So, what have I been up to this week? You probably haven’t seen any Facebook ads or pages or posts related to my book, and you probably haven’t seen any blog posts about it either… Because I didn’t do any of that.

My first marketing focus: Really good content.

I know, writing the actual book doesn’t seem much like part of the marketing process. But it is. The content is where everything starts. It’s arguably even more important than the typical marketing tactics like Facebook ads, SEO, and influencer outreach.

You can launch a crappy book successfully, but it won’t last. You can also launch a really good book to crickets, and it won’t make it to the big leagues. My goal is to do both. Before I focus on the launch itself, I need to make sure I have really, really good content. Evergreen stuff that is tried, tested and true, and will be for years. Tim Ferriss lives and breathes this philosophy. You can read how he applies it to his books here and his podcasts here.

I wrapped up the two-month-long process of writing my first draft last weekend. I needed a break.

Writing a book is hard. After you compile all the topics you want to talk about, you organize them in a way that makes sense, expand on each thing, find examples, then write it all in a compelling way. It’s overwhelming. Towards the end I had this almost constant feeling that I was missing things I wanted to say and including things I didn’t want to say. It never feels perfect, and even though I’m more of a momentum-maker than a perfectionist, I’m forcing myself to take my time and hold this book to a pretty high standard.

Once you get past 20,000 words, the book itself feels too big to handle. It becomes something with which you have to deal in large chunks. Those chunks grow and multiply. So to get step away from it for two weeks and get some outside input, I sent it to five of my closest friends/family. These are my Alpha readers.

Click here to see how I organized the Alpha readers (they saw this document after I asked them each individually if they wanted to read my draft).

Some of these people are in my target market, some aren’t. I’ll get a good mix of feedback and some time to get the get the marketing ball rolling before I revise it and work with a professional editor.

Re-Engagement Campaign

Now that the content is temporarily off my plate, I can start getting my ducks in a row for the launch. I already have a list of a couple hundred emails from my first book launch. Since it’s been pretty inactive, my goal is to filter out the people who don’t want to be on my list while keeping the ones who do. I gave them an honest update, offered them something they will actually value, and gave them a clear path to unsubscribe if they want.

I’m expecting the list size to decrease and the quality to increase. That’s a good thing. Here’s the email I sent:

I’ll likely send a series of 3-4 more emails to this list between now and launch week with more value propositions, book launch updates, and offers to unsubscribe.

I just sent this email out today, so I won’t have any metrics to share until next week.

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**This is Part I of a series documenting my book launch marketing strategy. Click here to watch it unfold live.**

Part II coming soon.