Hello Lovely Authors,

We’ve had some great posts the last few weeks on world building! From World Building: an Intro for the newer writers among us, to World Building for Specific Genres.  There will be more great posts to help you get along with your world-building, but did you know that you should use world-building in your marketing strategy too?

What? It’s true! Marketing is simply the way you tell your story to get people to buy your story! (Mind blown yet? Don’t worry, we’re about to put it all back together for you!)

How Marketing Uses World Building

Think about some of the greatest marketing campaigns. What do they do? They use world building. Coke’s Give the World a Coke campaign promoted the world-building view that Coke made the world a happier, better, more connected place. Is that true? Lots of people have that feel-good feeling about Coke even to this day! Every campaign they’ve done since builds on that concept. That’s their narrative.

Dove’s Real Beauty campaign did the same thing, building a world where we don’t sell beauty products by making a woman feel ugly so she HAS to buy the product, but by building a world where women buy beauty products to enhance their natural beauty. Every campaign they’ve done for the last 10 years has tied into that narrative.

How to Use World Building for Fiction Marketing

So how do you do this for your fiction books? You have to start with a worldview (marketing lingo for the key message you want to use to drive people who think and feel the same to your product, or the message you want to convince people is how things should be ). Not sure about your worldview? Take a look at your hook. For example: in The Hunters Saga, my hook is “For those who believe Vampires should be killed, not kissed.”  For The Clear Angel Chronicles, “What happens when an unwilling psychic teams up with an unbelieving detective?” My worldview tells readers exactly what to expect of each series. From there, all your marketing campaigns should revolve around sharing, demonstrating, or increasing that worldview.  With Coke, they wrote songs, created ads, billboards, had guest appearances, and continued to build on that theme. Same with the Real Beauty campaign. So should you.

When you create your book trailer, it should be built around your worldview. If you reference reviews in the trailer, pick reviews that reference in some way that worldview you are building. Here are some of the examples I am using in my trailer for The Hunters Saga:

“The vampires in her novel are vicious and intriguing, and I enjoyed reading a novel that went back to the classic vampire mythology by making vampires monsters once again.” Ashley Aroones

“ I’m grateful for this author, because in this book: vampires maim, kill, drink blood, and actually f#*king die when exposed to the sun. You know, things that hominus nocturna is supposed to do. So, if you’re looking for disco ball vampires, you’ve come to the wrong author.” Drago

“This is the first time I’ve read of vampires in the non-erotic sense, but in a deadly one. This reminded me of a Japanese anime I watched because vampires are feral, soulless beings…” Joy

When you choose samples to be shared, make sure they are scenes that demonstrate that worldview. Most of the samples I chose to share during my release tour were all around the tension-building scenes of fighting the vampires.

When you create quotes with images to share on social media, keep it focused around that worldview. Here are some that I created for The Hunters Saga:

And another favorite:

When you create advertisements make sure that they build that worldview.

How to Use World Building for You, The Author

When doing interviews, guest posts, radio appearances,  this is where it gets really tough for some authors. What if you’re doing a guest post to promote you the author, not a specific book? (Especially tricky when you have multiple stories in a variety of genres.)

You need to create a worldview about you the author, and that’s a whole separate campaign! For my work as an author, I have two personas I promote, as needed. The first (which is the one you see most often in Our Write Side) is the Friendly Book Marketer. A lot of my guest posts come from this position that is a unique strength I have which sets me apart from many authors. The other persona that readers see is An Angell’s Life of Bookish Goodness. That persona is sharing the worldview that books make life richer, better, and happier (much like the Coke ad! )

If I am not doing a tour to promote a specific book, when I have opportunities to guest post or speak, it comes from one of those two worldviews that best fits the audience of the blog, podcast, or event where I’m appearing.

As you plan your marketing strategies, keep these tips and tricks in mind.

What’s your worldview that you use to build your campaigns? Share in the comments below!

Need help finding your worldview? Let us know in the comments below. We’re always happy to help!

Until next time,

Keep Writing!