Selling Books on Squidoo

I have written number of lenses to offer marketing tips to other lensmasters. Please visit this lens about my marketing background.

AIDA - a marketing mantra
Attention
Interest
Desire
Action
Why I prefer a book review lens
Aida and Presentations
About Kate Phizackerley
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The most common mantra in marketing / sales is a simple straightforward mnemonic:

A
= Attention

I = Interest

D = Desire

A = Action


Action is the interesteing step for most Squidoo lensmasters: action by a reader is a clickthrough and hopefully a commission earning sale. AIDA represents a path down which to take your readers to encouarge as many of them as possible to take action.

The first step on the path is to get the attention of your prospective customers. In a Squidoo context if you have a well-focused lens or group you have already achieved that. If you have a lens on "Growing Orchids at Home", most of your readers are going to be interested in growing their own orchids at home. Inevitably there will be some who are interested in growing other flowers or some just interested in orchids, but they are still potential converts.

If your lens or group is more general then you could have a diverse readership who have stumbled upon your lens. In that case you need to do something to grab their attention. Probably some great graphics. Maybe you write your own table of contents to help them find quickly a section of the lens which is relevant to them.

Assuming that already have the Attention of the visitors to your lens, or at least to that section of your lens, then the next step is to engage their interest. That means developing the level of their involvement in your subject through great text, videos and photos.

If your intention is to sell books, you are targetting those readers who want to develop a deeper knowledge of the subject. That suggests that superficial or irrelevany text will not help your case. Publishers often release the first chapter of a book to get readers interesed. Your lens takes the place of that first chapter.

This is the most important section and, looking at many lenses on Squidoo, a step to which many lensmasters decote too little effort.

If you have successfully buillt interest, this needs to be turned into the desire for a book on the subject. In order of efffectiveness, you have three options:

1) A book review lens

This is my favourite. You can see an example in my lens which reviews The Complete Tutankhamun by Nicholas Reeves. Rather than include an Amazon module in lenses like my one on Tutankhamun, I feature my book review lens.

2) An Amazon spotlight module

It's easy to overlook this module as it doesn't come up in the Standard favourites but it is a good way of highlighting a single book. You can your review of the book within the module to make sure that your readers really do want to read the book,

3) Standard Amazon module

This is the weakest option. It is possible to add reviews to books but this means picking the books yourselfs - ie you need to keep the books featured up to date. It's place is perhaps as a catchall at the bottom of a lens.

If everything has worked as planned, your readers should now click through and purchase. Make sure that you have chosen a book or books which Amazon has in stock. Remember that not all of your readers may be based in the USA so you may wish to add separate affiliate links for your British readers, for example, to help them buy from Amazon UK.

There are several reasons why I prefer a book review lens to adding a review directly within an Amazon spotlight module.

1. It's easy to re-use the review on several related lenses.
2. If I wish to update the review, I only need to edit one lens rather than several
3. It looks to the readers as though I have taken more trouble and increased credibility => increased chances of a purchase
4. I can easily link directly to the review from other sites
5. If a reader decides not to purchase after reading the review, I can offer them alternative books or re-direct their interest to another of my lenses
6. It's another lens towards becoming a Giant Squid

If you have any extra information or questions about this lens you can contact Kate Phizackerley, the lensmistress, using the contact form I have provided.

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Kate has written many Squidoo lenses. Please visit her lensography or read her Squidoo Diary to keep up to date with her recent publications.

And if you would like to know more about Kate then please visit her personal lens on Squidoo or Kate's main personal hub and web site.

Finally, thank you to the developers whose icons I feature on many of my Squidoo lenses: Dry Icons for the Portfolio icon; Gopal Raju for the Twitter Bird; Icons-Land for Sweet Angel; Maja Benic for the Contact & Home icons.