Branding is often one of the most confusing topics under the umbrella of marketing. In this episode, we return to look at the second step of creating a breakthrough author brand.

 

Other Episodes in this Series:

* Step 1 – Look in the Mirror (Who am I)

* Step 2 – Look at Your Readers (Who are my readers?)

* Step 3 – Look Through Your Readers (What do my readers say about me?)

* Step 4 – Look in Your Reader’s Mirror (What does my brand allows readers to say about themselves?)

 

 

Transcript

 James Rubart: This is episode 2 in our 3-part series on author branding, how to create a breakthrough author brand. So if you haven’t yet listened to episode 1, you might want to go back and check that one out before you dive into this one.

 

Thomas Umstattd: In the last episode, we talked about what a brand is, what a brand isn’t, and where to get started. If we are to sum it up in one or two sentences, it would probably be to look in the mirror, figure out who you are and to be true to who you are. And that is the most important step, but it’s also often the only step a lot of authors take. And this episode and the next one, we’re going to be talking about the more advanced steps, the things that set you out and set you apart from the crowd.

 

So step 1 is to look in the mirror.

 

Step 2 is to look at your readers and figure out who it is that you’re trying to reach. This is a very critical step in the branding process.

 

James: As some of you know, that came out – I started an ad agency in ’94. But before that, I sold radio advertising, and that’s where I first understood the idea of demographics. And demographics very simply are who are you trying to target using an age range?

 

So one of the last radio stations I sold airtime for was KLSY Radio, and we were trying to get to women between the ages of 25 and 54 years of age. So that was our demo. Not men. We didn’t care about men. And we didn’t care about women under 25. We didn’t care about women over 54.

 

But what we did is we – 25 to 54, that’s a pretty broad range. And so, we had to determine, all right, in that range, who do we care about? Well, it turns out who we cared about was that 36-year-old woman because she was right in the heart of it. She had the income that we wanted to get to for our advertisers.

 

And so what we did is we designed a person. We gave her a name. We gave her a type of car. We could tell you where she lived. We knew what kind of restaurants she wanted to go to. So we drilled down and created this demographic, this specific person. And everything we said on air, everything we promoted, the music we played was all designed for her.

 

Thomas: And we forced our clients to go through an exercise where we put together demos or as it’s called then web design web marketing ad persona for their readers. And almost universally, authors hate this exercise. They hate it so much. And sometimes we’ve thought about not requiring it of our clients. But it does make their websites better, and it makes all of the marketing better because it forces our clients to focus.

 

And one of the challenges that a lot of authors feel with defining the readers is that they feel like it’s a limiting thing. It’s like, “Well, I’m only targeting women. What about all of those men?” And that is just very faulty logic.

 

First off, no book appeals to everyone. In fact, the books that have the broadest appeal are often the ones that have the narrowest focus.

What are some of the best-selling books of the last decade?