Susan Friedmann [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today, my special guest is serial entrepreneur and brand marketing expert, Blairee Brown. Blairee is obsessed with helping entrepreneurs make their businesses shine. Featured in Forbes, ESPN Radio, and Yahoo Finance, Blairee founded Visionary Advantages BrandLab to help brands elevate their presence online with her one stop shop team of experts. Prior to starting her boutique branding and marketing agency, her career focused on operating entrepreneurial ventures and managing marketing and PR across major contemporary fashion brands in New York City. Blairee, it's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.
Blaire Brown [00:01:08]:
Well, the pleasure is mine. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm really excited to talk to you.
Susan Friedmann [00:01:13]:
Blairee, I know you and I were talking before we went on the air, and we were talking about author branding and how important that is. Let's stop there, and tell us why it is so important for especially our listeners who are primarily nonfiction authors. Why is it so important for them to establish an author brand?
Blaire Brown [00:01:38]:
Sure. Well, I think whenever I've worked with authors before, a common thought is that, okay. I'm going to get this book out and into the public, and then it's just gonna fly off the shelves or off Amazon's digital shelf like hotcakes. And, well, the fact is that's not exactly what happens. In order for that to happen, you need to get your marketing going, tell people about you, your books, spread the word because it takes a little bit of work. You gotta get that going, build up the momentum and build that following right out the gate to establish yourself as an author and as a book brand. It's very important to put those initiatives into action in order to get that book sold.
Susan Friedmann [00:02:22]:
Where does one start? There's always a beginning because authors, for the most part, really often don't know where to start with this. The whole idea of marketing, selling their book, promoting, and then this idea of building a brand often is foreign territory to them. Where would they start?
Blaire Brown [00:02:45]:
That's a good question. I always look at being an author as being a business. We're trying to sell something. We're trying to get the word out there. The starting point, for sure, I think, would be to build out your brand, like, create a logo for yourself as an author, and then to establish yourself on social media, yourself as an author, and then to establish yourself on social media and have a website. We want to give people a central hub to find you. So if you're out in networking at an event or you see friends, how can they easily access you and see what you're about? And if you're planning on having more than one book, really fine tuning, like, who that audience is that you're talking to and how you can reach them. So I would start first with a logo, like an author logo.
Blaire Brown [00:03:27]:
We can even plan on having that on a book series if you're going to be expanding. Just an emblem that's recognizable and builds out that brand awareness. From there, then you can build social media posts on a platform. It's free to get that going. If you wanted to just log in to create an Instagram account or Facebook, you can easily upload your logo on there and start making social media posts. You can use a tool like canva.com to make graphics even if you're not necessarily a graphic designer because not all of us are. Right? Those are two simple ways, logo, social media. And then I would highly recommend having a website just so people can easily find you.
Blaire Brown [00:04:09]:
They can buy their book. You can link your book in all the different areas that it's available. Let's say it's available on Amazon or Target or Barnes and Noble, for example. You can have those links all on your website so people can choose where they purchase.
Susan Friedmann [00:04:25]:
What's going through my mind as you were saying that is the logo. You stressed having a logo. Talk to us more about that. Yes. It could be a symbol. It could be something that's recognizable. What are some of the things that we should think about with creating a logo or having somebody help us create that?
Blaire Brown [00:04:47]:
Sure. I honestly would do a little bit of research about your industry. So if you're writing a nonfiction book, what type of nonfiction is it? Is it about you and your life? Is it about history? Like, where does that land? And then I would try to take elements of your genre that you're writing for and see what is that audience gravitating towards. What are they connecting to? Once you figure that out, and then think about what do you like as an author. This is you. This is your brand, and this is something that you might be expanding on down the line. This might not just be one book. So in that case, think about the future industry, who you are, and then go from there.
Blaire Brown [00:05:26]:
Over time, you're gonna want if you're building out social media posts and a website, you'll also wanna take into consideration the colors that are going into this and so on. And all those building blocks should help you figure out what kind of logo you want and what direction.
Susan Friedmann [00:05:41]:
Colors. That's an interesting one. Let's delve a little deeper into colors, the importance of colors. Talk to us a little bit more about that.
Blaire Brown [00:05:51]:
If you are a talking about sustainability, for example, obvious color for that would be earth tones, greens, browns, things like that. If you're doing, like, a health and wellness path, like, maybe light pastels, you know, soft colors. There's a lot of psychology behind colors, and whenever you're developing it, you wanna think about that, the industry, and so on.
Susan Friedmann [00:06:16]:
Yeah. Colours are always one of those things that the things that you like, but that may not be appropriate. Right. Such thing as power colours. What are some power colours, for instance?
Blaire Brown [00:06:28]:
Yeah. I mean, power colors, like, it could be a psychological thing. Maybe you wanna use green for money or some bold colors like blue or the primary colors, you know, yellow, red. It really just depends on what direction your brand is going in. And again, I think every author should view themselves as a brand and a business because, frankly, we gotta make some book sales. Right?
Susan Friedmann [00:06:51]:
That's for sure. And then I remember writing about this in my Riches and Niches book, How to Make It Big in a Small Market. To create a name for your business that says what you do versus sometimes using your own name, I've got a name that's difficult to spell. Friedman, nobody can spell that correctly the first time around. And sometimes it's hard to pronounce because it's written the German way, and I get people who call me Freidman and, yes, all sorts of things. It's much easier to use Author Marketing Mentor versus relying on my name. What are your thoughts about that?
Blaire Brown [00:07:32]:
I agree. It's really just a preference thing. Right? Like, my brand originally was my name because that's how I was focusing on the consulting piece of my marketing brand. But now as we've evolved, we're now a visionary advantages brand lab. Because it's not just me now. I have a team of people that are helping me to execute these projects, right, and bring brands to life. I think it really just depends on exactly what you said. If they feel more comfortable using their name, if it's more memorable, easy to spell, or if they wanna lean on a business name for it.
Blaire Brown [00:08:06]:
Susan's children's books or something, you know, just for an example. The beauty of it is that since it's your brand, you can be creative and you can do anything that you want. But as long as you just are strategic about your intentions behind it and your think about your audience too, you should come meet in the middle, and you'll find the perfect name.
Susan Friedmann [00:08:26]:
Yes. And it's not the first time around because I tried to be very clever when I first started my business. I used Diadem Communications. Nobody knew what that meant. They thought I was a wireless company. And it took a few years, and then I decided to change my name when I was working in the trade show industry, and I became the trade show coach. And that was so much easier to remember, and it also said what I did at the time. Yeah.
Susan Friedmann [00:08:58]:
As you said, your preference. And I know many people use their own name. Again, it just depends. I know. Yeah. I don't think there's any hard and fast rule that
Blaire Brown [00:09:08]:
is I don't think so either. There's no right or wrong, but as long as you're not talking about, like, electrical engineering are us, and then you're writing books about botanicals. Like, make sure it makes sense for what you're doing.
Susan Friedmann [00:09:22]:
Absolutely. What advice would you have for first time authors, let's say, with limited resources for marketing their book? Where would you advise them to put their resources?
Blaire Brown [00:09:36]:
I think where I put my resources is honestly just create a simple brand presence. You don't have to spend 1,000,000 of dollars. Right? You're just starting out. Just focus on creating a simple presence, you know, whether it's putting together that logo and a color scheme, you can even go to this website called coolors.com, and it's free. It's really fun because all you have to do is hit the space bar on your laptop to flip through different color palettes. Doing something like that in your free time, like, finding some colors that you like and then creating social media posts to promote your book are some very simple solutions that you can do just to get it started. I mean, it's free to just set up a social media account. And then to just build up something that's consistent and resonates with your audience is going to pay off a lot in the long run because then whenever they're being interviewed on podcasts, right, or just talking to friends, they can easily direct people to that platform, and that could be a way that they share announcements to build up an audience.
Blaire Brown [00:10:44]:
So I think that that's where I would start because you gotta start talking about your book.
Susan Friedmann [00:10:50]:
Again, if you're going into speaking, training, or coaching, what would you recommend there? The branding approach for authors who wanted to, let's say, expand beyond the book. And the the book is a big fat business card that says, hey, you know, I'm an expert in this area, and I can speak or do training, coaching, consulting. What would the recommendation there be with regard to the branding?
Blaire Brown [00:11:19]:
I would establish yourself as a speaker and really just make that a priority. I think use the same method by getting a logo and a color scheme that is going to essentially become recognizable over time to your audience. Building up that consistency will just make the light bulb go off in your audience's brain whenever they see your content pop through on social media and so on. That's something really important, but get in front of people and start talking. There are many podcast resources where you can go and people are going to be looking for your expertise to talk on their show. Pitch yourself to those platforms of podcast shows, find your favorites, write to them, reach out. There's podmatch.com, or I think it's a dot com. A hot match is a great way to connect with different podcast hosts because the more you build up that reel essentially and examples of you speaking, the more likely you're gonna be invited again to different speaking engagements.
Blaire Brown [00:12:17]:
And so if you can build that out, that foundation of trust, and then you showcase it on a website when the time is right, it'll be much easier to get bigger productions.
Susan Friedmann [00:12:29]:
How about mistakes? There must be a ton of mistakes that people are making when it comes to branding. What are some of the most common ones that you would like to share with our listeners?
Blaire Brown [00:12:41]:
Easily, the most common mistake would be somebody wants their brand to be everything to everyone. And you being the niche queen over there, I'm sure you could agree that you gotta niche it down. Right? Like, people aren't gonna connect with every single piece of content that you're creating. So you wanna focus on the people that do connect because that's what's really going to move the dial, so to speak. So definitely focus on who your audience is. Don't try to be everything for everyone, and that's gonna make a bigger impact.
Susan Friedmann [00:13:15]:
Yeah. That's something that, unfortunately, is tough, you know, when people think, oh, that book is for everyone. And, yes, it might be. And listeners have heard me say this a 1000000 times. It's like, But you can't market to everyone. You've got to pick your path and go down that path. And you're right, yes. I call it niche marketing, niche marketing.
Susan Friedmann [00:13:38]:
Yeah. But it's finding that group of people who are most interested in what you have to say and what problem you can help them solve. What does your book do that helps them solve that challenge?
Blaire Brown [00:13:53]:
Yeah. And I think at first, it's painful as a business owner and author. Right? Like, you want everybody to see all of this awesome work that you've done. But at the end of the day, whenever you're talking to 10 different customer avatars, right, then that just is gonna be confusing to them. Like, what are they actually saying? What are they trying to accomplish? I don't understand it. And once you establish that confusion with somebody, it's gonna be an immediate no. They're not gonna wanna follow or they aren't gonna wanna explore more about the book that you've written. So just focusing on who it actually is geared for is gonna be more impactful.
Susan Friedmann [00:14:30]:
Now, as you're saying all this and you gave us a great mistake to avoid, how about a misconception, a common misconception about author branding that you'd like to debunk?
Blaire Brown [00:14:46]:
Okay. Well, I think one is everybody thinks that the second it goes they publish the book that they're just gonna become famous and it's just gonna fly off the shelves. Not really it. I mean, yeah, that'd be awesome, but you gotta put some work into marketing. I think people also think that if they start marketing on social media immediately, that they're gonna get this huge following because their post looks so great. And trust me, I'm a believer in social media. I've already brought it up several times on today, but you'd still have to engage with the audience. If they're commenting, you need to respond, and you need to be inviting people to follow your page.
Blaire Brown [00:15:26]:
And you just have to build up that consistency so that way people do see a cadence in what you're posting and get involved. So I think people need to know if you are going to be using social media as your main platform to market yourself to make sure that you're keeping it up and consistent and it's not just you post for a month, you leave it, and then that's gonna do the job for you. It's a ongoing effort.
Susan Friedmann [00:15:52]:
Yes. And you've mentioned the word consistency a few times and the power of being consistent. Whether it's getting responses or not, the fact is you're out there, you're in front of the public eye, and people have to be reminded constantly, you know, often you know, somebody says, oh, well, I tried that and it didn't work.
Blaire Brown [00:16:15]:
Right.
Susan Friedmann [00:16:16]:
And then they leave it. And it's like, no, keep trying. It may not work today, but it may work tomorrow or the day after, or even the week or month or year after.
Blaire Brown [00:16:28]:
Exactly. You just gotta be consistent. That's the name of the game.
Susan Friedmann [00:16:32]:
And stay top of mind for people. And again, I think that's where your branding comes into play. Help me with that, is that recognition that, hey, oh, yes, I recognize that brand.
Blaire Brown [00:16:47]:
Exactly. If you're seeing a Target ad on TV or something or McDonald's, you recognize the golden arches, you recognize the color and the type of imagery that they're using. With Target, you notice that red, and then they use that dog and there's other imagery involved in that too. But as soon as I said those two brands, you probably saw it visually in your head. They didn't get that overnight and, you know, neither will you. It's just you have to build it up. So whenever people are scrolling through social media or if you're doing an email campaign, right, they are recognizing the way you're talking, the colors that you're using, the logo that you put on each social post, all of those things, well, it's just going to just build up over time and it it will start to resonate, and people will start having that recognition as you're consistently posting or reaching out to them. Like you said, it it might not be immediate, but over time, it does count because it could happen.
Blaire Brown [00:17:48]:
Tomorrow could be the day that it lands in front of the right person in your audience and they happen to need you right then and there, or wanna use your book as a resource for maybe an event they're hosting, or maybe they're looking for a speaker in that area right now. And then, boom, you land in front of them. It's the right place, the right time.
Susan Friedmann [00:18:07]:
Yeah. It's that consistency, staying with that messaging, that same messaging. And then, as you rightly say, the colours, that those are the your colours that you are using consistently. How about if an author is wanting to promote themselves as an expert in an area and they're wanting to promote the book? Balancing those 2, what would your recommendation be with that scenario?
Blaire Brown [00:18:39]:
I would say just focus on the value you're bringing to the table. Like, how are you helping the audience right then and there? Why should they be listening to you? Make sure it's not a sales pitch. People will tune out immediately. Just focus on giving free advice. And then if they want to learn more, then they'll inquire and they'll want to buy your book. Giving away some tips here and there, I'm sure is not the entire book that you've written. So I hope not. Just focus on the value you bring to the table and making it exciting, something they wanna learn more about, and then the sales will follow because of that.
Blaire Brown [00:19:14]:
Just be sincere about it, authentic, and leave the sales pitch at the door. And then just at the end, you know, I would say you could mention, you know, hey, if you wanna learn more, check out my book. It's called a, b, and c, whatever it's called, you know, and then leave it at that. People like that.
Susan Friedmann [00:19:30]:
They do. And you said something interesting too, and that is be willing to give stuff away for free. And I've had pushback from authors who say, no, I I don't wanna give that away because if I give that away, they're not gonna buy the book. What are your thoughts on that?
Blaire Brown [00:19:49]:
I mean, don't give everything away. Right? But I would hope if you've written a book, there's a lot more to it. Right? That people would wanna inquire more. If you give a bird's eye view, however, of the concepts, you can ask some intriguing questions that might get people thinking a little bit deeper about what you have to say and the value you do bring to the table. I think the key is is that you want people thinking, wow, if they're giving me this much information now, I can't imagine how much information that's full of value is going to be in their book. That's what we wanna leave the takeaway. It's like, wow. I'm impressed.
Blaire Brown [00:20:26]:
Let's dive in for more.
Susan Friedmann [00:20:28]:
I think that That psychological approach. Yeah.
Blaire Brown [00:20:31]:
Yeah.
Susan Friedmann [00:20:32]:
It's always fascinating. I mean, marketing is a very inexact science, but yet the consistency needs to be there.
Blaire Brown [00:20:41]:
Yeah. I give free information all the time. And people are like, wait. But you're giving away. I'm like, no. But it's helpful. Right? And then if they need more help because I've got a team of experts, then that's when you dive in. But, otherwise, I think we should all, you know, help each other out as business owners and get them to that next step.
Susan Friedmann [00:21:02]:
How about a tactic that could be overlooked that authors could use to make a lasting impression? What's something that might be easy and yet we don't think of it?
Blaire Brown [00:21:16]:
Sure. I mean, I've mentioned websites a couple of times, and I think that part of that and effort that you could do if you have a website or you plan on having one at some point is thinking about SEO strategies. SEO stands for search engine optimization, and, essentially, what it does is your goal is to have your website become best friends with Google. A common misconception is that people think, okay. I have this website. Everybody's gonna go to my website, and, naturally, traffic is just going to flow there. But the truth is is you have to take a few extra steps to get your page ranked on page 1 of Google. And something that's a slow game, it's definitely not overnight.
Blaire Brown [00:22:01]:
But if you start slowly writing, you know, let's say a blog post a month, and if you're a writer, hopefully, that's not too hard. You can always repurpose your content, but do a little keyword research for SEO. There's tools out there that you can use to get the research. Look at the keywords, see, okay, what are people searching for that would make sense for me to pull up? Select those, like, strategic amount of keywords, and then just implement those in your blogging strategy. So if you have those in your blogs over time, Google will start to notice, hey. There's new content on this website all the time. People happen to be searching for this. I should send people there when they search for it.
Blaire Brown [00:22:43]:
That's essentially what it tells Google. As a writer, I think that's a just a long term strategy that I think would help you. It's just look into SEO keywords, how you can execute that through writing one blog post a month. You can even use those keywords in your social media captions to double down. And then, boom, over time, you'll start to see more traffic go to your website. So I think that's a easy thing you could start adding to your marketing plan.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:10]:
And I think that just knowing the keywords that people are searching And again, there are different, websites that allow you to find out what people are searching on. And as I mentioned to you before the show, is that, you know, people don't look up author marketing, but they do look up book marketing.
Blaire Brown [00:23:33]:
Right. It's so fun. That distinction. Change that. Yeah. But that's why it's so important to just look into it and not just don't write a blog post just to write one because that's not really gonna do a lot for you. The key is that you need to have a strategic SEO plan. Like, if you are consistently writing about one genre or theme that's related to your book and what you wanna speak about in front of audiences, that's gonna give you way bigger advantage than just writing a blog post to write one.
Blaire Brown [00:24:04]:
So put some thought into it.
Susan Friedmann [00:24:07]:
Very much so. This is a great segue for you to tell our listeners how they can find out more about you and the services that you offer.
Blaire Brown [00:24:18]:
Sure. I own Visionary Advantages Brand Lab, and just go to visionaryadvantages.com. You can message us on there. You could see all the different ways that we can help you do marketing and branding. We're essentially a one stop shop, and we do everything from logos, websites, SEO, and social media. And our goal is just to champion other entrepreneurs. We're a team of entrepreneurs over here, and we're excited to help bring brands to life. And so that's what we're here, cheering you guys on.
Susan Friedmann [00:24:48]:
And I believe you've got lots of free resources on your website, isn't it?
Blaire Brown [00:24:52]:
I do. I do. There's a whole page for entrepreneur resources, and you can go there and download them. And there's a podcast too with a a lot of free business advice from experts across every industry.
Susan Friedmann [00:25:06]:
Fabulous. And as you know, Blairee, our guests always leave our listeners with a golden nugget. What's your golden nugget?
Blaire Brown [00:25:16]:
Today, we kept bringing it up, and I was thinking, what's my golden nugget for the day? And I think today, the key is consistency. If you're just brand new at starting your marketing efforts, focus on getting that branding locked in, create that logo, that color palette that you love, and then pick a platform that you wanna start being consistent on. If you just get that started today, it's going to pay off a lot in the long run because then you'll be able to look back and see, okay. I started posting, and it's starting to reach people organically. And I think that's gonna be the name of the game for you and your business at this time. It's just think about the consistency of your branding and in the way that you're marketing. Hopefully, that helps.
Susan Friedmann [00:26:00]:
Oh, it certainly does. Consistency is so consistent to be consistent.
Blaire Brown [00:26:05]:
Yes. Exactly.
Susan Friedmann [00:26:08]:
Oh, wrap your head around that one. In the event, Blairee, this has been an absolute pleasure, and thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with our listeners.Ā
By the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return that you were hoping for. So go to Book Marketing Mentors
to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books.Ā
So until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.
