As a new author, marketing your book in today’s competitive media landscape can occasionally feel like trying to sell broccoli at a food festival. While broccoli is healthy for you, you’re up against dealers hawking their loud, fierce flavors. You might think that it’s difficult to get the public’s attention. Fortunately, there are many book lovers out there. As an author, the obstacle for you is to cut through the digital noise and find your book lovers.
Book trailers can make a lasting impression!
A book trailer is a quick video teaser for your upcoming book. The trailer can be focused on live-action, illustration, scrolling text on a compelling background, or pretty much anything to grab the imagination of your relevant audience.
Book trailers have blasted in popularity in recent times, reflecting the growth of online videos in general. Video is now necessary for any thriving online marketing campaign, especially for writers. An influential well-edited book trailer by Book Writing Experts showcases whether the book is a romcom, a memoir, or a parenthood book to cause excitement and curiosity in your potential reader.
How To Use A Book Trailer To Advertise Your Book
A trailer shows a greater sensory background than a standard print ad. Since book trailers are still rather new and not every book has a trailer, your book has the opportunity to make a much stronger impression on a possible reader.
So how do you guarantee your trailer is viewed by as many potential readers and buyers as possible? Here are a few techniques we suggest for marketing a book trailer in all genres
- Upload your book trailer On YouTube
Before you experiment with anything with your books-new video file, you want to post it on YouTube. Not only will this provide you more freedom to share the video link elsewhere, but YouTube is favorably monetized and searchable. Most readers looking for book trailers will search on Google or YouTube first. It’s an obvious first step.
Be sure to use high-density keywords and phrases in your trailer description so your video will come up and rank in search results related to those terms. Also, link to your website or chosen book retailer in the description so potential viewers can buy the book.
- Promote the Book Trailer On Different Social Media Accounts
One thing to consider is that every social media venue has distinct video specifications. A 5 minutes trailer that works great on YouTube might be too long for an Instagram audience, while a short video trailer that works great as in an Instagram feed post might not be sufficient enough to drive interest in your Twitter audience.
It’s always an excellent initiative to discuss different video formats so that you’ll have all the video sizes you need without needing to go back for more rounds of edits. Prioritize your social media platforms with the largest engagement and start by designing videos tailor-made for those platforms.
- Link your book trailer on your website
Next, you want to ensure that users browsing your website will see your book trailer. You can add the book trailer on your landing page, make a new section on your site only reserved for book trailers, or add the trailer to the section of your website dedicated to your book. If you know how to edit your website, you can either upload the trailer file instantly or gain more YouTube video views by embedding your YouTube video on your website.
Feature your book trailer on your site’s landing page, which is usually the most viewed page on any website, embed it or link to it your youtube trailer, and also create an article that’s all about the trailer, how you hope your subscribers will share it with their family.
4. Advertise Your Book Trailer With Campaigns
Perhaps the most overlooked marketing strategy is paid campaigns! This is particularly essential if you don’t have a powerful social media presence on any platform. Google Ads and YouTube Ads are some of the most useful if you’re trying to advertise your book trailer since they can get video views instantly on YouTube, which is why it’s important to make sure the video description contains links to where readers can purchase your book.
Instagram engagement is perfect for videos if your book trailer satisfies the format specifications to direct Instagram Ads. You can also promote on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest any social media platform if you are willing to invest a few dollars. While you could invest as little as $1 on a few social media ad venues, the main rule of marketing is you have to invest money to make money.
- Tweet your book trailer on Twitter
Just like on Instagram, YouTube videos play within Twitter feeds, so you don’t have to link your book trailer anywhere else for your Twitter audience to view it. With Twitter, you don’t have to stress quite as much about sharing the same tweet multiple times because it’s 100% legitimate.
- Email The Book Trailer To Your Loyal Audience
If you have an email newsletter available on your website, you’ll want to email the new book trailer to your loyal subscribers. You can embed a URL to the YouTube video directly in your email. You can navigate your audience to a homepage on your author’s website with the trailer and details about the book, mainly links to where the users can purchase your book.
If you don’t have an email newsletter set up yet but want to have one with a more relevant audience, you can use the book trailer as an encouragement to drive more subscribers. Invite your social media supporters to subscribe to your email list for a premier sneak peek at the trailer before you spam it on different social media channels.
Your email newsletter subscribers will be the most active viewers of your book trailer. So make sure to let them know about it. Tell them fascinating facts about the journey of the trailer while it’s still a work in progress, get them enthusiastic about the trailer’s release date, and eventually, email them on the day the book trailer goes live on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter.
- Host a book trailer Launch Party
Your premiere party doesn’t have to be a big fancy event. Maybe an affordable coffee shop would be glad to have you and a dozen book club friends hanging out at their cafe, watching the exciting trailer, and have a short Q&A segment about the video and the book.
If you host a big event, though, make sure to make it available to the public, hype it on Facebook, write about it on your website, and let the local press cover your event. Those will produce more opportunities to advertise your book trailer.
8. Show the Book Trailer at Public Events and Book Clubs
If you speak at book clubs or give presentations about your book at different events, then it’s a fantastic idea to include your book trailer as part of your book presentation. Showing a book trailer offers you a short moment where you don’t have to be talking in front of a huge crowd.
It’s also an amusing and pleasing way to grab your audience’s attention and maybe make them more inquisitive in your book. Of course, your team wants to make sure they test out playing the book trailer ahead of the event and consult with the event management to make sure they have tools compatible with yours in order to play the video.
