Powerful Marketing Insight

When it comes to introducing a new book into the marketplace, I know a truth firsthand. It’s easy to spend massive amounts of money in the marketing area—with little measurable return. What works for one product may or may not bear results for the next product.

As a part of the marketing department at Zondervan Publishing House, Greg Stielstra has been involved in marketing more than 750 different books including twenty #1 bestsellers and eight books which sold more than a million copies. PyroMarketing gives the history of mass marketing and points out the current lack of effectiveness with such techniques.

What if you could change your technique to give relevant messages to the right people then foster their enthusiasm to spread throughout society? It’s a technique which doesn’t require a large marketing budget—just a focused thoughtful plan. Using the metaphor of fire, Stielstra has boiled the technique that he calls PyroMarketing into four steps: 1) Promote to the people most likely to buy (something he calls finding the driest tender), 2) Give the consumer an experience with your product or service (Touch Them with the Match), 3) Help them tell others (Fan the Flames) and finally 4) Keep a record of who they are (Save the Coals).

Each chapter includes a brief summary then thought-provoking questions for the reader to apply PyroMarketing to their own situation.

Thousands of new books are introduced into the market each year—now as I’ve mentioned in the past, it’s easy to get a book published. You can get a garage full of books but how many books can you get sold into the hands of readers. I believe the technique of PyroMarketing is something many people can apply to their own product development. I highly recommend this book to stimulate and jump start your own marketing plans. Whether you are in a business or any other aspect of product creation (such as writing a book), you will want to pay attention to this title. If you are writing a book or a book proposal to submit to a literary agent or a publisher, you should read PyroMarketing then use the techniques to sharpen and improve your own marketing plans.

Let’s take some of this information and apply it to writing a book proposal.

What is your best potential audience for this book? What means do you (as the writer—not the publisher) have to reach them? (The Driest Tender)

What can you do to give that audience a taste or experience of your book? (Touch them With A Match)

How can you aid them in passing along your message? For example can you sell to this audience at a discounted (or special) price to assist them getting more copies of your book that they will in turn pass to others and stir them as evangelists for your message? (Fan the Flames)

Do you keep track of who these people who are purchasing your book? (Save the coals) Then when you have a follow-up product you can easily reach them again. One of the continual problems with mass marketing or retail marketing is this lack of follow-up or data management. These concepts are spelled out in detailed examples in PyroMarketing.

Hopefully these questions will help you apply the techniques from PyroMarketing to your book proposal (nonfiction or fiction). I’ve only begun to describe the principles which are detailed in this book. If you apply these principles to your proposed book, it does several things: 1) it shows the publisher immediately that you “get it.” You understand marketing is a cooperative effort between the publisher and the writer. It’s not that you write the book and abdicate this effort to the publisher but you will be an involved partner. 2) It distinguishes your proposal from anything else in the stack of proposals. I mean anything—and elevates the interest from the editor (who in turn champions your book to others within the publishing house).

I believe such steps will likely improve the results from your marketing efforts. So…1) Get this book 2) Study this book 3) Apply the techniques to your own life. It may make you into one of those PyroMarketing “evangelists” who love the book and want to pass it on to others.