Tag: marketing on a budget

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Marketing Sense

Are You Making This Costly Email Mistake?

Marketing sense

It seemed like such a great idea. Last summer, with four Lead Magnets offered on my website’s Home page, I created five more (private) Lead Magnets, each coordinating with one of my five-part continuing sessions at a Christian writers’ conference.

Nine active Lead Magnets! Sweeeet, right? Read on!

Content, design, and creation went smoothly. At the end of each continuing session at the conference, I shared the link to that session’s Lead Magnet with class attendees. (They were not made public.)

A few conferees opted-in for one session-related Lead Magnet. Some for three. Some for all five. It was smooth sailing until (cue the scary music)…my 4-part Welcome email series, unique to each Lead Magnet’s topic, ran its course.

That’s when I realized I’d goofed. BIG TIME! My email well had run dry because though I’d worked ahead and had my Welcome email series uploaded, I stopped working ahead without realizing I’d pay for it.

One bright morning, having already posted a well-thought-out email for each of my four Home page’s Lead Magnets each week, it hit me…I’d need an email for each of the five new Lead Magnet subscriber groups, too.

Nine weekly emails, each requiring content unique to that Lead Magnet’s topic.
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Every week. Along with my many other duties. Ack! But I met my obligation.

I rode that horse for four months. Then, exhausted, I merged all nine Lead Magnet subscriber groups together and sent the same email to everyone.

But that’s not a long-term solution. In my *Welcome email series, I’d promised to guide new subscribers deeper into the topic of their chosen Lead Magnet. I couldn’t keep that promise if I stopped writing nine separate emails.

In a revolving door of poor choices, I had to choose one.

So I’ve been sending one weekly email to all subscribers of all nine Lead Magnets,
rotating topics each week. Not just a short paragraph or two; a fully developed article. But only one per week. Not nine.

Subscribers are getting powerful content, but it’s not focused on their unique interest, revealed by the Lead Magnets they requested. Sigh. 🙁

I’m asking Christ for a better solution. (He is The Perfect Marketer, you know.)

Unintentionally trapping myself into this content corner is a valuable lesson I’ll not forget. Plus, it’s embarrassing. Then why share it here…publicly? To help you avoid such a slip-up.

Does That Mean You Should Only Offer One Lead Magnet at a Time?

No! Lead Magnets are your most effective marketing asset…and they’re FREE! Done well, each one helps you grow your online platform by showcasing a different slice of your knowledge to your ideal audience. Show them you know “your stuff” via this short content piece, and they’ll want more from you including, perhaps, your just released book. 🙂

Here’s the Secret to Getting It All Done on Time

Create your Lead Magnet: design, content, and great title. Next, write your Welcome email sequence. Then plan and write your next 4-8 weekly emails. Upload everything…BEFORE promoting your lead magnet.

Continue working ahead. This healthy habit gives you room to breathe, to address unexpected issues in your personal or professional life, and to enjoy peace of mind. BIG payoff there!

This is how you can avoid the costliest email mistake I’ve made in 20+ years.

Click here read part 1 of my Welcome Email Series and here for parts two-four.

Patricia Durgin is an Online Marketing Coach and Facebook Live Expert. She trains Christian writers and speakers exclusively, helping them develop their messaging, marketing funnels, conversational emails, and Facebook Live programs. Patricia hosted 505 (60-minute) Facebook Live programs from 2018-2020. That program is on indefinite hiatus. She’s also a regular faculty member at Christian writers and speakers conferences around the country.

Categories
Guest Posts

The Top 3 Easiest Ways to Market Your Book on a Budget

You’ve written a book and published, and that felt like the hard part. But marketing your book is one of the most important items on an author’s to-do list. Or at least it should be. After all, how can you expect any sales if you don’t get your book out there, in front of the hungry readers who want to dive into your story?

In this article, we’ll look at three easy ways you can market your book on a budget. 

1. Newsletter Swaps 

The first step to building a great author platform and making your marketing efforts easier is growing a mailing list of your readers. You can do this by: 

  1. Writing a reader magnet (this is a short, free book or resource that you give away to your readers to get them to sign up for your list). 
  2. Signing up for a mailing list service. I suggest MailerLite because you get so much with your free account and you can have up to 1,000 contacts. It’s also super easy to set up. 
  3. Put a link to your reader magnet in the back of your books, asking readers to sign up. 
  4. Distribute your reader magnet using either BookFunnel or StoryOrigin (StoryOrigin is free). 

With that out of the way, let’s talk about newsletter swaps. 

Newsletter swaps are when authors who have mailing lists take turns sharing each other’s books. So, Author A shares Author B’s book and vice versa. 

It’s important for both authors to be in similar genres. For instance, if you write sci fi, you probably wouldn’t benefit too much from a romantic mystery books author promoting you to their readers. And you should make sure any books you choose to promote are books your own readers will enjoy. 

But how do you find these other authors? Well, that’s where StoryOrigin comes in. 

It’s a completely free service authors can sign up for, and they facilitate author swaps by connecting you with other authors in your genre. It’s pretty neat. 

2. Revamp Your Cover and Blurb 

This might not be the most obvious marketing step you take, but it is probably the more important one. 

If your cover isn’t right for your genre, readers simply won’t click on it or buy your book, because they have expectations that match what they’re used to. So, if you’re writing sci-fi military books, your cover should probably look something like the bestsellers in the genre. 

It’s safe to say that readers in this genre would expect your cover to be similar if your book was a military sci-fi. And the same can be said for your title and your blurbs. 

Follow these steps to make your book more appealing to your target customers: 

  1. Check out the top 20 books in your category (independently published ones) and note down what their covers look like. 
  2. Note down what keywords the books are using in their titles, subtitles, and book descriptions. 
  3. Rewrite your blurb to better suit the genre. Check out Bryan Cohen’s book, How to Write a Sizzling Synopsisfor more direction on how to do this. 
  4. Redesign your cover (either yourself or with a cover designer). For DIY cover redesign at a low-cost price, I suggest checking out BookBrush. They’re an author friendly service that can help you redesign your cover quickly and professionally. 

3. Change Your Kindle Keywords

This might not be the most obvious way to market your book, but it’s a big one. If you’ve ever set up a book in your KDP Dashboard before, you’ll have seen 7 boxes on the first page of setup.

Basically, your goal is to enter keywords into these boxes that help Amazon present your books to readers browsing the Kindle Store. But how do you find those keywords? 

Well, you can follow this method: 

  1. Open Amazon in your browser’s incognito mode and select ‘Kindle Store’ from the dropdown menu. 
  2. Type in a keyword that best suits your book ‘military sci-fi’ for instance. Type in ‘military sci-fi a’, ‘military sci-fi b’ etc. and note down all the auto-fill keyword phrases that Amazon gives you. These are all search terms that readers have typed into Amazon before. 
  3. Check out the competition for these keywords by looking at the top 3 books and working out how many books they sold to get there. You can do this by noting their ABSR then heading over to my Amazon Sales Rank Calculator and working it out. If they’re not selling many books, the keyword might be no good. 
  4. Once you have your list of keywords, make sure they’re ‘allowed’ by Amazon by checking out their keyword requirements here.
  5. Now you have your list of keywords, input them into the boxes. 

If you already have these keywords boxes filled, start by changing only two of them (and write down the original keywords you had in there before you change them). Then, wait 5-7 days to see if your sales go up. If they don’t, change back to the old keywords, if they do, keep the new ones and consider performing more experiments. Here’s a full guide on changing your keywords. 

Final Thoughts

Publishing a book can definitely cost money, but marketing your book doesn’t have to be super expensive. That’s why I recommend the above three methods for getting the most bang for your buck. 

Cheers! 

Dave Chesson is the creator of Kindlepreneur.com, a website devoted to teaching advanced book Marketing which even Amazon KDP acknowledge as one of the best by telling users to “Gain insight from Kindlepreneur on how you can optimize marketing for your books.” Having worked with such authors as Orson Scott Card, Ted Dekker and more, his tactics help both Fiction and Nonfiction authors of all levels get their books discovered by the right readers.

Categories
Guest Posts

10 Best Marketing Books For Authors Ever Written

There are a lot of talented authors on the Best Writers Online and Online Writers Rating custom writing reviews platforms. There are a lot of talented authors we even don’t know about since they are not willing to show their creative results to the world.

However, do you know what is the difference between a talented writer and a successful writer? The successful writer does his best to market his creative offspring. Surely, you want to be successful and talented at the same time, so here is the list of the best marketing books that will help you with this task.

Online Marketing for Busy Authors: A Step-By-Step Guide by Fauzia Burke

According to the author, technology is the best thing available to authors in our time. Promotion and advertising have never been so easy and effective, unless, of course, you know what you are doing. The author of this book knows how to make you a popular online author, and is happy to share tips on creating landing pages, developing a social presence, and sending effective email newsletters. Plus, the book contains great time management tips to finish your new book on time.

● Rating on Amazon – 4.6 out of 5

Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins

A well-known saying states that the artist must be constantly hungry so that thoughts about how to earn his living stimulate creative impulses. The author of this book destroys this theory and proves that the best artist is the artist whose work is highly paid.

Regardless of whether you are painting in oil or writing a book, your work must be paid. And well paid. The author helps to accept this idea within oneself and find the first promotion strategies.

● Rating on Amazon – 4.6 out of 5

Sell Your Book Like Wildfire by Rob Eagar

This book one of the best marketing books that can be called a strategy for developing your brand. Each page is a step-by-step explanation of what you need to do to start a stream of conversations about you, and most importantly, what you need to do so that your book starts to be sold both in physical stores and online. The author offers a comprehensive strategy for your popularization, which will work under the main condition – your book should be really interesting and sought-after.

● Rating on Amazon – 4.5 out of 5

I Must Write My Book by Honoree Corder

How is this book interconnected with the marketing of your own one? Here is the most direct connection. In this book, the author teaches you to write consistently, purposefully, not to lose inspiration and motivation, to maintain clarity of thought and, moreover, to do it easily. As a result, you get a better product, and the better the product, the easier it is to market it.

● Rating on Amazon – 4.9 out of 5

Reader Magnets: Build Your Author Platform and Sell more Books on Kindle by Nick Stephenson

In this book, the author proposes a strategy that successfully mixes a creative approach, technology, and relationship management. Its formula for success is simple – give readers a lot of cool content for free, and at some point, they themselves will want to pay for your book. No false advertising and misleading marketing – only value, value and one more value.

● Rating on Amazon – 4.6 out of 5

Your First 1000 Copies by Tim Grahl

This book received many rave reviews from writers who became best selling New York Times authors, and with the help of this book as well. The author puts your reader at the forefront and teaches you how to start a relationship, engage, build trust, and sell without causing feelings of irritation and imposition.

● Rating on Amazon – 4.5 out of 5

Write. Publish. Repeat. (The No-Luck-Required Guide to Self-Publishing Success) by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant

This book teaches writing and selling at the same time. Moreover, the authors prove that publication is not the most difficult part as many authors consider. Using the techniques described in this book, you can create a work for which publishers will fight with each other.

● Rating on Amazon – 4.7 out of 5

Write To Market by Chris Fox

This book is a pure marketing approach to writing yours. No, the author does not deny the need for creativity and an artistic approach but insists that before you write something, you need to analyze the market or the preferences of readers. This is the only way to create a sought after product and sell it.

● Rating on Amazon – 4.7 out of 5

How to Make a Living As a Writer by James Scott Bell

In this book, the author suggests turning your writing into a business because technology has given the best opportunity for this. This book is a collection of secrets on how to write well, not to lose inspiration, to sing more in less time, organize your business, and receive passive income from writing.

● Rating on Amazon – 4.7 out of 5

How to Write Copy That Sells: The Step-By-Step System for More Sales, to More Customers, More Often by Ray Edwards

This is a great book for those who not only make money by writing but also help others earn and sell more. If you are a freelance copywriter or owner of a business, open this book now. It will teach you how to write so that the sales of your product grow organically.

● Rating on Amazon – 4.6 out of 5

Do you know more books on authors’ marketing? We will kindly appreciate your suggestions, so feel free to post a comment and share it!

Frank Hamilton is a blogger and translator from Manchester. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and self-education. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.

Categories
Publicity

Creating Free Graphics or Memes for Authors

Graphics or memes have become an easy way to make any subject matter or content viral. What are they? Simply they are an image overlaid with text that engages people to learn more or to share them. As an author you want to have these in your arsenal. Facebook photos have an 87% interaction rate!

Think about this. When you are scrolling through your social media feeds don’t you take a moment to read the writing on the images even if you don’t mean to? Simply put, humans are visual creatures. The Facebook graphic is one tool that will be useful for a long time to come.

With Facebook’s news feed restrictions the graphic or meme is one way that you can get creative and get around the diminished page views. Photos are not part of the promotional restriction nor are blog content posts since the algorithm cannot read the writing on the images. What does this mean for the author market? This is an excellent way to expand your reader base and get your content seen.pics

That said, as an author who may not have the resources to hire a design team to build some great graphics how are
you to compete? There are several free websites that cater to photo design software intended for use for these type of products. Today I will be talking about two of these products that I use nearly every day.

First there is Picmonkey.com. Picmonkey is a simple and easy to use website that can allow you to make graphics with very few limits on what you can do. This is the first I recommend learning for authors that want to be able to be as creative as they would like. Here are some of the pros and cons of this specific website.

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Pros:

  • Free version
  • Allows editing of any kind of image
  • Automatically gives dimensions for project based on style of project.

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Cons:

  • You provide the images
  • Very limited designs for premade items
  • Learning curve

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Canva1

Second there is Canva.com. This site is visually stunning and has many more options than Picmonkey. This site gives you previews of how you can set up your images to look and then allows you to change nearly any element in it. They also have stock images with licensing for $1 each. (This is definitely better than some of the sites out there like Shutterstock.) Even the free elements are top quality and crisp.

 

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Pros:

  • Free image options
  • Previews of how it can look
  • High quality output and sizing for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google +

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Cons:

  • More of a learning curve
  • Cannot embed an image overtop of another image

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Here are some examples from each site for you to get the feel of what the sites are capable of. If you are not interested in creating your own graphics there are many people willing to do this for nominal fees. You are welcome to contact me and I will put you in contact with a match for your budget and content. Click on the images to see them full size.

[bctt tweet=”Create top quality author Facebook memes with these tips. #AuthorRT #MarketingYourBook”]