Lead generation is basically marketing speak for “how will you initiate interest in your product or service.”
It’s not something many writers are encouraged to think about — there is a mindset, more prevalent in other genres than here in the romance community — that once the book is done, it generates interest simply because it exists, and there’s a sense of frustration when the newly released book (or books) aren’t generating the kind of visibitiliy and sales they’d like.
Truth is, all writers need to generate leads. We call it different things — running a newsletter, building a platform on social media, blogging, generating adds on Facebook or Amazon, newsletters swaps, and putting calls to action in the back of a book — but they’re all predicated on the same idea: get someone interested in you and your writing so you can further that relationship and build a sale.
It may be horrible marketing speak, but I actually like the phrase lead generation because it keeps me focused on high level strategy rather than immediate tactics and tools, which have a tendency to be less effective as more people use them.
In just the last year we’ve seen Facebook adds and Newsletters become a tougher method to use effectively because of changes Apple’s made to the way it handles privacy, while the cost of Amazon ads has increased as more and more authors flock to them. Meanwhile, Booktok and Instagram have become the hot new means of reaching out to authors… but they will grow less effective as more authors flock to those methods.
One thing I will stress — less effective doesn’t mean ineffective. It just means they’re no longer going to have the outsized impact, and you’ll need to invest time and money in learning to use those tools effectively.
Making effective use of your backlist will often come down to three questions:
- What kind of leads are leading people into your backlist?
- How are you using your backlist to generate leads for your other books?
- What resources can you leverage to generate new leads?
