Do you need help marketing your book? Bob and Cheryl in Bestseller: 100 Nearly Free Ways to Market your Book give 100 free or inexpensive ways that they have personally used in marketing their popular 14 books.
Authors and national conference speakers since 1992, even with some of their published books with Christian national publishing companies, still needed do some extra book marketing themselves. Without a huge budget, they marketed with big and small ideas (some out-of-the-box) that all added up to some big results. These are up-to-date and sure bet marketing ideas that can be used in a variety of settings for a variety of things.
Here's a sampling of some of their 100 nearly free ways to market your book:
1. Having a Prayer Team Is Key
Surround and underscore your book project with prayer. Enlist others for your prayer and accountability team. Then update them weekly on your progress via praise reports of God’s working and prayer request needs. Ask your team to pray for your venture: that God would get the glory and that He would make the paths smooth for your writing and publishing. God has given you a calling to write a book. He will give the holy wisdom, strength, love, and grace to accomplish what He asks you to do.
44. Make it Mobile-Friendly
Make optimal connections for your content for mobile. Shorten your content. Customers like to have interactive exchanges with authors. Ask for feedback on merchandise. Solicit opinions on a column by ending with a sample comment with a question. Add mobile surveys. Giving people quick and easy access to interact via mobile devices is a vital key to gaining readers. More than 50 percent of consumers are now checking their email on mobile devices so you need to make the mobile connection a priority in your set-ups.
69. Outrageous Service to Others
A. Announce a time when you will wrap Christmas gifts at no cost. Connect this event with an open house and book signing for your newest book. B. Hand out cold bottled water with your book’s website stamped on the wrapper. www.orientaltrading.com/personalized-monogram-bottle-labels-light-blue-a2-3_3917.fltr?prodCatId=501331&tabId=1
91. Experiential Marketing
A new marketing technique is called Experiential Marketing. Applied to the sale of your book it comes down to this concept: If a reader “experiences” your book’s idea they will love it. To give your book some launch momentum, you want it in your readers’ hands and soon they will be buying it. An example of experiential marketing would be how the iPhone companies sell phones to teens. Once the teens have an iPhone in their hands and see how it works—how fun and cool this brand or model makes you feel—then you want the cell phone. So Smartphone companies have booths outside concerts and get teens to play and text with their newest phone and then sign them up to buy their own model while they are experiencing that new model with their physical senses and loving it. Perhaps you could set up a little reader nook with complimentary designer coffee near your book table at a trade show or conference so potential customers could read the first chapter of your book for free. That would be a perfect example of how to make experiential marketing work for you, the author.
92. “Haul” Marketing Video
What is “haul” marketing? Whatever the book or product, you have someone with an outgoing personality make a video of themselves coming home from a shopping trip where they have purchased your books. They talk about what is in their shopping bag and explain each book and how or where they are going to read it or give it away. The good “haul” marketing videos are going viral. Sponsor a “haul marketing” video contest - your book/s included in their “haul."
Authors and national conference speakers since 1992, even with some of their published books with Christian national publishing companies, still needed do some extra book marketing themselves. Without a huge budget, they marketed with big and small ideas (some out-of-the-box) that all added up to some big results. These are up-to-date and sure bet marketing ideas that can be used in a variety of settings for a variety of things.
Here's a sampling of some of their 100 nearly free ways to market your book:
1. Having a Prayer Team Is Key
Surround and underscore your book project with prayer. Enlist others for your prayer and accountability team. Then update them weekly on your progress via praise reports of God’s working and prayer request needs. Ask your team to pray for your venture: that God would get the glory and that He would make the paths smooth for your writing and publishing. God has given you a calling to write a book. He will give the holy wisdom, strength, love, and grace to accomplish what He asks you to do.
44. Make it Mobile-Friendly
Make optimal connections for your content for mobile. Shorten your content. Customers like to have interactive exchanges with authors. Ask for feedback on merchandise. Solicit opinions on a column by ending with a sample comment with a question. Add mobile surveys. Giving people quick and easy access to interact via mobile devices is a vital key to gaining readers. More than 50 percent of consumers are now checking their email on mobile devices so you need to make the mobile connection a priority in your set-ups.
69. Outrageous Service to Others
A. Announce a time when you will wrap Christmas gifts at no cost. Connect this event with an open house and book signing for your newest book. B. Hand out cold bottled water with your book’s website stamped on the wrapper. www.orientaltrading.com/personalized-monogram-bottle-labels-light-blue-a2-3_3917.fltr?prodCatId=501331&tabId=1
91. Experiential Marketing
A new marketing technique is called Experiential Marketing. Applied to the sale of your book it comes down to this concept: If a reader “experiences” your book’s idea they will love it. To give your book some launch momentum, you want it in your readers’ hands and soon they will be buying it. An example of experiential marketing would be how the iPhone companies sell phones to teens. Once the teens have an iPhone in their hands and see how it works—how fun and cool this brand or model makes you feel—then you want the cell phone. So Smartphone companies have booths outside concerts and get teens to play and text with their newest phone and then sign them up to buy their own model while they are experiencing that new model with their physical senses and loving it. Perhaps you could set up a little reader nook with complimentary designer coffee near your book table at a trade show or conference so potential customers could read the first chapter of your book for free. That would be a perfect example of how to make experiential marketing work for you, the author.
92. “Haul” Marketing Video
What is “haul” marketing? Whatever the book or product, you have someone with an outgoing personality make a video of themselves coming home from a shopping trip where they have purchased your books. They talk about what is in their shopping bag and explain each book and how or where they are going to read it or give it away. The good “haul” marketing videos are going viral. Sponsor a “haul marketing” video contest - your book/s included in their “haul."
