Rule 3: Marked men (or women)

A marketing manager in a company gets telephoned several times a day by people trying to sell them something. Why? Because in a company while Sales make money, Marketing spend it, and these callers have marketing products and services to sell, and their key buyer who holds the purse strings is the marketing manager. The first question any marketing manager worth his salt will ask is: Is it worth it? Except they won’t ask this, they’ll ask the following question which is tantamount to the same thing: Will it reach the audience I need? If the answer is no, then the marketing manager is going to put that telephone down straight away. There’s no point even considering it further. If the answer is yes, then it might be worth the marketing manager finding out more information to start evaluating the potential opportunity. Authors marketing their books need to know, for each book, what the audience is they want to reach. Without this, it’s impossible to form a judgement on the potential effectiveness of a marketing activity. After all, how can you aim at something, if you don’t know what it is? Define your audience, or audiences – your potential buyers and readers (who may not be the same people). Write them down in a list with your biggest or best-potential audience as number 1. If you want the greatest returns from your marketing activity, focus most effort on reaching your audiences in order of priority.