How to Measure Book Launch Success

If you’re a nonfiction author, you undoubtedly had a specific objective in mind as you created your book. Maybe your goal is to:

• Land speaking engagements.
• Win consulting contracts.
• Impress and educate new clients.
• Demonstrate the value of a product.
• Sell courses and coaching services.

Your particular motivation for writing your book is particular to you, but most of these long-term objectives include the following characteristics:

The process of building customer relationships into sales is a marathon, not a sprint.

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Why? because most people are uncomfortable making immediate purchases with their money. By getting to know you and the value you offer, they must build up to it. Because of this, your book is a crucial component of your marketing strategy:

1. People who read it will get to know you and recognize the value of what you’re offering.
2. People who hear about it in the media will also start to know you, even before they read the book.

Marketers frequently refer to the “customer journey” – the steps a consumer takes from having no prior knowledge of you to selecting your goods or services. A successful book launch encourages readers to start. A strong launch creates a clear path to your final objective by guiding individuals from the first step through the second and then the third.

Your Book Launch Is the First Leg of a Marketing Marathon

Before you’ve determined all the ways your launch can help the consumer journey you’re building, you can’t evaluate the success of a book launch. For instance, individuals are unlikely to pay $1,200 for your extensive leadership course the moment they learn about you. Their path might be more like this instead:

1. Hear about you on media from a trusted source and sign up for your free newsletter.
2. Read your newsletter for a few months, gaining valuable insights, and eventually sign up for a free mini-course.
3. Take the mini-course and apply its principles, then buy your book.
4. Read the book, learning even more about you and your methodology, and then sign up for a paid introductory course.
5. Take that course, see the value in it, and invest in the comprehensive offering.

A successful book launch can support you at every stage along the way:

• It helps you create media connections with trusted sources, encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter.
• It provides quotes, graphics, soundbites, and even video clips you can use on social media to build an engaged platform.
• It gives you “as seen on” blurbs and endorsements you can use on your website in promoting your free mini-course.
• It helps you test messaging to see what will resonate with your audience.
• It builds your Amazon reviews to encourage future readers to buy and read your book.

In other words, book sales aren’t the worth of your book launch, at least not right away. It consists of everything your launch can do to assist the client journey you are creating.

To get that full value, you need to build out the elements of your customer journey before your launch.

In this specific example, that means:

• Create your newsletter.
• Claim and promote your brand on social media.
• Build all the courses you’ll need.
• Create your author ecosystem, including your website.

Again, this is but one illustration. Your specific client journey depends on your ultimate aim, which depends on what you need to build. Once everything is in place, you can use your book launch to capitalise on those leads and begin creating those enduring client relationships.