You know content marketing is important to building and growing your business as a self-published author, but how do you go about moving forward with a strategy that really works?

The key is to set clear, purposeful small goals that get you closer to your ultimate goal of selling more of your books. That’s the way to develop a winning strategy that allows you to build a thriving business.

Aspects of your marketing plan should focus on these five essential marketing goals for self-published authors.

Attract new readers to your marketing funnel.

One goal that every self-published author should have at the top of their list is to continually attract new potential readers.

Running a successful promotional campaign to sell your books relied on creating a system that attracts well-qualified leads and guides them right into your marketing funnel.

Content marketing is the perfect vehicle for each stage of the process.

• The first step is to develop content that your ideal customer really wants to read. Through that content, you gently lead them to a landing page where you can capture their email with the promise of delivering more amazing content.

• The next step is to deliver more interesting content on a regular basis. This helps deepen the relationship with your audience and lets them know you have their best interest at heart.

• The final step is to use even more content to convert your potential customer into a buyer of your book. Once you have succeeded in converting a prospect into a loyal fan, the chances of them purchasing your previous and subsequent book publications increase exponentially and the conversion process becomes much easier.

It’s important to remember to never hard sell or try to pressure your reader into signing up for your list or buying your book.

Content marketing is all about giving your potential customer the right content and great information that they can use to decide whether or not what you have to offer is right for their needs.

Creating compelling content on an ongoing basis virtually guarantees that you’ll keep your marketing machine fueled and running, leading to more and more sales of your books.

Get the attention of search engines.

Every good writer knows that while creating content intended to wow their readers, the focus should never be on search engine optimization.

In the past, keyword stuffing and unnatural-sounding exact match phrases have worked well for pages to reach the top of search engine results.

Unfortunately, this led to many people being severely disappointed by monotonous content that didn’t really answer their questions in an entertaining, educational, and interesting way.

Today, the ultimate goal of search engines is to provide searchers with the best content possible, and they have made changes to ensure that is possible.

This means that when you create content for marketing purposes, your primary goal should be to ensure that you meet and exceed the needs of your potential customers.

The better you can figure out what your audience wants and deliver it to them, the more love you’ll get from search engines. Over time, this translates to more traffic, more landing page conversions, and ultimately more sales of your books.

Build a relationship with your audience.

A fundamental truth of doing business in today’s world is that people come from those they know and like.

Consumers are now smarter, have more information to help them make decisions, and have more purchasing options than at any time in history. What this means is that traditional marketing has been turned on its head and the ball is now in your prospects’ court.

If they don’t know or like you, your brand and your products, you have a better chance of winning the lottery than of getting something bought from you.

The easy way out of this dilemma is to recognize that your prospects are real human beings and not some nameless, faceless bunch you just want to buy, buy, and buy more.

If success in self-published book sales is your goal, a very important goal should be to constantly build and deepen the relationship you have with your audience with each piece of content you publish.

Empathizing, understanding their needs, delivering value, and contacting them regularly are all effective in achieving this.

Discover new opportunities for future projects.

As an author, you are always exploring new ideas for future projects and manuscripts that may become your next bestseller.

The good news is that if used correctly, content marketing can dramatically increase your inspiration and spark a flow of new ideas and opportunities to develop future writing projects.

An important goal to set with your content marketing strategy is to experiment regularly, with a focus on discovering exactly what your readers would like to see more of from you.

You can also use the response to your content as a research tool and to discover valuable information.

Pay close attention to your audience’s reaction to different types of content and to the various topics and discussions in your niche. Read comments and measure likes, shares, and click-through rates.

After posting multiple pieces of marketing content, you’ll begin to notice patterns and discover new opportunities.

Your content marketing efforts could also lead to new strategic partnerships to promote your books alongside other authors whose audience is similar to yours and therefore likely to be receptive to your offers, and vice versa.

So another aspect of this goal would be to be on the lookout for these types of collaboration opportunities.

Build a loyal fan base.

Attracting a steady stream of new prospects into your marketing funnel should be a top goal for every self-published author who wants to see success with their book sales. However, putting all of his focus on bringing new prospects into his funnel means leaving a lot of opportunities on the table.

Countless studies show that when you sell a product (like your book), you make the majority of your revenue from a relatively small percentage of your total customers. This is the 80/20 rule in action.

In the long run, you can expect about 80 percent of your sales to come from about 20 percent of your customers.

Another way to look at it is that it’s easier to get someone who’s already bought something from you to buy again than it is to convert a new potential customer.

This means that focusing on deepening loyalty with people who have already bought your book is, if not, even more important than developing content to attract new leads.

One of your content marketing goals should always be to provide existing customers and fans with an amazing experience that encourages them to seek out you and your books whenever they want a literary pick-me-up.

An added bonus is that building a loyal fan base makes it easier to attract even more quality leads without having to do additional marketing.

Word of mouth is the most powerful method of growing a business.

By offering valuable content and products to your followers, you make them active ambassadors, promoters and champions of your brand.

Keep these five essential goals in sight as you create and execute your content marketing plan, and you’ll be well on your way to more leads, more fans, and more book sales.