Use The "Landing Page" To Pitch Your Book Pt3

In Part One of this series I explained what a landing page was and how it could be an important tool in your marketing arsenal.  In Part Two I showed you how to create your own landing pages in under an hour, and I gave you a few tips to increase its efficacy.  Now that you all have landing pages complete with awesome book covers and sparkling, effective copy, I'm going to give you some pointers on how to turn your pitch into book sales--which is why we're all here.

FREE STUFF

I've written a number of posts about giving books away for free, the first of which you can find here: FREE Your Ticket to Big Sales.  I'm not going to rehash what's in the post.  You can click on the link and read it for yourself.  Instead, I'm going to point you to one of America's top retailers as proof of how effective free can be.

Walk into any Costco any time of any day and you'll see customers roaming the aisles grazing on freebies.  I'm sure you've grazed on a few Costco freebies as well.  Ask yourself this: if freebies didn't sell product, would Costco continue to give them away?  Of course not.  Freebies are a successful marketing tool for Costco, used to get customers to try new stuff.  So, if one of American's top retailers is using this method, you should be, too.

Some of us aren't like author Michael R. Hicks with three books we can give away for free.  If you go to my landing page you'll see I don't give a book away at all.  Instead, I give away 4 chapters of my novel Boyfriend From Hell, the first in my The Falling Angels Saga.  If readers download my chapters and like them, some will purchase the entire book.  Many of those who like the book will go on to read the series.  You see how this works?

By the way, the free download on my landing page is longer than the one available on my Amazon page.  One caution: if you're planning to join Amazon's KDP Select program, they have limits on how much of your book you can give away for free to qualify.  Please checkout their guidelines before giving away a large chunk of your book.  If you don't want to give a way a piece of your book on your landing page, give away a short story, or a novella--any writing sample that will show off your skills and make readers want to purchase your book.  Giving away something for free is the most effective way you can monetize your landing page.

Now that your landing page is ready to monetize, where do you find customers?

Twitter

Anyone who has read me in the past knows I feel Twitter is your most effective marketing tool and it's FREE.  To use Twitter effectively requires some work.  If you don't have a tweet deck (like Hootsuite--also free) get one, because you'll want to schedule tweets touting your landing page so that they're sprinkled throughout the day.  Statistics have shown me that my tweet: No Clockwork, One Angel and a Demon from hell. Here's why The Falling Angels Saga is your next INCREDIBLE READ gets a number of clicks each time I use it. 

Alter your message so you're not saying the same thing all the time.  Start by looking at other tweeters tweets. When you find something you feel is catchy and has a pitch similar to what you're going for, adapt it to suit your pitch.  This isn't cheating.  All marketers copy success.  You should, too.  Come up with several messages to tweet throughout the day. Also, take some time to prospect for new Twitter followers, new readers to pitch your book to.  There are lots of books and blog posts on how to find new Twitter followers.  Google the words Twitter Followers.  Ignore the ads on buying followers.  They don't work.  Start by reading the posts on attracting new followers. And once you've identified new followers, you'll need to look at their profiles to qualify them as possible candidates for your book.  Lot of work?  You bet, but it can be very rewarding.

You can also try Blogads and Google Adwords to find prospects for your landing pages.  Personally, I haven't had much success with either, but I'm still experimenting with them.  But Blogads and Adwords costs money, and I believe if you do a little marketing work you can vastly increase your book sales for FREE.  The key here is it can never be on autopilot.  Some work is required.  But if you do the work, you'll reap the rewards.  That's how it is in life, isn't it?

One final thing, I chose "Incredible Reads" because it's more eye catching than just putting my book title up there:Want to find your next incredible read, go to INCREDIBLE READS.  That was the idea. 

Okay, that's it.  Now go forth and create a landing page, have fun doing it, make some money, and please write me any time.  And if you decide to purchase one of my books, that would be AWESOME. 

Author, Michael R. Hicks (whom I've mentioned several times here) has a wonderful book The Path to Self-Publishing Success that's definitely worth a read.  Anyone who wants to make money off their writing efforts should check it out as well.

Peace.