FINALLY! A MARKETING SYSTEM DESIGNED
FOR THE PUBLISHING MARKET.
AND IT WORKS.
What will it take to get to the next level in your author career?
In today's world, becoming a successful author requires more than just talent and ability.
While some believe that all you need to do is spend money on ads to gain visibility, the reality is that success in the industry requires much more than that.
Where is it possible to get help?
There are dozens of courses that teach the basics of self-publishing.
We took these courses and they helped us realize that becoming a full-time author was not only possible, it could lead to the life we'd dreamed about.
After seeing a margin of success, we hunted for more courses to help further us along our paths. The problem we found with many courses was how they simply taught the "spend more money on ads" method, though they may offer different approaches to that.
But, wait...those work, though, don't they?
Sometimes, yes, at least for the short-term. That's why you're here, right?
You've taken yet another ads course that started out promising, but has since put you right back where you were when you started, if not worse. You spent a lot of money, made some back, and are now seeking the next thing to help you find another sales bump.
In other words, you find yourself in the same position yet again, standing before the gap from here to there.
You know enough that the beginner courses won't help because you're beyond that, and the flavor-of-the-month courses that promise big gains in little time have proven time and again not to be the antidote.
Is there a realistic way to get from here to there?
If you feel stuck in what we identify as here and you desire to get to our future state of there, then you're in the right place.
Beginning State
(Here)
Frazzled and frustrated.
- Has published
- Has run ads
- Has had some success publishing more than one book
- May have jumped from genre to genre
- Doesn't understand the target audience for the product
- Can't articulate a brand promise
- Not business (profit) focused
- AD HOC strategy to marketing and ads
- Suffers from Imposter Syndrome.
- Doesn't understand why they're failing...or worse, why they're successful.
- Has no idea how to manage service changes (FB, AMS, KDP, etc.).
Future State
(There)
A silent giant on the rise.
- Understands their mindset and how to have integrity between themselves, the brand, and the business.
- Understands how the publishing market works and the ideas of cumulative advantage.
- Has defined their lane.
- Can articulate a brand promise that resonates with a minimum viable audience.
- Adopts systems thinking.
- Runs their business competently.
- Knows how to weather the storms of change.
- No longer suffers with Imposter Syndrome because their goals are internally aligned.
- Strategically minded towards changes in the industry and business adjustments.
The same may be true of your marketing system.
If you don't have an automated process then prospects never nurture into customers and customers slip between your fingers.
Are you saying there's a realistic path to that future state?
Yes!
We have been working tirelessly to build a system—not just a course—that can help you achieve the results you're seeking.
So, what is the path for those seeking to become silent giants?
Here's the secret...
You don't sell books. Readers buy books.
Just as you are deciding if our offer is what you need to help you get where you want to be as an author, a potential reader goes through a similar evaluation of the books you offer.
They must determine if your book is worth their valuable reading time.
If the process is too hard, they will go back to a familiar author.
Once you understand how to help a potential reader come to believe your book is worth the risk, your book will do the selling, and oh boy, is it crafty at selling itself.
You see, it’s the reading experience where the reader determines the quality of your book. That all happens in their head, not on Facebook or Amazon.
The prevailing wisdom and tactics used today are detrimental to long-term success.
Authors seek to scale.
Looking at doing this with ads alone is not the answer. Unfortunately, there are many courses that focus solely on advertising as the medium for growing your business. Ads are absolutely important, and they are great at getting people through the door of your author business, but there soon becomes a problem of scaling.
The facts prove that as big as audiences are on various ad platforms (if the numbers they report are true), they will eventually saturate.
Having put multiple books into the top ten of the entire Kindle store over the years, we know the ad budget required to move between the top five slots would be astronomical.
And get this: we've gotten books into the top five of the entire Kindle store without spending a penny on advertising for that book, multiple times, in different genres.
How is that possible?
Through building a system that creates audience reach.
What we can scale is the author's audience.
Our method is building a system that slowly and deliberately increases your audience reach. In other words, it's not about Facebook's audience or Amazon's audience, it's about your audience.
We scale your audience, not just your ad spend.
Again, this isn't to say you can't scale your ad spend effectively. You certainly can, and we will show you exactly how to do that, but if that's the only tactic you're attempting to employ, you're going to continue getting the same results.
The days of throwing more money at the problem have to end, if you're going to build a sustainable system that doesn't seek to consistently burn you out as it also tears through your budget.
We need a new mindset, one that is focused heavily on retaining the customers who give your books a chance. Doing that will allow you to send qualified traffic to your Amazon sales pages, driving up your conversion rates instead of focusing solely on unqualified traffic that most often serves to drive those rates down.
If you were running an ice cream shop, you wouldn't merely try to bring in as many people as possible. You would attract people who love ice cream. That's obvious, but the next step is something ice cream shop owners do that authors seem to miss. The ice cream shop owner works to keep those customers coming back every week. She has to get them in the door, of course, but if they only show up once and never come back--because she has no solid retention system--her business isn't going to last long.
Our monthly ad spend tells us quite clearly that the cost of gaining a new customer can be substantial.
We should do everything we can to retain them.
We offer a different way.
The inception of Indie Marketing Mastery was at NINC in 2022. It was there that John Logsdon and Joe Solari discussed the idea of a marketing course for authors who already had some success, but were struggling to level up.
John suggested bringing in Bonnie Paulson to join the project as he had worked with her for years and knew she was the source that many advertising gurus in the industry learned the strategies and tactics they sell in their courses today.
Thus, the team of Bonnie, John, and Joe was born.
The team agreed there were some great beginner courses available out there, but we could find no solution that offered a comprehensive system to get authors from scraping by to finding a level of success that fit their needs.
The plan was simple:
- Utilize Joe's Cumulative Advantage research and proven application practices to teach authors how to build powerhouse readerships that can show genuine growth and business health.
- Utilize Bonnie's Advertising and Marketing Strategies to target the right readers, improve conversions, and help authors understand how analytics, ad craft, and monitoring processes can build a scaling system that actually works.
- Utilize John's Mental Game strategies to help the author make sure the goals they're working toward are the correct goals for them, and then aid them in keeping their heads in the game in order to achieve their best success.
- Utilize the Author Helper Suite to connect Joe's Cumulative Advantage system and Bonnies Advertising and Marketing Strategies, while also providing a number of additional tools to help the author track sales, spend, sell-thru/read-thru, link flows, and new reports you only get as a member of Indie Marketing Mastery.
But I need a constant flow of new readers, right?
You'll always want to attract new readers, certainly, but only if you have a system in place that nurtures and maintains them. Without that, the ability to scale is diminished, and your marketing and ad spend is anything but maximized.
But what about the new ads method I just heard about? Shouldn't I jump on each of those straightaway?
The question to ask yourself is how many of those methods have sustained their reliability in the past?
You see, when a fresh method comes out, the crowd rushes to this new hotness and everyone's results begin to suffer.
That's what happens with saturation.
The "Easy button" only gets you a quick hit before it drops off the cliff again, and often times it doesn't even bring in the right readers. Your hopes rise, your excitement thrives, and a couple of months later you find yourself right back where you started.
We know. We've been there. It's a frustrating cycle.
What we do.
The IMM solution is based on the idea that you need a system that constantly seeks to nurture and retain your ideal readers. This ensures the readers you are able to attract from your marketing and advertising efforts stick around.
Those are the readers who will help your business thrive.
And you know this to be true, because you have a certain set of readers who purchase each and every book you sell. These are the people who are your ideal readers. Maybe you've been fortunate to attract them and keep them around by simple osmosis or maybe you were able to speak with them in some way that nurtured them naturally.
Now, imagine that you had five hundred more just like them. What about one thousand? Two thousand?
Okay, so take that number and release your next book.
What do you think your conversion rate is going to be on Amazon over that first week of launch at that point? And when Amazon sees how high your conversion rate is, and how high up in the store your book has gotten, guess what happens next...
Amazon markets for you!
We're pretty sure everyone can agree that Amazon is going to be far better than any of us at marketing our products to the people they believe will pull out their credit cards and get reading.
What is the next step?
First off, you should decide if you're an author who will get the most out of Indie Marketing Mastery.
Ideal candidates fit the following criteria:
- Authors who have demonstrated their talent and ability by writing several books with increasing sales and reasonable reviews.
- Authors who are comfortable using advertising platforms.
- Authors who are continuing to produce high-quality books.
- Authors who have had enough with the frustration of jumping from one advertising fad to the next, only to find themselves back to where they started from...or worse.
- Authors who are looking for lasting change that fits their goals as they continue to build momentum in their career.
Does this sound like you?
If so, enter your name and email below and we'll send you further details about Indie Marketing Mastery.