Building a Marketing Plan for Essential Chords Book

I looked up Marketing Plan on Wikipedia to see what officially makes one up. And they wrote this,

"Solid marketing strategy is the foundation of a well-written marketing plan. While a marketing plan contains a list of actions, a marketing plan without a sound strategic foundation is of little use." 

Not really sure just what that means, I think my strategy is to sell my book. I am not sure what I wrote in the Marketing Plan post yesterday is really a marketing plan but it will have to do. I have been online since 1996 doing all kinds of activities. I have tried all kinds of methods to get people to come to my websites and buy my stuff. Some works, most doesn't. I know that if you want the best chance of success you need to write good content, make it clear, and give readers clear paths to your products, and be in lots of places, do this and you at least have a chance of selling something if it is something that they want. So that is what I will be doing as I push my book out into the world.

Yesterday was crazy with getting everything set up and loading up images and such on a bunch of different sites. Today I loaded up Essential Chord promo images on my Google Picassa account. I also set up an excel spread sheet of all the tracking and visitor numbers so that I can watch what is going on. If you don't track it you have no clue.

I don't have a clear step 1, 2, 3 kind of thing, I know that I will jump around the Plan but having a written plan will differently help keep me on track and give me a list of tasks. Let me know how you market your books and music, it is a journey.

Ok off to do more stuff.

Essential Chords Book Marketing Status

Ok, big day today, the marketing has begun for our new Essential Chords Book, so far I wrote the marketing plan and task list, set up a Facebook Page at Acoustic Music TV on Facebook, shot some promo images and made a cover for the web, gone through and established the base line stats for what the book is doing today on all the places it is sold or mentioned, and built a book page here on this.

My hope is that by putting the marketing plan out on the web it will give me more incentive to do all the tasks that need to be done and help keep me organized. Lots more to do, but off to a great start.

Here is the link to our book on Amazon (affiliate link)

Marketing Plan for Essential Chords, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele & Banjo

We have started the marketing for our latest book, Essential Chords, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo, and thought it might make for an interesting study. I have been using the web and social media for quite a while now in all kinds of areas but this will be the first for promoting my own book.  Our book is up on Amazon.com and starting to sell, I have just built a Facebook page, we have a website, this blog and several other sites. So below are the notes from the Marketing plan. Going public like this help keep me on track and see what we can do.
 

Task List for the Marketing Plan for Essential Chords Book

Goal

To increase the sales of Essential Chords, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo Book on Amazon and other sites.
Goal to get the sales rank under 500,000 and ultimately under 100,000

Essential Chords  Current sales are about 1 book a week, with a sale rank of 1,175,775

Notebook Music Chords  Current sales are about 1 book every 2 to 3 weeks, with a sales rank of 871,112

Method/Plan

Build a wagon wheel of promotional sites, images and video that bring traffic into AcousticMusicTV.com and out to Amazon. Show the features and benefits of the book. Mostly updating and adjusting current set of sites for the new book and adding promotional material out on the web. Try to add in additional books into the stream.

Promotion will be for Essential Chords book, which is an updated and renaming of the previous book Notebook Music Chords, I won't be taking Notebook Music down but will watch it and see what happens to it.

Baselines for Measuring Progress

Establish the current base line visitors numbers for, you have to know where you start to see if anything works, here are the current stats as of March 19.
  Sales on Amazon of Essential Chords in March, 1 book a week,
   Sales rank on Amazon for Essential Chords March 19, #1,175,775

   Sales on Amazon of Notebook Music Chords in March, 1 book every 2 weeks or so
   Sales rank on Amazon for Notebook Music Chords, March 19, #871,112

   Sales on AcousticMusicTV for Cafepress music items, Jan-March, 3 items per/month, $6 average, watch for increase traffic to boost gift sales.

   Sales on Lulu for Notebook Music Chords in March, 3 units since mid February

   Sales of Guitar and Mandolin sheet music books on Lulu, 0 sales

   Scribd, 40 reads/month
  
Basic Google Analytics as of March 19
   AcousticMusicTV.com, 95 visits/day, visit 3 pages, bounce rate 52%, Top Keyword- Mandolin Chords, Google
   AcousticMusicTV blog, 43 visits/day, visit 1.73 pages, bounce rate 57%, Top Keyword-Banjo Chords, Google
   NotebookMusicChords Blog, 15 visits/day, visit 1.8 pages, bounce rate 59%, Top Keyword-2 finger mandolin chord, Google
  

Marketing Materials

Make a basic set of graphics for Essential Chords, cover, couple of interior, some instruments, etc
Shoot some basic book promo pictures
Pull together the basic book description
Create picture files of pages and book for Flickr, Picassa, Facebook, blog

Finish Essential Chords Major Chords sampler book for promo

Make up book graphics for the website

Edit customer quotes that have come in for Notebook for use as needed

Websites

Set up Facebook page for acousticmusictv, what name should the page be?
Update AcousticMusicTV.com with Essential Chords Book
Take down current AMTVWeb site and replace with new sampler, replace cover on email sign up boxes

Set up a book page on blog, AcousticMusicTV.blogspot,com and NotebookMusicChords.com
Set up Hub Page, Squidoo Pages

Email List

Fix the signup on web site and the 2 blogs
Take down current autoresponer series and update with new book and links
Develop some email blast to list

Video

Make promo videos for all three books, the chord book and the 2 blank sheet music books, put on YouTube, websites and blogs

Other Stuff

Reconfigure and upload Essential Chords to lulu.com, paper bound and spiral bound, connect to bookstore
Take down the Notebook Chord book on scribd, put up the Essential sampler book
Set up a free pdf version for anyone who buys a physical version of the book

Social Media

Post about the process
Post on Facebook different pages, videos, lessons,
Post on Twitter different stages of the process and other posts
Cross link everything

Track the Analytics, Amazon, Lulu and Facebook visitors and sales.

Reading a Guitar Chord Box

We have been busy creating several new books which you will hear about shortly. Including a redoing of our Essential Chord book and two new blank manuscript books, one for guitar the other for mandolin. I thought I would put up some of the graphics from the resource sections in those books. Below is one on how to read the guitar chord boxes that you see next to staff line.

Our latest book on Amazon, Essential Chords, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo