Who Should You Be Marketing Your Books To?

Your book marketing plan should include strategies for reaching several different target audiences:

• Readers -- people who buy the book to read. This is the most obvious category and it includes your primary audience (the "ideal customer" that the book was specifically written for) as well as secondary audiences who have an interest in your topic.

• Purchasers -- people who buy the book for someone else. For example, people buy books as gifts, parents purchase books for children, and women buy men's health books. Who would be likely to purchase your book for someone else, and how can you reach those folks?

• Influencers -- people who communicate with your target customers and can let them know about your book. In online book marketing, the influencers may be the most important category of all. Think about how much you can multiply your marketing efforts when other people spread the word to their own readers and customers.

Other authors, coaches, and bloggers who cater to your target customers can mention you, your website, and/or your book in several ways, including blog posts, links, Twittering, ezine articles, and media sharing tools like Digg. For more information on working with influencers, see my posts on developing relationships and online networking.

Traditional and online media are also important influencers. You can reach them through traditional publicity efforts as well as online press releases and article distribution.

How can you expand your marketing reach by promoting to all of your target audiences?