[Marketing 101] – Why Selling Isn’t Enough

I first got into marketing for the same reason that most people get into the field: I had a product that wasn’t selling as well as I wanted it to, and I wanted to find out what I could do to make it sell better. And for many people, that’s all that marketing really is.

But that concept of marketing, generally known as the “Selling Concept,” is outdated in today’s marketplace. And while sales are an important part of the marketing process, they’re only part of the whole, and publishers who rely on sales tactics are missing out on the bigger picture…

When I tell someone I’ve just met that I work in marketing, I’ve come to expect a certain reaction. It begins with a nod, and then a panicked awareness that moves up through the eyes and onto the forehead, which begins to pale slightly as the blood rushes from their face. “Oh,” they’ll whisper. “You’re not going to try to sell me anything, are you?”

I blame the previous generations of people who have worked in my profession. Don’t get me wrong; many marketing professionals have made a lot of important advancements over the last 50 years, and the field of marketing has evolved from the simple question of “How do I get people to buy this thing I just made?” to something much more elegant and useful. But marketing professionals have done a terrible job of staking out their territory in the mind of society at large and have allowed a lot of hucksters to use the term to describe their own practices, leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. It’s ironic, since marketing is all about crafting an image and a relationship, that professional marketers have allowed the term for their profession to be sullied. But then, part of the problem is that up until the last few decades, even marketers have been trying to figure out how they fit into the world of business.

That’s partially because marketing wasn’t really necessary up until the 20th century, thanks to the rise of mass-produced merchandise. Marketers spent the first two decades of the 20th century learning to understand the impact of things like national product brands and retail distribution possibilities. But things changed in the 1930s as the economy surged forward and consumerism caught on. Suddenly, consumers weren’t just interested in buying any product; they were interested in buying the right product. Marketers had to learn how to convince potential customers that their product was the one to go with. Advertising was proving effective, but it was more helpful for brands and new products than it was for established products. And thus many companies (particularly retailers) began to focus on developing effective selling techniques to help sell off their goods and services.

The idea of sales is simple: you sell what you’ve got for as much as you possibly can. You don’t concern yourself with the needs or wants of the customer (unless it’s relevant to making the sale), and you don’t worry about the customer past your sales transaction. If the product doesn’t do what the customer needs it to do, it’s not your problem. Your only concern is to make your next sale.

Flash forward to the 21st century and you’ll see that there are still companies who practice sales in this manner. In fact, as a publisher, this very likely could be your philosophy, since your business is built very much around a “push” strategy where you develop a product, print what you think you can sell, and try to sell through your run so you can earn enough to develop another product.

But in the world of modern marketing, selling is only part of the whole, and today’s marketing professionals use what is called a “Marketing Mix” as they make decisions. The term comes from Neil H. Borden, who wrote a book in 1964 called The Concept of the Marketing Mix. His idea was that all marketing decisions ultimately relate to the “target market” and that it is necessary for a marketer to include the right “mix” of marketing decisions to reach that target market. Borden broke these decisions down into four categories: product, pricing, promotion and place. (They’re commonly known today as the “4 P’s.”)

But what’s interesting about the marketing mix (and the broader philosophy of “the marketing concept”) is that it doesn’t look at the product and then ask, “how can I sell this to the customer?” Rather, it looks at the customer and asks, “how can I serve this customer with a product he or she will want to buy? And how can I keep that customer coming back for more?”

For a publisher, this is a tough, tough question to ask, because it seems contrary to common sense. In the publishing marketplace, after all, consumers are concerned about hot topics and popular authors. Publishers who can create trends or ride the waves of popular culture often do quite well, while publishers who focus on serving the customers are often buried underneath the competition. The best way to be successful in the world of publishing is to create something like Chicken Soup For the Soul or Life’s Little Instruction Book or The Secret — something that’s engineered to sell that you can back up with a solid promotional plan. In short, to succeed as a publisher, you’ve got to find a way to sell your books, because there are so many options available that no one’s just going to come out and buy them, right?

I’ve thought about this problem for years, now, because I’ve observed that many products really are developed with little concern for the customer’s wants or needs, especially in the world of media. Creative people tend to be drawn to fields like publishing, cinema, music and television, and we hate being told to tailor our products to suit a market. We want to create what we like and what we think is interesting, and we hope that the quality and passion behind our work will attract people to it. And sometimes, it does. But more often than not, our work is not received well, and we find ourselves struggling to create more and hoping that we’ll eventually find the big “break” that will make everything we touch turn to gold.

Perhaps that’s why the field of publishing has often been described as a “lottery” — many people have observed, correctly, that despite the tens of thousands of high-quality novels that are published every year, only a few become bestsellers. What’s more, these bestsellers are often books that are fomulaic and not very literary or even well-written, and they’re crafted by the same “big name” authors everyone’s used to seeing – the authors who got their lucky chance and whose names are now synonymous with success. It’s hard to believe that anyone who doesn’t have a trade publisher deal and a multi-million dollar marketing budget can compete with these guys.

But you see, the “common sense” perspective has a major flaw: it’s focused in the wrong direction. As a publisher, I’m not asking why consumers are buying some books and not others; I’m looking at the products and trying to figure out why one product sells better than another, and I’m drawing my conclusions from studying the products. If I were to shift my perspective and watch the consumers, I’d see that most of the people who buy novels are looking for easy, convenient reading. They’re not interested in trying new things; they want to stick with the authors and genres they know. If that author has inspired a television show or a movie they’ve seen, so much the better. They’d also rather buy their books while they’re shopping for groceries or at the drug store, where things are conveniently placed, than wade through a bookstore where they have trouble finding exactly what they want because they’re overwhelmed with choices.

How can a publishing company serve that sort of customer? Sadly, that particular sort of customer is not going to be easy for most publishers to acquire, because he or she already has an established relationship with the publishers who populate the bestseller racks, grocery stores and convenience stores. And what’s more, they’ve spent millions of dollars to establish those relationships, and they’ll spend millions more to keep them. That’s one of the reasons phrases like “New York Times Bestseller” exist — they’re meant to capture the type of reader who’s only interested in what’s supposed to be popular. The truth of the matter is that phrases like “bestseller” are just a sales gimmick publishers use to sell more books.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of opportunities to reach other consumers through publishing. The trick is to figure out what customers want, but don’t have, and then to find a way to provide that. One example would be the … For Dummies books, which began as down-to-earth computer manuals written for non-technical people, but which branched out into all sorts of fields when it became apparent that consumers wanted easy-to-read instruction manuals that were focused on being friendly and helpful instead of technical and pretentious. They’ve even inspired several brands of imitators! Another example would be the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader books, which offer a humorous compilation of short articles for those who like to read while they’re waiting on nature to take its course.

“But what if I’m going to be publishing fiction, or comic books?” you might be asking. “Isn’t it better to create something cool that consumers don’t know they want than to pander to them?”

My simple answer is that a certain amount of pandering is necessary no matter what you’re doing. If you publish a book that no one wants to read solely because it’s interesting to you, you can’t blame the consumers for not showing more interest. Publishing is a commercial endeavor, and publishers who don’t create what the market wants won’t stay in business very long.

But, with that said, if you take the time to define your target market and get to know your potential readers’ tastes, you can improve your chances for success. For example, many comic book creators have attempted to start their own superhero universes because they have reasoned that since Marvel and DC have done so well with superheroes, that’s what comic book readers want. But their reasoning is based, once again, on looking at the products instead of the consumers. If they were to ask the consumers, they’d find out that most of the people who buy Marvel and DC books aren’t as interested in the superhero genre as they are in following the adventures of the characters they grew up reading about. Most of these same consumers would be open to reading other kinds of comic books, but they’re saving their superhero dollars for products from the two companies who have dominated the genre for decades.

Likewise, in the realm of fiction, it’s never a bad idea to examine a target market and see what the consumers are interested in that you can publish. If you’re interested in publishing vampire western romance mysteries, you have to figure out who the readers are likely to be and then figure out what they want out of your books. Do they want a unique story, or do they want you to stick to established genres and focus on romance between characters? Do they like lots of action and violence, or do they prefer you skip over the action and get straight to the steamy, sexy stuff? Knowing these sorts of details can help you select the right novels to bring to market… and they will give you insights into how you need to promote your books when they’re ready for sale.

Marketing requires a lot of thought and a lot of planning. It’s not just as easy as selling something you’ve already created. But remember that it’s worth the trouble if you do it right; you can be very successful as a publisher by selling a small number of books to the right audience over and over again. You won’t have the prestige of a bestseller, perhaps, but you’ll have something a lot of your competitors won’t: steady cash flows.

Writing Scraps

by Sean J. Jordan