Internet Marketing Guides

Posts Tagged ‘Pitch’

E-mail marketing is one of the best ways to sell products and market your services. Lots of internet marketers report that they have more success when they sell to their e-mail lists than when they leave the selling to their websites and advertisements. The reason for this is because the people on your mailing list are already receptive to what you’re promoting.

Of course, that doesn’t mean email marketing is the ideal solution for everyone. Your emails need to be worded correctly to maximize responses. Think about how many times you’ve automatically deleted an email from an internet marketer trying to sell you something. Below are some tips to help you avoid your mailing list doing this to you.

Don’t overwhelm your readers by including to many promotional offers in your e-mails. By promoting several offers all in one e-mail your subscribers may become upset and unsubscribe because you are giving the impression that all you want to the is pitch products to them and not give value. It seems counter-intuitive to stick to only one product per email but many things in marketing are counter-intuitive. Your sales message is what gets people to buy so don’t disrupt the process by introducing an entirely different product into the mix. If you want more sales then only sell one at a time. If you want to know the latest craze in marketing have a look at this Halloween Super Affiliate blog

Remember that you should occasionally send out an email without a sales message included. You can actually increase sales by offering your mailing list helpful hints or information about your products or niche topic instead of trying to sell to them. There are people who prefer to receive information that helps them make a decision to buy. You will drastically increase the odds of people opening your emails and reading what you have to say, which is every email marketer’s greatest challenge.

Try not to send out too many emails. There are those who believe you should try to send emails every day or perhaps every other day. There’s no need to go that far. Can you imagine trying to write an original email every single day? Besides, if your mailing list get used to receiving emails from you daily that always try to sell them seomthing, they’re more likely to delete them unread. It is possible to turn your buyers off if you bother them too much. Think of over-emailing as the internet marketing equivalent to a pushy salesperson hassling you endlessly to buy something to the point that you eventually get completely turned off and walk away. A great new course in the new wave of internet marketing can be seen at this Halloween Super Affiliate website

email marketing offers online business owners plenty of scope and range. Far too many people believe they need to constantly send daily sales emails to their list if they want to make any money. Others very rarely send out messages because they want those messages to matter. Eventually you will learn which methods work for you and the people to whom you are selling. When the pattern does begin to form, you’ll have hit on the key to reproducing similar responses from the people on your list every time you email them.

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When my first book (The Cliffhanger) was published nearly seven years ago, I had high hopes of its success. I mean I am, after all, a PR person ? so how hard could it be to market fiction? Granted, up till that point I hadn’t taken on a lot of fiction ? well, to be honest I hadn’t taken any fiction. Fiction is tough and everyone knows it. But now I was going to get my chance, and what better way to start than on my own book? When The Cliffhanger hit the #1 spot on Amazon it was no accident, it was a creative push that got it to #1 and ironically, the pitch that prompted this Amazon soar had nothing to do with the book. Curious? Then read on.

When I was first pushing The Cliffhanger I did all the things a good fiction author is supposed to do. I sent out review copies, created a stunning press release, scheduled book events. All of these things were great, but they didn’t give it the momentum the book really needed to succeed. The book signings were good, but a tad boring, the press was interested, but not enough to feature me more than once. I knew I needed to do something, but let’s face it, when you’re writing romance it?s tough to find a pitch that has the stickiness to it to, well, stick. When you’re taking a fiction book to market you need to have more to hang your star on than a groovy story ? you need something the media can sink their teeth into, you need grit. That ‘grit’ is the reality piece of your story.

The truth is there’s always a thread of reality that weaves through each piece of fiction. Find your reality and own it, if need be, craft your pitch around it. Let’s say you wrote a book about a woman overcoming domestic abuse. You’ve done your research, you know the stats, in fact, you might even be considered an expert. Why not then turn a portion of your campaign into a domestic violence pitch? The same can be said for just about anything. They key here is to find that grain of reality and see if it’s interesting enough to create a new peg. Once you’ve found your hook, own it. What I mean is become the expert on that hook and familiarize yourself with ever statistic, every study and every new trend.

When The Cliffhanger was released I soon realized that marketing romantic fiction was only going to take me so far, but marketing the method of printing was more unique. Why? Well, The Cliffhanger was one of the first books in the San Diego area to be published via print-on-demand. Hence, that became my story. Until the Presidential race of 2000. Now that was an entirely different story.

No doubt many of you will remember the counts, recounts, chads, and hanging chads, right? Well, one morning I woke up to find our local paper with the following headline: “Cliffhanger.” I knew right then that if I couldn’t find a hook to hang my star on that angle, I might as well hang up my marketing hat forever. It was at 3 a.m. that I woke up with an idea so stunning, I knew it had to work. I raced out to the office supply store the minute it opened to pick up several packs of clear labels. I got out the postcards I had printed with the book cover on them and stuck on labels with the following slogan:

Getting tired of the Presidential cliffhanger?
Try this one.
The Cliffhanger, a novel.
No politics involved.

I mailed 500 postcards out that day while praying the election wouldn’t get called. I mailed these postcards to everyone in the media I’d ever contacted. Ever!

Days after my mass-mailing, I was walking through my living room, when suddenly I spotted my book cover on the screen. I was stunned. The local TV anchor was saying, “This has got to be the best thing I’ve ever seen. This lady wants you to go buy her book. I say everyone should rush out and buy it.” And everyone did. That afternoon my book shot up to the #1 spot on Amazon, where it stayed for three months. It even beat out Harry Potter (which was #4 at that time), yet Harry got the movie. Go figure.

The point is that finding an “anchor” will help you push your campaign. This works for book events, too. If you’ve written a crime book, why not “theme” your event with DO NOT CROSS Police line tape (if you can get your hands on it) or some other prop? The key is to be unique, carry your theme throughout your marketing and hang your star on unique ways to promote your book.

But the second piece of this, the piece that’s become all the rage recently, is the visual aspect of your book. Now I’m not talking about the cover, I’m talking about the movie. Yes, you read right. Your book, a movie. Now I’m not talking about a full-blown two hour motion picture. I’m talking about a movie trailer. Most recently several major publishers have started using book trailers to promote the fiction books they publish. Why? Because we are a very visual society, and if you’re trying to distill the core of your book into a thirty-second elevator pitch, why not distill that same information into a trailer? Studies have shown that book trailers can increase book sales in excess of 30%. This is why most of the major publishers are jumping on the book trailer bandwagon. Still not convinced? Check out this book trailer of Candlewood Lake and see if it doesn’t entice you to buy the book:

http://www.authors-online.com/billboards/drivein/candlewood/index.html

Now here’s a short list of tricks we’ve used to promote fiction:

* For a series of detective novels we worked with, we told the author that instead of pitching the book, we were going to pitch some of the intriguing unsolved mysteries. He became the unsolved mystery expert and when he did a book event, that’s what he talked about. People were enthralled, and it also got him quite a bit of radio, too!

* For a chick lit book last year the author had one of her recipes (for Orgasmic cookies) come to life when she partnered with a local cookie company. The result? We had people writing us for copies of the book just so they could try this fabulous cookie.

* And what better place for a romance reading than a romantic winery? If you live near some wineries, don’t hesitate to stop by there and ask if they’d like to invite you in for a reading.

Have you ever considered partnering with another author who has a similar title? Last year, I consulted with two authors who’d written books about Paris. I decided they might want to meet and partner up for events. They did, and the result was magnifique! Everyone loved the “evening in Paris” they’d created, and needless to say, they got lots of bookings!

The trick is, with all the fiction out there, you have to find a way to be different. Selling the story isn’t always going to sell your book, but entertaining the reader or selling how the story affects the reader or how it can benefit them will. Find your anchor, hook, or story ? and you’ve found an audience.

Becoming a marketing story-teller isn’t as hard as some people make it out to be, and whoever said fiction can’t be marketed just didn’t know how to tell a great story.

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When it comes to marketing the choices are clear: market to your reader. But the ?where? to find your reader has changed as more and more of our lives migrate online. A recent article on how offline media is succumbing to the ?Net talked about a flurry of newspapers diving into online content, online ad placement, and online forums to push more of their feature pieces, reviews and editorials into a virtual medium.

Even industry standards like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are moving more and more of their content to the website. So what does this mean for you? Well, it means that the lines between on and offline are becoming even more blurred. It used to be that if you had a few select publications that you were pitching you could contact their on and offline departments and possibly be considered for interviews or feature pieces in both of them; that?s not the case anymore. Sometime an online feature means that you can kiss your offline exposure goodbye, so it?s good to ask before you start pitching. Much of the online content is now pulled from the offline source, so while this could work in your favor, better to be certain if you have your eye on print coverage. That said, you might be better off being on their website, where you?ll get lasting exposure.

But media promotion isn?t the only factor in marketing, in fact, there?s a lot you can do without even heading into the media realm. Consider these ideas:

* Craig?s List: have you been on this site recently? If you haven?t, take a few minutes and run through the listings for your city. It?s a great place to promote yourself but be careful, the Craig?s list people don?t like a ?salesy? type of pitch but prefer something more folksy and casual. If you surf the site for a while you?ll see what I mean. You can use Craig?s list to promote your event, your product, even your service, but they key is, don?t look like you?re promoting. Also, keep in mind that often regional media will surf this site looking for events they can cover, so get yours listed there now!

* Virtual networking: it?s not just for trading business cards anymore. If you?re trying to gain platform or gain media exposure, heading on over to sites like http://Linkedin.com can be a good way to start your network and gain additional exposure. Also, sites like MySpace have gotten a bad rap as predator sites, but only a marginal portion of people on this site are there for nefarious reasons. While the MySpace age does tend to skew younger, there?s virtually a place for everyone and every message on this site. Not a MySpace person? Try http://eons.com instead, this site targets the over 50 crowd and offers another great place to market your book and message.

* YouTube: this site isn?t just for singing pancakes; in fact, more and more authors are moving snippets of signings, speaking gigs or other visual promotion tools to this hot new resource. It?s a great link back to your site.

* Social bookmarking: have you been doing your social duty lately? Posting to sites like http://del.i.cious.com could really help to spread your message like wildfire. Sometimes a few sites is all it takes to start the buzz going in your market.

* Consider the overlooked media: As the bigger papers are moving their content online and vying to keep readership interested, the smaller overlooked papers like The Bastrop Daily Enterprise in Louisiana and Arkadelphia Daily Siftings Herald in Arkansas are booming. Their readership is loyal and their papers always hungry for content. Have you poked around in the smaller regional newspapers yet? If you haven?t, you might want to. You might find that while it?s great to have an online presence, the further we get into Web 2.0, the more these publications are overlooked by pr people.

The ?Net has opened up a bunch of opportunities both online and off, take your focus off the norm and start exploring some new territory, you might be surprised what it can do for your campaign!

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