Ebook Marketing Works Best With Niche Audiences

Effective ebook marketing requires more than using various tactics that try to persuade people to buy a book. It also takes book content that works well with niche audiences.

So an ebook marketing strategy begins with the content of the book. A writer who publishes a book on a general subject such as travel will have a much harder time reaching an audience than if the book is about cruises or resorts.

Competition is one major reason for this problem. The more general the topic, the more extensive the competition. The more narrow the topic, the less extensive the competition.

It’s nearly impossible to get heard when hundreds if not thousands of books on the same subject are available, especially on massive ebook platforms such as Amazon. Targeting is a key strategy in ebook marketing.

Ebook Content Strategy

One of my favorite ebook content strategies is cross-platform publishing. An example is a website publisher who extracts content from that site and repurposes it into an ebook.

Quite a few media companies use this approach, whether they are newspapers, magazines or website publishers.

Yes, it is duplicate content. But the audiences rarely duplicate because they reach that content in different ways. A website visitor uses a search engine such as Bing, Google or DuckDuckGo to get there. Someone looking for a book is more likely to search on a major book website such as Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

More importantly, the writer or publisher doesn’t have to create entirely new content for the ebook. The labor cost is therefore minimal. It lowers the risk if the book doesn’t have good sales and increases the profits if it does.

If the site is large enough, publishers can extract multiple ebooks with a narrow focus. They should do so rather than produce just one book with a broad focus.

Multiple books will have greater appeal for niche audiences, especially in light of programs such as Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited. KU allows subscribers to read only some pages in a book, and writers get paid for only the pages that are read.

An ebook content strategy that relies on highly targeted niches will create better opportunities with potential audiences.

Ebook Marketing Strategy

Ebooks with a narrow content focus will lead to marketing with a narrow focus as well. For example, consider the following titles:

1. Cruise Destinations
2. Alaska Cruises

The first one is geographically broad while the second one is narrow. The search engine ranking of the first one — whether it is Google, Bing or Amazon — will undoubtedly be much lower than the second one because it has more competition.

Likewise, summaries and meta descriptions will have big differences in the potential keywords that also impact search results.

Finally, marketing efforts such as ad campaigns will have a much easier time with targeting keywords if the content is more narrow in focus.