Use The "Landing Page" To Pitch Your Book Pt1

Not too long ago I was among the legions of authors using Twitter to pitch my books.  Review quotes from readers with a call to 'buy my book' were my method.  But late last year I started getting away from this type of pitch.  I changed because my tweets stopped being effective.  On Super Bowl Sunday 2012 my tweets: Not watching the Super Bowl today?  Have I got a HELL of a read for you garnered me enough sales to propel Boyfriend From Hell onto several Amazon top 100 lists for a few hours.  Yet by September of that same year my blatant pitch tweets had become less and less effective.  The main reason was, when I started tweeting 'buy my book' back in 2011 there were possibly thousands of authors doing this.  By the end of last year there were 10s of thousands or more.  My once very effective tweets had become Twitter clutter or worse--SPAM.

This is the first of three posts about changing up your strategy by using a landing page to attract new readers to your books.  I'm going to begin by dealing with the question: what is a landing page?

Wikipedia states: Landing pages are often linked to from social media, email campaigns or search engine marketing campaigns in order to enhance the effectiveness of the advertisements.

A piece on CopyBlogger states: A landing page is any page on a website where traffic is sent specifically to prompt a certain action or result.

A good way for us to answer this question is to first establish what a landing page is not. A landing page can't be any page on your website.  They're all pages on which one might "land," but for our purposes, a landing page is a page where you can send traffic so that you can make a broader, more impassioned pitch about your book or books. 

I began reading about landing pages last January, and started experimenting with one of my own.  I'm still experimenting, updating my page to make it more effective while trying to discover new ways to get readers to the page.  The post I referenced earlier in Copyblogger states: Think of a golf course… a landing page is the putting green that you drive the ball (prospect) to.  That's very well stated.

A landing page is a good idea for any author, but it's an even more effective tool if you're writing a book series or have a number of books available. Here's a screenshot of Ted Dekker's landing page, touting his up-coming novel while still making you aware of the rest of the series:

Here's a link to my own landing page.  Remember, it's still a work in progress: http://incrediblereads.blogspot.com/

So, a landing page is a page where you send prospective readers in order to make a strong pitch for them to download your book. In a growing marketplace, your landing page can distinguish you from other authors. Think of it as a chance to tell a reader more about you and your book to help influence their buying decision.

In part 2 of this series I'm going to tell you how you can build your own landing page in less than an hour, and what should be included on that page. In part 3 we'll discuss how to use Twitter and other marketing tools to find prospects to send to your page.  And while you're on my page, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.   Please leave a comment letting me know what you think of this piece and my landing page.  Thanks.

Peace.