Welcome to the Funnel

What is the author marketing funnel? The better question is what is THE MARKETING funnel in general?

This is where a lot of people go wrong. When you’re starting an author career, you are going into business for yourself. And businesses need systems in place to scale and become profitable. 

That’s why I’m here. To show you what the back end of a business looks like from the marketing perspective so you can self audit and diagnose your issues before they start to arise. 

So, today, we will start with the awareness stage of the marketing funnel. This is number one and your first step in getting book sales.

Write this down: Awareness is the first stage of the book marketing funnel, where the goal is to get your name, brand, and book in front of new potential readers.

The awareness stage in author marketing

Going from unknown author to people discovering you. This is where they learn your name, what you write, the genre you are right, and figure out if they’d like to learn more about your writing. This is a first date with a potential new reader to see if you two vibe with each other.

Your goal: build name recognition and plant seeds of curiosity.

Here is where you develop author promotion strategies to best meet your audience where they’re at. It’s also the best place to sit and learn how you want to use the book marketing funnel and build your brand. It’s a choose your own adventure game! Figure out what moves you want to make.

Where does book awareness happen?

Social media:

• TikTok
• Instagram Reels
• Facebook Groups
• Youtube Shorts

Podcasts and interviews:

• Bookish shows
• Writing podcasts
• Genre panels 

Events

• Local book fairs/events
• Panels
• Bookshop tours
• Summit style gatherings

Online Outlets

• Guest posting on blogs
• Being featured on websites
• Appearing in newsletters
• Being featured in a bookstores catalog

What to post to build awareness for your book

Your toolbox for awareness as an author online

Viral style content creation

• Trendy formats with strong hooks
• Example:
  • Books where the villain wins
  • The best book if you love enemies to lovers 
  • Message for the girls who love morally grey men
  • No one is talking about X in books
  • I don’t know who needs to hear this, but…
• Tips:
  • Find creators in your niche that make good content and study why their content does well. 
  • Use some trends to try to boost yourself
  • Start a series
    • “Epic reads you should add to your TBR”
    • “Underrated tropes and why I love them part 3”
  • If a video does well, STUDY it and repeat it.

Personal Storytelling

• Share your writing process
• Talk about your author origin story
• Share behind the scenes chaos
• Talk about your word building
• Talk about the development of lore or magic systems.

Collaborations and Influencer marketing

• Team up with an author on a post, talk about how you met
• Team up with an author on a giveaway
• Partner with a bookstagrammer on a curated post about your book
• Offer PR boxes to creators whose content you enjoy

Giveaways and Community

• Regularly schedule giveaways and ask for email participation
• Collect merch and genre appropriate prizes
• Ask for engagement

Pitch yourself out

• Browse content creators to pitch to for your book
• Pitch yourself to bookish podcasts for discoverability 
• Ask blog posters if you can write a guest post for them about your genre or writing tips
• Look for outlets that appeal to both writers and readers

Awareness Content Ideas

• If you like [X movie] you’ll love my book
• Imagine if [x] and [y] had a baby, and it’s my book
• Moodboards
• Playlists
• Behind-the-scenes of writing 
• Break down how the magic system works in your world
• Show a family tree or relationship dynamic
• Meet the characters
• A day in the life of a [genre] writer
• Write an about you post
• Talk about how your day job is either inspiring to your work or if your writing helps you escape your day job.
• What scenes have you deleted from your book? Why?
• Get on camera and be weird and yourself.
• Share snippets of scenes with social media audiences.
• Develop your elevator pitch and make videos about it.
• “When [x] happens, [character] must/say/does [y]”
• Talk about tropes
• Set the stage: “in a world where aliens invade a small town farm, one man must rise to the occasion and avoid falling for the alien commander in an enemies to lovers style tale of war, invasion, and the ultimate forbidden love”

Pro tip: use story telling such as the last bullet to really hook people into the second stage of the funnel.

How to measure awareness in your book marketing efforts

These are called KPIs (key performance indicators) of author visibility on social media

Track these month after month:

• Follower growth on your platforms
• Profile visits
• Reach and impressions
• Engagement (likes, shares, saves, comments)

TL;DR

Most authors spend all of their time on awareness, not realizing that they’ve started a business. They post, make reels, and flop around (maybe dancing) to get seen. And that’s fine. But you CANNOT stop there. You must graduate beyond that, or your audience won’t either.

Posting something and calling that marketing is how you stay stuck (and then complain about it)

Awareness is step one of five in the author marketing funnel. 

If you want real sales, raving fans, and a legit career, you need to build your systems to scale. Don’t rely on going viral. 

If you want some posting ideas, take the ones here and make them your own.

Make some connections.

Track what works and double down so you can move to phase two.

And I’ll see you in part two, interest.

(The real conversion magic when you got their attention.)