Book Pre-Launch Buyer Journey Interviews

Book Pre-Launch Buyer Journey Interviews

A key way to determine your readers interests, how and where they are likely to find your book, and their key buying motivators is to ask them. Buyer journey interviews identify the steps, interactions, and media that your readers take to purchase your book. Talk to to 5-15 people from your top 3-5 qualified audience categories.

Reader Personas – are classifications that groups of potential book readers are assigned to based on shared interests or problems in need of solutions. Personas are more than market segments. They are a set of characteristics that include job roles, typical activities, and other psychographic and behavioral characteristics.

Topic and Media Discovery – learn key interests, challenges, and paint points or desires for your qualified audience. Discover what media channels they look on (web search, groups, etc) for topic related information.

Invite List – who to invite and how to invite them. This can be a mix of some close friends you already know (first interviews), qualified connections (Linkedin), and new invites (post book interview invites on topic discussion groups). 

Interview Questions – start with basic questions to learn the background (qualifications) and interests of the person. Ask open ended questions and take notes on key words and phrases they use.

Benefit List Review – after you have gotten their unbiased viewpoint, show them a list of key benefits and ask them to prioritize how important they are: 1 – not very important, 10 – extremely important. Ask them to provide some key reasons why these benefits are important.

Interview Analysis – review and compare your lists to determine the most important interests (dominant buying motivators – DBMs), keywords they use, and which media channels are important for you setup or participate with.