: You’re probably getting a fair amount of eyes on your posts and videos of those who will never read your book, because it’s "just not their thing". Knowing exactly who will respond to certain types of marketing messages means your efforts aren’t wasted, and you’ll get a higher return on your investment of time and effort.
- Enhanced Engagement: Content that connects directly to your audience invites engagement such as likes, shares, and comments that spread the word of your book much further than you could do on your own.
- Competitive Advantage: Your marketing will truly stand out when compared to all the others who are following cookie cutter marketing strategies.
