Creating an effective marketing campaign means you have to work backwards.

For our first book, Water & Blood, Dorothea and I met and had a brainstorming session over lunch, discussing all of the things that have to happen between now and the release of the book. As you can imagine, such a list can be both extensive and daunting.

Items in the list include things such as:

• complete final edit
• design and complete book cover
• research strategic marketing opportunities in more detail
• update websites
• create publishing company LLC, if necessary.
• develop posters and advertisements
• acquire pre-release reviews
• determine give-aways
• research bookseller organizations that would support our product

That’s not the complete list by far. And many of the items on the list require multiple tasks to complete. Our To Do list can quickly become unmanageable.

So, we categorized the list into three basic categories: Immediate, Near Term and Long Term. This will, at least, prioritize our immediate workload into those items that are required before subsequent tasks can be initiated.

However, no marketing plan is complete without a due date. So, we formulated a prospective release date and worked backward from there to see if all that we have to do can be completed when we want to release the book. Our current goal date is about a year from now and, though, that may seem like a long time, it isn’t.

With the mountain of tasks that lay in front of us, I can assure you that not a day will pass without working toward checking off something on our list. But, we’re excited. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and we’re confident it’s sunlight and not an oncoming train.

Part of the plan will be timed release of marketing material and websites. Timing is everything. Latest research, for example, shows that a post on Facebook has a three hour window of effectiveness before it is lost in the maelstrom of other updates. Three hours!

We’ve done a lot of the marketing work already and I’m itching to get it out there, but, with attention spans shortening, increasing marketing noise and a dwindling timeframe by which to grab your customer’s attention, the release plan of all of the marketing material has to be very precise, otherwise the work is wasted.

So, be patient with us. We have a LOT of things planned. Getting them all done… well, that’s the hard part, isn’t it?