Nigel George is an educator and author of five books on technology and self-publishing. In this article, he prompts authors to consider a different way of thinking about their approach to marketing and their advertising spend.
Would you, having never seen a horse race in your life, bet an entire month’s pay on a single horse because someone said you should?
When a local club advertises its latest bank of poker machines, replete with new and improved bells, whistles and bling, would you withdraw all your savings and go spend it on the pokies because, hey, it’s new and bright and shiny?
If some guy you had never seen in your life came up to you and said for a thousand dollars, he could show you how to get rich betting on the South Latvian camel racing league, would you give him the money?
You might scoff and say, ‘Of course not, Nige. Only a mug punter would do that, and I’m not that silly!’
It’s a great answer; one that I would expect from any regular, everyday person (who doesn’t have a gambling problem).
But guess what? This is exactly the behaviour many authors new to marketing exhibit when they start to promote their books:
- They blow a fortune on some new ad platform because they hear it’s the Next Big Thing;
- They waste time and money on the latest shiny new app ‘guaranteed to beat the algorithm’; or
- They spend hours on YouTube watching videos with titles like ‘I made $31,345 in a Week Using This Mega-Hack FACEBOOK DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW!!!’
They behave like a mug punter. And we know what happens to mug punters, don’t we?
They lose their shirt.
It might come as a surprise, but there are many similarities between authors who know how to market successfully and professional gamblers.
On the surface, there is the fact that they not only keep their shirt but also generate a profit from their work.
What is more interesting to me, though, is the similarities between how successful marketers and gamblers approach their work. Core to both is a fundamental understanding that they are in the risk business.
So, let’s have a look at some of these similarities, starting with the most important one of all.
They know risk is a numbers game
Risk is by far the least understood concept in business and in life. This is because when we hear the word ‘risk’, we all immediately switch to an emotional context:
- ‘What’s the risk of me getting hit by a bus when I cross the road?’
- ‘What is the risk of my kids getting into drugs?’
- ‘What if I get cancer?’
- ‘What if my partner gets cancer?’
This goes on in our heads every day. So, when presented with a risk-based decision, like: ‘what is the risk of me losing all my money on this advertising campaign?’, our emotional brain goes and messes things up.
Risk is a numbers game:
- When you buy a lottery ticket, there is a fixed chance that you will win
- When you play cards, there is a fixed chance the next card will be a king
- When someone clicks on your ad, they will buy your product, or they won’t
- Of all the people who click on your ad, somewhere between zero and one hundred people out of one hundred will buy your product.
Professional gamblers and marketers are working the numbers and evaluating risk vs reward every day. If you don’t develop a deep understanding of how to balance risk so you make a profit, the outcome is the same as if you poured all your money into the pokies—you lose your shirt.
Gaining this understanding is not as complicated as you might think; if you know Year Six maths, you have all you need to succeed at digital marketing.
There is a quip from an advertising executive that has been floating around for decades. It goes like this: ‘Half my advertising spend is wasted. The problem is, I don’t know which half.’
Recent research shows that this percentage has barely changed, but the big difference is, with minimal effort, we can find out what spending is wasted.
Let’s say you are running a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign. There are only three things that can happen with an individual ad:
- Nobody clicks on it
- People click the ad, but nobody buys
- People click the ad, and some of them buy.
Cases one and two are easy to deal with: you stop running those ads as you are wasting money.
Case three requires one more step. Say you make $2 profit per book sale. This means you must pay less than $2 per sale to make a profit.
So, if you are paying:
- 10 cents a click, you must sell 5 books per 100 clicks to break even
- 20 cents a click, you must sell 10 books per 100 clicks to break even
- And so on.
This is risk-based thinking. It has nothing to do with your gut or talent or some secret insider information. It’s all numbers, and if you put the effort into understanding this, you have what is necessary to come out in front.
While the numbers of risk vs. reward are simple, the type of game we are playing can get complicated. Which brings us to the next lesson we can learn.
The pros are experts in their chosen game
Nobody would enter a poker championship, having only played for matchsticks at home. Only a crazy person would jump on a $100 minimum blackjack table, not understanding how to play the game.
Pros play and study their chosen game for years. They not only know all the nuances, tips and tricks, and rules of the game, but they study their competition in great detail, learning all they can to give them an edge.
Successful marketing requires the same level of dedication and diligence.
You must not only learn the technical differences between platforms, but you must also understand what works on each. For example, ads that are successful on Facebook are rarely successful on Amazon, and vice versa.
SEO requires an entirely different skillset to be successful. It also requires significantly more patience, as it is a long game that can take years to show progress.
Organic marketing on social media is different to blogging and guest posting, which is different to writing feature articles to promote your work.
Successful marketers also study the competition constantly. They look for clues on what works and what doesn’t work, digging deep to find anything that can give them the advantage.
The massive commitment necessary to go deep leads to another common characteristic of professional marketers and gamblers—they specialise.
It’s extremely rare to find a pro gambler who is a champion in both poker and blackjack. Likewise, pro marketers pick a channel or two to specialise. Maybe they only run Facebook ads and guest post monthly, or they specialise in Amazon ads alone. They either leave the rest, or hire someone to manage the other channels for them. (Something a professional gambler can’t do!)
The pros also know that some opportunities are not for them, regardless of how attractive they may sound. Which leads us to our final similarity between pro marketers and gamblers.
They Know When to Hold ’em and When to Fold ’em
Sometimes, the best game strategy is not to play at all.
There is no such thing as a professional lottery player or a professional pokies player because your only chance of success at these games is pure luck.
Marketing equivalents are a new author trying to succeed with Google AdWords or generating organic reach with Facebook. With AdWords, you will almost certainly lose your shirt because of the cost, and with Facebook you are up against the algorithm that limits your reach to push you towards paid advertising. In both cases, you are better off not playing at all.
Timing also matters. A poker player in a weaker position will sit a few hands out when others are betting big. You don’t want to be promoting your new indie book when one of the Big Five is blanketing every channel with their latest A-lister.
There are always better times of the year to market certain genres. I used to publish computer textbooks. July to September was practically dead. Why? Because it’s the US summer and nobody is in school or college. You must understand the cycles of your genre to know what times its better to sit things out.
So, are you a mug punter or a pro?
Have you learned enough about your chosen marketing strategies to sit down with a notepad and a calculator (or a spreadsheet) and work out the odds of you making a profit?
Have you dug really deep into your genre and the market, and have you got a great understanding of what leads to success?
Do you have the confidence to walk away, no matter how bright and shiny and exciting an opportunity looks?
If you answer ‘no’ to any or all of the above, you owe it to your indie publishing business to learn.
‘But, I hate marketing! I can hire people to do this for me!’ I hear you say.
Yes, you can but with the number of shonks in the marketing space, if you don’t understand the basics, guess what will happen?
You’re going to lose your shirt.
See you next month.
Nigel George is an entrepreneur and manager with 25+ years’ experience building and managing technology companies. He is the author of five books on technology and self-publishing. He has independently published his books since 2015 and is an expert on how to build and run a successful independent publishing business. Nigel is passionate about passing on his expertise to other authors, teaching them how to succeed as an independent author. You can learn more about his work on his Indie Publishing Machine website.
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