The role of your product or service in your marketing campaign

Since this is a record of the process of marketing a product or service, I should probably start at the beginning with product development.

In my case, my product is my book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results . 

LESSON ONE: Develop your product with the distribution channel in mind

I wrote the book with an end audience in mind and even with a potential distribution channel in mind. 

Never in my most sleep deprived state did I EVER expect my book to become a best seller merely by it’s appearance on Amazon.  That meant I was faced with deciding BEFORE I WROTE A SINGLE WORD on how I would get my book into the hands of my intended audience.

One way of reaching prospective buyers was to launch my Beyond Niche Marketing blog. 

At this point, I’ll go on the record as stating mistakes were made in the NAMING of my product.  I am horribly jealous of Jefferey Fox’s book’s name HOW TO BECOME A MARKETING SUPERSTAR: UNEXPECTED RULES THAT RING THE CASH REGISTER.  This is, in my opinion, the BEST title I’ve EVER seen PERIOD!  Also, for the record, Rosemary Davies-Janes wanted to change the name of my book when I hired her to create the book’s cover, but by then the chapters had been named and the book had been through three rounds of editing with two different editors and it was really too late to fix my naming mistake.

LESSON TWO:   Sometimes you have to FIDO: Forget It and Drive On

The poor naming of my book damned my chances of selling it "virally" via traditional channels, (bookstores both on and offline).

However, I had in mind from the beginning a plan for selling books in quantities larger than 1-2 at a time and THAT is the basis of this "project".

IMPORTANT TAKE AWAY INFORMATION:

Don’t kid yourself!  Marketing begins during product development.