Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

Creative Campaign Ideas For New Book

Posted by Anonymous on 5/13/2006 at 12:42 PM ET 500 Points
The principals of MarketingProfs, Roy Young and Allen Weiss, have written a book titled Marketing Champions, which is being published and released by John Wiley in September of this year. The book is described and available for pre-order on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471744956/qid=1147538228/sr=2-1/ref=pd_b....

The book provides marketers, who often get no respect in their organizations, with practical tools to enhance the stature and influence of marketing.

If interested in reading a draft of the Preface, send me an email (click my name to get the address on my profile page).

We are looking for creative ideas to boost sales.

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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 5/13/2006 at 5:13 PM Accepted
    Roy,

    You need to get people leaving reviews, hopefully positive, on Amazon.

    The way to do this is to give some books away, in advance, and I think giving one to each of the top 25 experts here or whatever number and asking them to please leave a review would be a good start and a great way to get reputable marketing-minded individuals sneezing on Amazon and spreading your virus.
  • Posted by Deremiah *CPE on 5/13/2006 at 6:16 PM Accepted
    Hi Roy,

    both Randall and Pepper Blue have offered some interesting possibilities. But I think for a FREE book I would love to challenge Marketingprofs Top 25 experts to do more than just give one review at Amazon.com.

    HERE'S IDEA #1...
    For example if each member of the Top 25 Experts signs up as an Amazon Reviewer online (which is a free service) they have an equally greater opportunity to help you do more with your book. But what's equally more interesting is the opportunity they have to gain so much more publicity opportunities themselves just by appearing on Amazon.com.

    SO HERE'S THE CHALLENGE MARKETINGPROFFERS upon receiving a book become an Amazon Reviewer and then write your review for Roy's book. After you have written your review you can send out an email on line while at Amazon requesting your friends and family members to read the review.


    Roy I'm not sure if you ever read Jay Abraham's book "Getting Everything You Can From All You've Got" but in that book it shows us how to actually gain more from the actions we initiate and we expect from others.

    HERE'S IDEA #2...LET'S HELP ROY DO MORE by buying the book first ourselves.

    We know Marketingprofs has been:
    A great resource
    A channel for opportunity
    A place to develop friendships
    An amazing avenue for business relationships
    A treasure trove of information, knowledge and wisdom

    LET'S GIVE FORWARD...

    With that said let's think about what we can do to help Roy while sowing powerful seeds toward our own futures by being a giver. Most of us have at least 10-20 close friends we know who if we gave them a personal phone call and recommended Roys' book that they would take interest in considering to buy it.

    HERE'S IDEA #3...And I've seen it work!
    Roy there's an online viral marketer who is pretty successful at generating interest for clients in there books. He is a respectable online business man who I'm sure would be someone I think you should talk to. I'm not quite sure how these deals are worked out in detail but I do know that he partners up with some other very successful online marketers (who make an online product i.e., e-book, teleconferences, newsletters, and other online services that they make available to their clients for much more than your book will cost.)

    THE METHOD IS CALLED BONUS OVERLOAD...
    They give these offers away as FREE gifts or as BONUS items when they purchase your book. What ends up happening is for the cost of your book online they gain sometimes nearly thousands of items in additional BONUS products. They send all interested parties to your Amazon link online (that way those who purchase your item through their link can be tracked I'm sure)

    THERE IS A MUTUAL BENEFIT...through attracting customers for all parties involved...
    The benefit to you is that you obtain unlimited favor to gain access to their online customers as they gain unlimited advertising favor among other online marketers customers. This helps them to increase their audience of customers by giving away an online product that has great value. This eventually attracts new customers to them and to you simultaneously.

    If you want to know who he is shoot me an email and I'll let you know. I just don't want to give this guy a whole mess of advertisement for free since just mentioning his name here is worth so much more to me.

    Roy I have a whole mess of other ideas that I'm sure is worth more to me and you but we will talk about that later. Don't underestimate the ideas above as I have seen them work in tremendous ways. The greatest leverage that we all have to help you is our personal contacts. If each one of us could help you move 2 books the multiplicative factor of that would be huge.

    Much love and peace to you Roy...You're a great man with powerful marketing ideas that would benefit the world to learn more from what you are doing. As soon as I've read the book look out Amazon.com. Is there anything else I can do for you?

    Your Servant, Deremiah, *CPE (Customer Passion Evangelist)
  • Posted by steven.alker on 5/13/2006 at 8:23 PM Accepted
    Dear Roy

    Posing a question on this forum is certainly an excellent way of getting your book some excellent exposure and rightly so. If you are anything like me, you can probably offer marketing solutions to others, whether it’s as a contribution to a community or for a fee and then run straight into a brick wall for your own projects!

    Repeating the exercise of a question on other respected sales and marketing sites (CRMguru, Never Cold Call, Simpleology, Wiglaf Journal, CMC forum etc) initially sounded good to me, but on reflection, I thought that it might appear to sound a bit like “Physician, can’t heal thyself!) However, a copy to the editors of these sites would prompt a review which would be read by upwards of 3 or 4 million people.

    I also think that the idea of approaching a viral marketer has a lot going for it, and why not add to that the idea of doing a podcast. I recently listened to one from the CEO of Salesforce.com and was extremely impressed, despite the fact that they are a competitor and I’m not sold on ASP versions of CRM.

    Lastly, put together an RSS feed that can be linked to other sites, preferably as a contra-trade deal.

    I wish you all the best with this venture and look forward to reading your book.

    Regards

    Steve Alker
    Unimax Solutions

  • Posted on 5/13/2006 at 10:26 PM Accepted
    Who is the primary target audience for the book? What do THEY need/want? If the book is about marketing and you're looking for ways to promote it, let's start with Marketing 101 and identify the target audience and its needs.

    Surely you created the marketing plan before you wrote the book. Otherwise you wouldn't know what to write about. Share your thinking process with us and perhaps we'll find the answer to your question in the plan you developed up-front.

    P.S. Saying the target audience is "marketers" doesn't help much. Everyone is a marketer. Need to be much more focused than that.

    (This reminds me of Vince's question about how to market something that he's been developing for 4-5 years and has now "perfected." Except he can't possibly have perfected it if he never identified the right target audience and researched the product with that audience in the first place!)

  • Posted by NovaHammer on 5/14/2006 at 9:19 AM Accepted
    Many new books have been pre-released on this site also.

    https://www.bookcrossing.com/about

    Perhaps there is something here for like minded folks.

    Cheers
  • Posted by Deremiah *CPE on 5/14/2006 at 10:21 AM Member
    Great input everybody, (let's keep it rolling)


    IDEA #4,

    MARKETINGPROF'S THE ADDITIONAL ADDED VALUE...
    Since marketingprofs is a great resource within itself offer it as additonal added value to the purchasers of your book.

    HERE'S WHAT I MEAN...(Free Trial)
    Give them a 30 day, 60 day, or 90 day FREE "Trial Offer" as a PREMIUM MEMBER client in addition with their purchase of the book.

    GO MARKETINGPROFS, GO AMAZON OR GO WORLD-WIDE...
    You can make this available to all the individuals on Marketingprofs or GO FURTHER by making it available to all the customers on Amazon.com or the whole internet community.

    LIMITED TIME ONLY...
    Put it in a "Limited Time Only" format to increase the success of the offer, to drive clients to the product and in additon to that drive them to the website too.

    WHY THIS?
    It meets the Stephen Covey standard for creating a "Win, Win, Win" for everybody involved.


    BENEFITS are many...

    NO additional upfront cost to you since the product give away is virtual.

    You also get to use the MARY KAY way by allowing your clients to read the book and experience the PREMIUM MEMBER exclusive client status as a "Try it before you buy it". I know this works!


    Internally through Marketingprofs you're tapping into an existing client or either an existing user who needs to step up to a new level of participation with the organization anyway.

    START by...
    Test marketing it on a small sample of the 190,203 newsletter subscribers you have.

    Let me see if I can send an email out to some of the other proffers who I know can offer additional suggestions but I've got more. Is there anything else I can do for you Roy?

    Your Servant, Deremiah, *CPE, (Customer Passion Evangelist)
  • Posted by Chris Blackman on 5/14/2006 at 5:18 PM Accepted
    Roy

    Leverage various national and international marketing associations and institutes by providing their usual book reviewers with a copy including a summary. This will enable them to write a review faster and to get the book out there if front of their members.

    "Exclusive" offers for marketing association members won't hurt either... (You could sell these via the MP website with a promotional code).

    Good luck!

    ChrisB
  • Posted by Chris Blackman on 5/14/2006 at 5:20 PM Member
    Roy

    Allow people to search inside the book on Amazon!

    https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/catalog-guide/guide/-/506469/103-5974...

    ChrisB
  • Posted by Deremiah *CPE on 5/14/2006 at 6:39 PM Member
    Great input Chris and Stlubahn,


    Stlubahn> "I look for comments from other reviewers before buying a book site unseen."


    IDEA #5, The Law of Reciprocity will invoke "The Teaser"
    (this will meet the needs of those who won't buy unless they can see it first)

    So what is Idea #5? It's an idea that let's you go deeper with the Mary Kay concept of "Try it before you buy it". Here's what you do. You give away the first two chapters of your book to readers as an introductory up front offer creating a motivation for buyers to want to purchase the book after viewing it.

    Benefits:

    No up front cost to you.

    Buyers experience the book before they purchase it

    Get's buyers off the fence and provokes them to buy

    Buyers gain something up front that evokes reciprocity

    Builds trust with your audience/customer and simultaneously communicates your confidence in the product you're selling.

    Again this creates a win, win, win for everybody. Is there anything else I can do for you Roy?

    Your Servant, Deremiah, *CPE (Customer Passion Evangelist)

  • Posted by Frank Hurtte on 5/14/2006 at 9:49 PM Member
    I look forward to the book. Further, I will plan to put a link to the book from my own website.
  • Posted on 5/15/2006 at 1:42 PM Accepted
    Hello Roy!

    The book will be very popular and am looking forward to reading the book. Nevertheless, you asked for additional creative ideas to boost sales and I certainly would like to contribute to the cause.

    Some additional thoughts....

    Love the title, Marketing Champions!

    Even though we should not judge a book by its cover, we also know the masses will, and first impressions are forever. The book's cover, if I can be so bold to say, can be improved slightly to better illustrate your message to your target customers.

    Two suggestions:

    1. A stronger graphic, perhaps, of stock prices soaring and/ or a collage of business headlines, "revenue hits new heights", etc. combined with the graphic of the blue ribbon could attract your target market's attention more and thus boost sales.

    2. The word 'Practical' strategies in the tag line, if replaced with the word 'Superior' strategies would relate more to your title, Marketing Champions. Business executives looking to buy a book are more likely to be attracted to 'Superior' strategies than 'Practical' strategies.

    Just a couple thoughts...to boost sales of your book!

    Best wishes on your venture!


    Sandy
  • Posted on 5/17/2006 at 12:47 AM Member
    Put a copy of the preface or first chapter on time share executive jets.

    Go to CEO conferences and do a signing.

  • Posted on 5/18/2006 at 8:19 PM Member
    So many good ideas. This group is really something!

    A few other observations:

    1. If your primary target audience is really as narrow as the senior marketing executives at the largest companies (in hopes they will love the book and recommend it to all the marketers who report to them), why not send each of them (in the Fortune 500, etc.) a complimentary, autographed copy ... followed up by a simple survey that asks, among other things, "Would you recommend this book to a colleague? Why/why not?"

    If they say "Yes," you can make it easy for them to do so with a follow-up letter, email message or personal contact. If they say "No," you may learn that your product isn't as great as you thought it was, or that you have the wrong target audience.

    If they don't respond, you've at least planted the seed and made them consider the possibility of recommending it.

    500 or 1,000 complimentary books is probably the cheapest publicity you can get -- if the core marketing strategy is to gain endorsement/recommendation by senior marketing execs at large companies.

    2. There is a terrific article in this week's New York Times Magazine about the book/knowledge business. It's the cover story, with the teaser title, "What Will Happen to Books?" It's long and detailed, but very, very interesting and intellectually stimulating.

    3. I would recommend two books that will give you more good ideas than you could possibly use. (The challenge will be to pick out the winners.) They are:

    "1001 Ways to Market Your Book," by John Kremer

    "The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing," by Tom and Marilyn Ross. (Get the 4th edition.)

    Both are available on Amazon and at just about every bookstore in the United States. (Don't let the titles or the size of the books deter you. They're the bibles of book marketing ... written specifically for authors.)


    One last tip: Don't count on your publisher for any help at all. That's not what they do, though most authors don't understand that. You have to be the brand manager for your own book.
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