We’re living in the golden age of audiobook production! Its rapid and steady growth has been opening new doors to authors, producers, and narrators year after year since the second decade of this century.
Thanks to the portability and affordable prices of electronic devices that play audiobooks, people are consuming many more titles than before, by accessing them everywhere they want.
In this post, I present how to market your audiobooks successfully, and to do it, you need to know:
- When Do People Listen to Audiobooks
- Which Are the Best Places at Home To Listen to Audiobooks
- The Best Moment of the Day to Listen to Audiobooks
- How Often Do People Listen to Audiobooks
- How to Identify Your Target Audience to Market Your Audiobooks
- Get a Detailed Profile of Your Audiobook Audience
- Create an Awesome Webpage
- Set an Organic Social Media Campaign to Market Your Audiobooks
- Create a YouTube channel to Market Your Audiobooks
- Create a Facebook Group to Market Your Audiobooks
- Create an Email Marketing Campaign to Market Your Audiobooks
When Do People Listen to Audiobooks
Thanks to the portability and pocket size of many MP3 players and smartphones, people can have access to audiobooks everywhere.
Audiences of all ages are nowadays enjoying audiobooks more than ever, mainly in situations where they need to do something else (commuting by car or on public transport, walking or working out). Some people set aside a specific place and time of the day to read and listen to a title from a comfortable space at home.
Which Are the Best Places at Home To Listen to Audiobooks
The best places to listen to audiobooks are the ones that have the lowest margin of distraction. The bedroom, a home office or studio, a comfy sofa in the living room, or even in the backyard can be perfect places to enjoy your favorite titles, as long as there aren’t louder external sounds or situations that make us interrupt the story.
The Best Moment of the Day to Listen to Audiobooks
The best moment of the day to listen to audiobooks is whenever you feel like going back to that exciting story you’ve already started! Nevertheless, there are four moments where you can really get the best out of your precious time: when working out, walking, running, commuting, and going to bed. Here is why:
- When you’re working out: As long as you don’t need to read, write or listen to somebody you need to interact with
- When you’re walking or running
- People who enjoy walking, running or hiking usually have a time-distance goal to achieve each day, and that’s a perfect moment to continue listening to that thrilling story
- During commuting time: As long and the street or road noise is not louder that the volume in the audio track, you can enjoy several titles per month and get the best out of your time
- When you go to bed: Find titles that help you relax; set a temporizer in your audiobook app so you can make sure you won’t miss important moments in the story
In my own experience, I found that no matter how interested I was in a story, a full workday made me fall asleep in just a few minutes. Then, the next day, when I went back to the last bookmark, I noticed that I had lost a lot of the story. This is what I did to avoid that for good:
- I took a look at the time I went to bed and started listening to an audiobook, from my latest bookmark (Example: 10:30 pm, chapter 64)
- I didn’t set a temporizer the first time
- I woke up much later (12:40 am) and calculated how much time had passed (2 hours, 10 minutes)
- I rewinded to a point that I could remember when I just went to bed (somewhere in the middle of chapter 65)
- I calculated how much time had passed from the moment I went to bed to the moment I could recall (29 minutes)
- Finally, I decided to set the temporizer to the end of the chapter every time the track was more than 20 minutes but less than 45
- In other cases, I just set it to maximum 30 minutes
Since then, I’ve never lost track of a story again when I go to bed : )
How Often Do People Listen to Audiobooks
Audiobook platform subscribers can listen from 1 to 3 audiobooks per month. By setting a 30 minutes timer, once or twice a day many audiobook listeners benefit from their time spent commuting, working out, or when going to bed. This is great news for authors and a clear indicator of constant growing audiobook consumption for the next few years.
According to the Edison Research December 17 2020 reports, listening taking place at home went up from 49% before the pandemic to 70%, due to the confinement period and work from home strategies that made listening location change notoriously.
Also, listening to podcasts has grown in the American population from 21% in 2016 to 37% in 2020. Spoken word listening has increased 8% in 2019, mainly in African-Americans, Latinos and young 13-year-old listeners to young adults up to 34 years old.
How to Identify Your Target Audience to Market Your Audiobooks
According to the latest pre-pandemic and post-pandemic trends, audiobook consumption is growing around 24% each year. Taking into account that many audiobook retailers allow multiple devices to have access to one account, new audiences are finding great content in podcasts, audiobooks, and audio magazines.
This fact means that not only the usual audience but also new audio spoken word content listeners are reaching all types of audiobook genres. Therefore, the usual audience profile is changing and authors urge to get to know in detail their new fans.
Step 1: To identify your target audience to market your audiobooks you need to lead your potential audience to your own webpage. This is what you have to do:
- Set organic traffic social media campaigns (see how to do it below)
- Keep an eye on your Google Analytics account to see all the data about your audience (go to the left side of the screen)
- Click on Audience, and then on Audiences
- Look at the results by Age, Genre, and Interest Category
Hack No. 1: Focus on the 3 highest percentages of each report (age, genre, interest category).
According to the image below, my target audience is 18 – 44 years old, a bit more than 50% are men, and their interests are sports, running, walking, cycling, computers, electronics, and accessories.
When you do that, you can refine with more accuracy what hashtags are common to those profiles in your social media campaigns.
Step 2: Now you need to know 2 more important things: What devices your new and returning visitors use to get to your web page and then, get more details about your returning audience.
Hack No. 2: If the percentage of mobile users is more than 20%, make sure every paragraph on your website (landing page, sales page, blog posts, etc.) is below 400 characters. No matter how loyal your visitors are, the longer the paragraphs, the more tedious they are to read on mobile devices.
Hack No. 3: Go to the left side of the screen, click on Audiences in the main menu, then click on Behavior. Check the percentage of returning visitors. An optimum percentage is 30% and above.
Keep an eye on your returning audience. That means that they follow you for the level of credibility and trustworthiness you demonstrate. The more they like you, the more likely it will be that they purchase anything you launch (audiobook, eBook, print book, podcast subscription, audio magazine, audio course, or video course).
The following video will illustrate in more detail how to get to know your returning visitors:
Get a Detailed Profile of Your Audiobook Audience
To get a detailed profile of your audiobook audience you can use Google Analytics on your website.
- Set Goals that include tracking every time a visitor clicks on affiliate links to other authors’ audiobooks or your own titles
- Go to your Amazon Associates account and track all the clicks on all your Amazon links
- Then, compare the number of successful clicks from the bounty program and Amazon Associate links with the number of clicks reported in Goals in Google Analytics
- Google Analytics will show the profile of those visitors, which is what you need to continue refining your social media campaigns (organic posts or paid ads):
- Go to Audiences and create an Audience with the visitors who click on your affiliate bounty and associates links
- Check how to create Audiences in the following video, exactly on 25:36
Remember that the 30-day free trial period on Audible pays $75 when a visitor registers and buys your audiobook during the first 61 days, no matter the payment method used (credit card, ecard, or Audible credit).
For more details on how much an author makes per audiobook, eBook, or print book according to the Amazon fees for affiliate marketers and authors, click here.
Create an Awesome Webpage
Your webpage is nowadays your main portfolio. The following tips are taken from my own experience in my websites, after years of trial and error, and effective training in blogging, YouTubing, and digital marketing:
Hack No. 4:
- Make your name (or artist name) your domain URL address. Your name is your brand!
- Make sure you get a safe and fast speed theme (like Kadence)
- Get a fast hosting provider (like Bluehost)
- Include a blog on your website
- Design super attractive sales pages every time you launch a new product or funnel to promote your own products. If you don’t see yourself as a talented web designer, consider getting a plugin sales page builder like optimizepress.com
- Be committed to replying every time your visitors contact you
- Set an emailer service (like Sendinblue, Convertkit, or Aweber) only when you have reached more than 35,000 page views a month. Use the free trial periods and free benefits (usually when you’re building an email subscribers list for the first time (from 0 – 500 subscribers)
- You can embed short video clips of the production process of your audiobooks
- You can insert Amazon banners, ads, and links on the pages that can lead your visitors to buy your books and products (landing page, sales pages, blog posts
- Make sure the images you use are not PNG (too large and heavy) but WebP
- Go to Google Speed Insights
- Type your URL and check how fast load it is
- The green numbers are the optimum goal
- Higher orange numbers (above 70) can do well
- Below 60 is not convenient for your site’s ranking on Google and other popular search engines
Set an Organic Social Media Campaign to Market Your Audiobooks
Once you have created your web page with some great content, you can now post on your web page’s social media accounts.
Not all social media platforms will bring the best quality visitors and potential buyers of your products. The platforms that I use and have brought me satisfactory results are: Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.
Hack No. 5: Make sure the image size on your posts corresponds to the standard size of each platform. Using the wrong size can discourage the platform’s algorithm from showing your posts as relevant content.
Hack No. 6: Make sure how many hashtags each platform allows. Too many of them can label your posts as spam, and you don’t want to get banned from the public view!
| Social Platform | Number of Hashtags Per Post/Tweet | Extra Tips |
| Maximum 30 | *Try it with no fear *Try hashtags for large, medium, and few followers *Large numbers don’t mean tons of views to your post | |
| Maximum 4 | *Honestly, more than 3 hashtags will look awkward in your post *More than 3 would be seen as a desperate attempt to get followers | |
| Maximum 2 | *Twitter blocks accounts frequently when using a social media planner app (like Later or Publer) *When you Tweet, do it directly on Twitter and schedule it | |
| Youtube | Maximum 15 | Hashtags are working out well lately. Just don’t saturate the description of your videos with too many of them |
| Reddit doesn’t use hashtags although you may use them if you want | *Type a \ backslash before the hashtag. Otherwise, it will increase the font size: \#audioproductcreators |
Hack No. 7: In the early stages post no more than 3 times per day, 5 days a week. Be patient and keep track of what times and days got you the most visitors, and then set a permanent timetable to publish.
Hack No.8: Keep posting 3 times a day, 5 days per week until you get 50 – 100 likes or more on each post. Then reduce it to 2 times per day on the 4 days with the most traffic.
Hack No. 9: After reaching 7,000 to 10,000 likes on Facebook, your FB page will be shown on the news feed with only 1 or 2 posts per week.
Hack No. 10: Use good quality WebP images or high-quality but small-size compression formats in your posts.
Hack No. 11: Avoid getting tired of posting on social media, by posting on two social platforms at a time.
Create a Youtube Channel to Market Your Audiobooks
The secret to getting a good level of engagement in your channel is the frequency you post in the early stage.
Hack No. 12: In the first 2 weeks post 3 videos. In the next 2 weeks and until you get over 1,000 subscribers, post 2 times per week. After that, only once a week will continue bringing new subscribers and hundreds, or thousands of views per video. Learn the top secrets to growing your audience on Youtube here (that’s the secret of my YT channels!)
Hack No. 13: Create some audio content that you will upload as a complete video (full episodes of a short audiobook), not a sample. Doing that will grow your viewing time to reach the requirements to start monetizing your channel with ads: 10,000 hours and 1,000 subscribers.
Hack No. 14: Make a balanced but appealing description of each of your videos. Add links to the Amazon Bounty Program for authors, as well as other Amazon or affiliate links to other audio product contents or services. Too many links will look too commercial. Four links is a number that will not bother the viewer.
Hack: No 15: Take some time to design appealing thumbnails for your videos. You should include a picture of you, an attractive title, and at least 2 different colors (fonts, background).
Create a Facebook Group to Market Your Audiobooks
Anyone can create a Facebook group but very few people know how to monetize it properly. The common tendency is to pack it with affiliate links, promotions of products and services, and memberships. All that is perfectly fine, but most of the members could see it as a way to make money from their pockets.
Hack No. 16: You need to offer a lot of value all the time. When you do that, people share it, and that’s the magic of Facebook!
Hack No. 17: Try to answer as many questions as you can from your members. Then you can start promoting your audiobooks or any other product and service you want.
Hack No. 18: A FB group works the same way as a web page: people will buy anything from you because they like you, they trust you and they believe in you. Keep working on building the best image you can.
Create an Email Marketing Campaign to Market Your Audiobooks
Email marketing is considered one of the best ways to monetize talent. You need a subscription form where every new subscriber will receive some good quality product you have created. When you do that, you’re creating an email list.
Hack No. 19: Prepare a series of 3 – 5 automated messages for new subscribers. Welcome them to your web page and portfolio. Include links that make them return to your webpage (blog posts, testimonials, sample content). Include a link that takes them directly to Audible, to register for the free trial period.
Hack No. 20: After receiving the automated messages for new subscribers, email your list once a week. You want your subscribers to keep in touch with you. Invite them to interact in polls, and comments, read new blog posts, and try new free sample content before anyone else. Make sure to always include between 2 – 4 links on each message.
Hack: No. 21: Create a warm-up automated campaign to let your subscribers know you will launch a new product. Offer them an early bird discount if possible. This strategy works very well for all types of products. In my experience, I’ve got satisfactory results with audio courses, video courses, and short audiobooks that I sell directly on my web pages.
Hack No. 22: If you sell your audio products or eBooks from your web page you need an e-commerce plugin like WooCommerce, to enable payments with Stripe or Paypal. If you don’t want to install one, you may pick Teespring.com or WarriorPlus.com.
- Teespring allows users to buy digital products as well as merchandise. Think of some nice designs. It would be something new and fun that can captivate some of your audience!
- If you use WarriorPlus, advise your subscribers to untick the boxes that enable receiving email marketing from them. They focus on digital marketing mainly and that niche is not your emphasis. You don’t want them to get distracted or bothered with those messages.
Read more details about digital marketing and the Amazon Bounty and Associates programs.
