For many, marketing is seen as peripheral to the core functions of a business. When hard times hit, it is often the first item to be cut. We view it as the end of a string of activities from ideation to production to distribution. I could speculate as to why marketing is often the poor cousin to finance or production. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s been associated with sleazy sales techniques. Or that it’s just advertising and everyone knows advertising is expensive. Perhaps it’s all the high-falutin language marketers use but no-one understands.

When you’re a writer, you get to be CEO, COO, CFO and VP of R&D, HR and Marketing. You get to write the rules. You get to do things differently. And I’m here to implore you to see marketing as the backbone to your writing career, a thread running through from start to finish. Why? Because when you understand marketing as a backbone, you’ll have a consistent thread that will:

• give you clarity as to what sort of writer you are
• make it clear to the right set of readers what and why you write
• help you decide where to focus your energy

Backbone not lifeblood

I’m not saying that marketing is the key to being a good writer. Honing your craft is the key to that and there’s no shortcut to craft.

Your craft will always be the lifeblood of being a writer. But blood is no good if it has no structure to hold it together and direct it. A backbone gives strength, stability, direction, articulation, and a good marketing plan will do the same for you as a writer.

When I say marketing, I don’t mean:

• advertising
• reducing prices to sell more stuff
• shouting loudly and often to anyone at all about what you’ve done
• writing what the market wants
• copying what other writers write

When I talk about marketing as a backbone, I mean:

• pinpointing and verbalizing what made you write what you write
• picturing and empathizing with your ideal reader, discovering what they want
• understanding and articulating what impact your writing is intended to have on your reader
• seeking and responding to feedback
• finding your support network

Sure, there’s book promotion in there. There are teasers on social media, sales promotions, there may even be advertising. But these are the very last elements. To keep with the anatomical analogy, these are like the fingers tapping out the instructions from the brain. You need the plan first, the backbone which says who you are, why you write what you write, who you write it for, and why they should care. When viewed like this, marketing becomes an integral part of any business, none more so than for a one-person company like a writer. OK, so it’s a little challenging being CEO, COO, CFO, as well as the director of R&D, HR and Marketing but we better get used to it, because this is the path we have chosen!

Do you see marketing as a core part of being a writer? I’d love to hear why or why not.