Madeline Martin

Heating Up History

Effective Marketing at a Low Cost

A majority of sales come from having a person exposed to an item at least five times.

Five. Times.

Whoa.

I’m going to let that sink in a moment.

So, when it comes to books, how can you possibly get your book out there so someone sees it at least five times? I mean, that’s crazy, right?

Crazy (in that maddening way), yes. Impossible, no.

The great thing is, there are easy-to-use, low cost marketing avenues out there.

I confess since before the release of my debut, Deception of a Highlander, I’ve put myself on a personal mission to get the hang of this whole marketing thing. The way I see it, I worked too darn hard to get this book series written and published to let it sink into oblivion because I didn’t tell enough people.

I did a LOT of trial and error and the thought of someone else having to go through that error part just makes me cringe.

So, I’m going to share with all of you the most effective paid marketing I implemented to try to get Deception of a Highlander a household, at-least-five-times-so-you-buy-it hit. And because I’m one of those girls who never orders anything off a menu without a price listed, I’m going to give you the benefit of listing the cost.

(*NOTE: All costs for all vendors are listed as of May 2015 and are subject to change, especially if you’re reading this in 2017. Just sayin)

Without further ado, here is my list of my favorite marketing vendors and how much they charge:

 

highlander-PAIRBookmarks

I confess I was hesitant to try these initially because I’ve tossed more bookmarks at conferences than I’ve kept (sorry, fellow authors…), but then I saw a swag call and figured – what the heck? Why not?

And THANK GOODNESS, because bookmarks ended up being one of the greatest things I’ve ever ordered for the following reasons:

  • Reminders
    • Telling someone your name and book title after a conversation is easily forgotten.
    • Pulling a bookmark out of your purse and politely handing it to them after the conversation is a great way to ensure they remember you, and your book.
  • Friends/family/fans
    • Not only does sending bookmarks to family, friends and fans get your name in front of their friends, it encourages word of mouth if they loved your book. Is there any better advertising than that?
    • Also, fans LOVE getting bookmarks – it’s fun swag for them and most are super excited to pass them out to friends. J
  • Swag Calls
    • There are ALWAYS swag calls for all different kinds of conferences. Yes, a majority will probably be thrown away, but some will still be picked up and taken home. And of those who just look at it and walk past, you can add that to the notch of “at least five” instances of exposure to your book.
    • Additional note: These are great to leave out at doctor offices/gyms/restaurants etc and some authors even leave them at restaurants (note: please tip well if you’re going to do this…)

Talina Perkins of BOOKIN IT DESIGNS does an incredible job on creating these beautiful masterpieces. She’s super sweet, easy to work with and stands behind her great service. Even better – she only charges $35 to design it.

She likes to go through GotPrint (but can tailor it toward any printer you prefer because she’s got mad skills like that). I can attest to the incredible quality of the colorful, glossy coated beautiful product they deliver. Their prices are as follows (there are more options, but these are the ones I’ve used):

1,000 is $31.36 (not including shipping)

2,500 is $68.80 (not including shipping)

Great news for you: Talina was so excited to make it to list of my favorite marketing vendors that she is offering $5 off bookmark designs from 5/18/15 – 5/22/15 for customers who use coupon code: MARTINMINUS5

I strongly suggest you take her up on her great offer or sign her mailing list to get notified of great deals throughout the year. She’s a treasure I’m SO grateful I was referred to.

*Note: BOOKIN IT DESIGNS offers other great services I haven’t yet used, but I imagine are as well done as her bookmarks – such as: book covers, business cards, trading cards, post cards, etc. Check out her site for more info on everything: http://www.bookinitdesigns.com/possession-PAIR

 

Facebook Parties

I was a little intimidated by a FB party at first because, well, really what IS a FB party?

It’s a party you create for everyone to attend from the comfort of their homes. I actually wrote another blog post on how to attend FB parties (which is a great thing to forward to any family/friends who are not familiar with how to be part of one): http://www.madelinemartin.com/how-to-enjoy-a-facebook-party/

Why a FB Party:

  • Guest Authors
    • The guest authors you invite to take time slots at your party (usually 30 min increments) invite their friends and fans, so you have more attendees. Also, with more guest authors, there will be more giveaways, thus drawing more people.
  • Great Exposure
    • People who attend for your guest author will get to learn about other new authors. It’s a great chance for cross-fan exposure between guest authors and the host.
  • Free
    • Aside from the cost of the giveaway you are doing, it’s free.
    • *Note, you can find someone to help co-host for a nominal fee (WORTH IT!) – details below.
  • More FB Fans
    • Not only will you get more fans based off posting a link to your FB author page, you can also go through the party after the fact and (if your posts were made with your FB author page profile) you can invite all the people who liked your post to like your FB page as well. J

I used Ashley Granger of SECRET REALM to help me host my FB release party. She was amazing and helped everything transition smoothly. Having her there to help was such a bigger relief than I ever realized possible. She does a lot of other virtual personal assistant services as well, but for FB parties, she charges between $30-50 depending on how involved she needs to be.

Ashley is personable and thorough and totally on top of everything. See Ashley’s SECRET REALM website for more info: http://thesecretrealm.com/services/

 

StickerPicStickers

I had stickers made of my first book cover and absolutely loved how they came out. I went through an etsy shop called BUTTONHEAD and worked with the owner, Ali, on designing them. She’s a true professional and went through the design several times to ensure I was happy with them. J

Why stickers:

  • Leaves a mark
    • Stickers can go anywhere and in towns where stickers are plastered on posterboards meant to advertise for people, it’s a great place to leave your mark.
    • Additionally, my brother is taking a pic with him and my stickers everywhere in the world he goes. It’s awesome to see where my mark gets left.
    • *Note: Please be aware of WHERE you put your stickers and only put them in approved places.
  • Great way to ‘sign’ ebooks
    • Not everyone likes to get paperback books these days and not all authors have print books to sign.
    • Signing a sticker is a great way to work around that. Then your fans can put the sticker wherever they like with your signature on it! J
  • Fun swag
    • A sticker is a little different than most of the swag out there. It’s small, portable and fun because you can stick it literally anywhere. I’ve had a lot of great feedback from friends/fans on my stickers.

You can touch base with Ali through her BUTTONHEAD Etsy shop.

She does 100 – 2” stickers for $36 https://www.etsy.com/listing/112956335/100-custom-labels-stickers-fast-shipping

100 – 2.5” tattoos for $84 https://www.etsy.com/listing/65834633/100-wedding-favors-wholesale-customStickerPicHeck

 

Mass Tweets

When I say mass tweets, I mean mass tweets. BOOKTWEETER posts a crazy amount of tweets repeatedly throughout the day. I tracked this on Bitly and saw a huge jump not only the day I ran the tweet, but also the day after (after that it seemed to drop off a bit).

Here’s why BOOKTWEETER is nice:

  • Spread Order
    • You pay per day for BOOKTWEETER to tweet your posts – I’ll include totals below. The more days you pay for up front, the cheaper your daily payment. Additionally, you can spread the days out, so they don’t all five have to be done at once.
  • You’re Hands Off
    • They tweet so much, you’d surely drop followers if you did that. They tweet all day long so you don’t have to. It’s kind of nice to just sit back and watch the tweet magic happen.
  • Lots of Followers
    • BOOKTWEETER has over 500K followers that receive their tweets – that’s a ton of exposure.

You can pay $19 for one day all the way up to $75 for 5 days. See those package details and all the ones in between at their website here: http://booktweeters.com/

 

Personalized Mass Tweets

COVERREVEALS is one of the most incredible personalized tweet/website service coordinators I’ve ever been in touch with. There are plenty of reasons why:

  • FREE
    • COVERREVEALS offers free book release postings for authors on their website. They book in advance, so make sure you sign up as soon as you know your release date.
  • Personalized Tweets
    • Not only do they do tweets (for a nominal fee detailed below) multiple days before your free posting, they also personalize them.
    • It’s not the same bland tweet sent out over and over and over, it’s customized to be different and tailored toward what people want to read and what people respond to. How’s THAT for great customer service?
  • Personable
    • The owner of COVERREVEALS genuinely cares about writers and helping us through our careers. Every time we’ve communicated, I’ve gotten a very thorough response.
  • Many Days of Tweeting
    • Depending on what date you are doing your free post, there will be many days of tweeting (as in a couple of weeks’ worth!) every day or so until your actual post. This builds up a lot of anticipation for the actual post, so when it goes up, people are more inclined to check it out. J
  • Daily Hits
    • COVERREVEALS website receives 4800 – 6800 hits per day, which gives your book a great chance to be seen.
  • Lots of Reach
    • COVERREVEALS has such a great fan base, a lot of people retweet on a regular basis. This is great because it gives the tweets 50k-200k people seeing what’s being put out there!
  • More than Twitter
    • COVERREVEALS doesn’t just post on Twitter for you, they also post on Google+ and Tsu, so if you’re not really active on either of those (this author is not) then its additional exposure in a market you aren’t even staking a claim in yet.

I’m currently using COVERREVEALS for a couple different services and their prices are amazing:

To have your upcoming release show on the Coming Soon page (it’s usually up for about 3 months): $5

An additional service for the Coming Soon page covers tweets created and sent 7 days prior to the release: $10

If your free post is after the release date, you can get tweets done until the date of the post: $15

COVERREVEALS offers many more services for really incredible prices here: http://coverreveals.blogspot.com/p/author-services.html

 

Final Recap

To do a quick, final recap (because I know this was a ridiculously long post):

I’ll be including all these links on my website as well so they are easily found. I hope everyone has gotten some good information from this post (sorry it’s so long!)

Please feel free to comment below with your own tips on what worked well for you with marketing your book.

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