All readers love to be taken on a journey. Whether they are fans of sci-fi, romance, thrillers, or the classics, it’s the wild ride the author creates that hooks a reader and turns them into a devoted fan.
Replicate that same exciting journey with a cross-channel marketing strategy and you’ll attract more followers who will be eager to join you on the journey to your next novel’s release.
The Cross-Channel Marketing Theory
Cross-channel marketing begins with a single theme designed to be adaptable enough to broadcast across a variety of marketing channels, such as your newsletter, blog, social media, etc. By adhering to a consistent message in the required style of each channel, you will effectively convey your message, entice new followers, and create excitement that will have readers moving between channels to learn more. This will, in turn, naturally produce a deeper loyalty to your author brand that goes far beyond your debut novel.
What Cross-Channel Marketing Looks Like for an Author
To create an effective cross-channel marketing campaign the first step is to find a good theme. Choosing one that is broad enough to provide a strong focus while maintaining enough flexibility to be able to create differently formatted messages will help you stay consistent regardless of which channel you are working in.
In a Blog Post
For example, if your genre is horror you can create a blog post exploring common Halloween traditions. Dig into several different activities, myths, or celebrations to give yourself many options to expand on the topic through your other media channels. Provide details in your post about how you’ve used those traditions in your story to provide atmosphere or to create captivating backstories for your characters.
On Social Media
Leverage the power of various social media platforms to amplify your theme with customized messages tailored to fit each platform’s specific formatting. Create a diverse range of content, including informative or fun posts for your Facebook feed, interesting memes for Instagram, and videos that will grab attention on TikTok. Whether you choose to use these specific channels is up to you, but be sure to provide content that is created specifically tailored for each channel and look for posts from others that you can share to further support your theme.
Repurposing for a Newsletter
The great thing about using a cross-channel marketing plan is the advantage you have when you create many different but similar messages. Bring them together in your newsletter to create a robust and varied message for your subscribers. Include summaries of your blog post with a link to the actual post and add in the memes, posts, videos, etc. you’ve used on your social media platforms to provide depth and fun content in your newsletter.
Avoiding Landmines
Timing is something to consider in cross-channel marketing. Nobody likes to be inundated with similar messages sent too close together. Consider writing four blog posts per month, with only two posts focusing on the Halloween theme and publish one per week.
A newsletter can be heavily themed based, so don’t be afraid to load up on the Halloween topics, but explore different areas of the theme to keep it interesting. This could be in the form of one large article on how you use Halloween traditions in your writing, a recipe for a Halloween treat, a picture from your childhood of a favorite costume, a quote from a horror movie, and tips on how to write a murder scene.
Social media is more flexible because it’s expected that you’ll be posting more often. So, put your efforts into thinking of clever ways to create short-form messages. I had my family help create a video of my daughter running through a corn field and I added the message “Child of the Corn,” an obvious reference to writer Stephen King’s story “Children of the Corn.” While this didn’t directly refer to my novel, it is a post that will be meaningful to readers of horror.
Final Thoughts
Cross-channel marketing is a common tactic used by marketers across every industry to cast a large net and capture the attention of people they may otherwise miss. By doing this you will take your followers on the journey to you next bestseller.
Make your message interesting, play to your genre (or at least within the scope of writing and publishing), and have fun!