How to position your Book Trailer

In my somewhat educated opinion, and many other very educated peoples opinions, the core of business success, depends on three things. “Location, location and location." The same remains true for any kind of promotion campaign you plan to launch. How you position that campaign is very important. By now, some of you out there are looking at your computer screens with bewilderment. “What do you mean by positioning?” You may ask, and it is an excellent question. I will like to answer that question by taking you back to my last hub I wrote on a related subject, Keeping the horse before the Cart.

In that hub I introduce you to something I called the CPR. I also told you that the tool is very useful in keeping your priorities straight in any projects you perform. In fact, I know many successful business owners or CEOS who used this tool extensively. How this tool is used in this application, is to determine how you want your clients to perceive you in there minds. In some marketing circles, this is known as positioning . For our use, we are particularly interested in the context, “the circumstances surrounding an act or event.”

Let us say you are writing a book about HubPages being a fascinating writers community were writers from all walks of life and from many English Speaking countries come together to share there experience and know how on a verity of subjects. Now, let us also pretend you have decided (after much research) that your demographics (your desired audience) are College students. Now the way you want those college students to perceive you, is as a hip, educated and worldly dude (or dudet). Someone that can still relate to their world, someone who can communicate to them!

So let us try to figure out how we are going to “position” the book trailer to these kids so they will buy the book. Since I have a thing about video, I happen to know that there are several website for original material focused on college kids. Two examples are College Hummer and Break.com.

Now you must also know what these kids want and that is ACTION, do not waste a lot of time and money going into long descriptions, less is more. That is why when I produced TV Commercials I would give package deals, ten, fifteen and thirty-second spots. I could pack a lot of wallop into even a ten-seconded spot! In fact, when dealing with TV, airtime has become so expensive that ten seconded spots could become the way of the future!

At this point, you take a hard look at my three little friends, Context, Purpose and Results. If you go back to this fundamental guide, it will help you determine how to proceed. This, of course are not the only thing you want to take a hard look at the most important is budget. That will determine a lot on how you continue.

I will use a ballpark figure of $ 500.00 dollars just because if done right, that is good amount to start with. Now, If I was going to launch a marketing approach with five hundred clams as my bottom line, I would not even consider TV. Not a prudent way to go. Instead, I would focus on the websites I mentioned before, along with YouTube in which (if you had the money) I would do a spot even longer, maybe even over one minute. The reason why in this case I would opt to go longer on You Tube is that, if you supplied a real catchy video, that received a lot of hits; you may even get YouTube to pay you for the video! I mention this because I happen to know someone who did just that! That is not what that person intended at the beginning, it just happened that way!

I have not even mentioned your own website which of course is probably the best location for your spot considering everything. Up until now, we have looked at thirty and one minute long trailer, even though I mentioned the shorter spots as a cost effective possibility. The place you want to use these “flashes” as I use to call them is with Goggle Add Since or other ads and can start to get costly. HOWEVER, if you take ever thing in consideration and position your adds well, it may be a wise move.

The question is should you even use a Book Trailer at all? The answer is what is your demographics or what age group do you want to reach? If you want to reach a Young Adult market like I am interested in reaching, I would say “YES!” If you are writing for Old farts like my self, (over fifty) then, maybe not! I have a love affair with video and have spent hours tweaking videos and trying the find ways to use quick powerful images to hold my intended audience “hostage.” This has become harder and harder for the youth of are day have become quite jaded by video images. However, I fill strongly it is still the best way to get peoples attention.

Just like in writing hubs, Book Trailers are a time investment. The book trailer I have used as an example on this hub has been viewed over 27, 000 times and yet it was originally posted in 2008. Still, that is good for just that one site (YouTube) has produced that kind of results, so if you had the video at a few more sits, you may triple your harvest. I use the word harvest because marketing is like planting seed. You try to find the most fertile soil possible. Then, with patience and a lot of hard work, you nurture those seeds until maturity, whenever that may be.

The whole book trailer concept is fairly new approach so it is still hard to say what kind of results you will receive. Personally, I am confidant they will work well for the category I have chosen to write in. In fact, I know I can add a new flavor to this format in the ones I will produce. I am now planning a demo product that when completed will most likely show up on a future hub. Stay tuned until then….