That phrase was on a poster in the classroom where I once learned the basics of the French language. It was put there by my very wise French teacher. He lived by those words, and pushed those words on everyone. It's about setting goals, but also, it's about setting targets.

Marketing is such a huge topic that it would take me months of steady writing to cover it. There are whole books, whole courses, and people who dedicate their lives to marketing. They do it full-time and get paid big money for it.

I don't get paid big money. In fact, as far as marketing goes, I'm pretty much a novice. But the one basic concept I do understand is the most absolute fundamental and important concept in marketing: you must have a target.

Nobody starts a marketing campaign without a target audience. In fact, it's impossible to make any real decision in marketing without knowing your target audience. The success or failure of your marketing campaign, no matter what the form, will depend on you knowing your target. Knowing your target will also have a big hand in whether you succeed or fail on Amazon.

Being an author, the rest of this article will be geared toward book marketing, but the concepts are the same for any product you happen to be selling. Whether it be generic widgets, books, or trips to Cancun, in order for you to really make sales your target must be well defined.

A while back I made a blog post about the Amazon Recommendation System. If you haven't read it, follow that link and read it now. Much of the following post will reference concepts introduced in that post.

Amazon's recommendation system depends very heavily on two items having lots of common purchasers. The more purchasers two items have in common, the more likely Amazon is to recommend one item to customers of the other. On top of that, only purchasers in the last six months are considered in their recommendation system. Why? Because they want to keep the recommendations fresh. They understand the value of targeted marketing. People who bought one item are very likely to buy another item that has already been purchased by many of the same customers. Their system is designed to do the targeted marketing for them.

Having a Good Product is Important

The rating on any given product makes a difference in the Amazon recommendation system. Given two books with identical purchasers, the product with the higher rating will get recommended first. This means that when the reviews start rolling in, you better make sure you've put the best product up that you possibly can.

It's also important to know who buys the type of book that you are selling. The idea is to target just the right people with your efforts so that you make the most of the purchases you get. And no, this doesn't mean relentlessly spamming message boards and Facebook groups full of people who are trying to have real discussions. You need a real plan in order to draw in those customers, and it's almost certainly not going to happen with the first book you release.

What About Amazon Select?

Select is no exception. Here's a secret that many people don't consider when they decide to have an Amazon Select free promo:

Every single person who downloads your book for free counts as a purchaser.

Yep. When Amazon starts recommending your book to people after the free promo ends, it will consider all those new "purchasers" in its system. If you target your promotion right, you can enjoy an extended period of strong sales as a result of those recommendations.

If you splash your free promo out in front of thousands of people, and do no targeting, then many of the new "purchasers" will have no books in common, and your recommendations will be next to worthless. Even worse is if those new "purchasers" have the wrong books in common, which will end up recommending your book to the completely wrong audience. This is a situation you want to avoid at all costs.

If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.

It's such an important concept that it warrants stating it again. You can't sell a book effectively without targeting your marketing efforts. Do yourself a favor before you do anything else to market your books, and take some time to define your target. Write it down, focus it as narrowly as you can, and then create a plan on how to hit that target. This will help you get the absolute most out of all of your marketing efforts.

Good luck!

If you haven't already, pick up a copy of The Time Weaver (Book I of The Time Weaver Chronicles) from Amazon.com today. Subscribe by email to my blog, and don't miss a single post!