So, the world is transferring its focus to videos with every passing day. Even hardcore book lovers are caught streaming social media videos time and again. Don’t worry, these videos won’t replace the fun of reading books any time soon, but they present a unique tool in your bundle of book marketing services.
You see, videos bring engagement for social media marketing campaigns. Video-based posts capture the attention of 91% of the social media audience. On the flip side, text-based content engages only a handful of people, only at certain times of the day.
Given these stats, video-based book promotion material should earn a high level of engagement for the book. The question arises, does it? This blog post will explore this theory from various angles.
What are Video Book Trailers?
For starters, book trailers are video advertisements to sell your book. When you publish a book, you also give its description, blurb, and copy for marketing purposes. Sometimes, you don’t write this promotional stuff, but choose to outsource it. In those cases, a copywriter will be hired by your book marketing team to write these advertisements for your book.
A video trailer is the same. You can ask your book promotion services provider to hire a video copywriter to write the script for this trailer. Or if you are confident and skilled in your marketing tone. You will want to write the script yourself. Note that writing a script demands a different set of skills than writing a blurb. Most authors have admitted that they couldn’t have created the same quality for their book blurb or video trailer script as an expert writer did.
Although these trailers take their strengths from the script, their visuals and audio also play a key role in determining their success. If you want to ensure high quality for your trailer, ensure that you contract an expert book marketing agency that has a whole team dedicated to video promotions with guaranteed results.
If you are questioning your genre’s ability to profit from a video trailer, don’t. These trailers work for both fiction and nonfiction book genres.
They Make the Story Relatable
The first thing you will notice about these trailers is how they make your story relatable. You may have written on a serious topic with no drama or emotional attachments. Yet, these trailers will make the topic important in the eyes of your potential readers. These trailers build upon the idea of value creation and benefitting the readers.
Like a captivating book blurb, they will start with identifying the pain points of your readers and matching them with solutions from your work. Without giving away a lot, they will share some not-so-popular tips with the readers, allowing them to witness a part of the value this book will create for them.
These trailers will reach a whole new level of innovative expression when you create them for fiction books. Ditching the professional, informative tone that accompanies nonfiction book trailers, these trailers will create an immersive experience with the right visuals and audio.
These Trailers Hook the Readers
Because of their immersive and expressive nature, these trailers keep the readers hooked. Most social media users watch their uploaded videos till the end. If these trailers are created professionally. The readers will follow them till the end and will want to know more about this project.
When most viewers will reach the end of the video, they will hear and see the call-to-action phrase or button. In short, you will use the video as bait to lead the viewers to the CTA goal. If they are intrigued enough. They will follow through with your CTA and help you achieve your book sale goal in the end.
Trailers Work with Algorithm
Till now, we have established that social media users prefer video content over text. But this behavior isn’t unique to these users. Instead, the algorithm also prefers video content over all other content types. If you post a video, it will be boosted to 3x more users than if you post a story or excerpt from your book.
It means that more people will be exposed to your trailer. When combined with engagement in the form of likes and shares, it will reach a wider audience than your immediate social network. If you have shared it in a book marketing group, it will reach more members of that group. On the contrary, each engagement of comment and like will create a marginal effect if it appears on a text-based post.
You Need Professional Trailers to Succeed
With all the information we have provided above. You may assume that video book trailers are a game changer for any book marketing strategy. They aren’t. on the contrary, some authors may choose to skip this marketing tool altogether. The reason is simple – these trailers cost a lot more than other book marketing services.
First, you have to pay for a professional script. Then, pay for a team to build that script into a captivating trailer. These costs don’t end here. Instead, you may also want to boost them to the right audiences using paid social media ads. Given these costs, trailers aren’t the most favored marketing choice for many authors.
Their ROI is Not Confirmed Yet
Those authors who agree to spend top dollar for their video book trailers question its profit. Are these trailers worthy enough? While many authors and brands have claimed that these trailers have broadened their reach and increased sales, the data isn’t sporadic at best.
With no reliable and concrete data about the potential or confirmed return on investment (ROI) of this tool. Marketers are hesitant to make it a necessary part of their book marketing services package. Authors are also wary of relying too much on it.
They Don’t Work without Support
Note that you cannot rely only on publishing video trailers to market your book. Not all potential readers engage with videos on social media. Many readers skip social media altogether. You must engage your readers on more than one platform. This way, even those readers who aren’t available on one platform will also be exposed to it.
Take video trailers as a topping for the cake. They will only help you when you have worked on foundational elements of marketing including social media posts, your author website, content marketing, and paid marketing. Keep in mind that these trailers will gain only a marginal percentage of your total readers from your book marketing campaign. So, attend to all elements of these campaigns strategically.
Wrapping Up
Video book trailers are a good marketing tool because of their reach and engagement potential. They work for most businesses. However, this post discusses the factors one should consider while investing in these trailers to boost their book sales.
