How to Master Social Media for Book Promotions

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Time-tested, true and the best way to make dreams a reality for YOUR book

Time-tested, true and the best way to make dreams a reality for YOUR book.

LEAP! 101 Ways to Grow Your Business on the Synergy Energy Show with Pam Perry

10 Ways to Reject the Recession and Build a Thriving Business
By Stephanie Chandler

Click to listen to the show

In a time when the lead news stories focus on business downsizing, the rising costs of gas and groceries and general economic turmoil, it is hard to avoid feeling the “recession depression.” But as business owners we have two choices: we can let the media send us into panic mode or we can view the economic downturn as an opportunity.

This is a time in the economy when millionaires are made. While some businesses are giving up and closing their doors, their competitors are seizing opportunities. Which side would you rather be on? Now is the time for you to rise above it—to stay a step ahead of your competition and Reject the Recession!

Here are ten ways to thrive in tough times:

1. Keep the Marketing Wheels in Motion
Though your first instinct may be to cut costs, this is the worst time to cut back on marketing. Studies show that businesses that continue marketing through a slow economy are the ones that come out ahead when the economy begins to turn. Make sure you have a marketing plan and stick to it. If your current marketing efforts aren’t producing results, try new strategies. When done correctly, marketing is an expense that should pay for itself. Find the strategies that work and then keep doing them.

2. Don’t Be Afraid to Discount
The reality is that consumers are holding on tighter to their wallets. The key to unlock their dollars is in discounts. Take a cue from the big department stores—they are holding incredible sales and offering more coupons than ever. Reevaluate your pricing strategy and offer discounts off your most popular products and services. This may also be a good time to lower your prices across the board and then advertise your “New Lower Prices!” You can always raise them again later.

3. Leverage the Internet
Are you selling products and services from your website? Can you expand your sales channels by selling on eBay or another online venue? Are you reaching your customers with e-mail marketing? Is your website optimized for the search engines? It doesn’t have to cost a fortune to implement an online marketing and sales strategy. Even if you simply add gift certificate purchases to your website, you could uncover a whole new revenue stream. Seek out an online marketing expert and evaluate the opportunities.

4. Form a Mastermind Group
Get together with your staff or assemble a small group of people who understand your business and brainstorm opportunities. When several people get together with a blank slate and some good energy, magic can happen. Ask for ideas—you might be surprised by the results.

5. Tap into a New Niche
Is there a niche that you have been meaning to focus on? Can you uncover a new market that makes sense for your business? For example, a florist that specializes in weddings could pursue the corporate market, a residential real estate agent could go after the investor community or a virtual assistant could decide to specialize in serving the unique needs of financial planners. Pick a new market and then develop a plan of attack.

6. Reach Out to Your Customer Base
One of the most overlooked business opportunities comes from your existing and past clients. The fact that they have already done business with you makes it far more likely that they will do business with you in the future. Make sure you are marketing to them, reaching out and reminding them that you are there. Ask them for referrals and offer a powerful incentive such as a cash reward or gift card for referrals. Never let a referral go unnoticed!

7. Make Improvements
This is an ideal time to evaluate all of your policies and procedures. Do they make sense in this economy? Is your customer service team delivering up to your standards? Could your sales team benefit from some additional training? How can you help your company perform even better? What are steps you can take to improve customer loyalty? Look at your business through a magnifying class and seize the opportunity to improve it across the board.

8. Survey Your Customers
Much can be uncovered by reaching out to your customers and asking them for feedback. Develop a short list of questions that include ratings on your products, services and staff. Ask specific questions such as, “How can we improve your experience with us?” Tools such as http://www.SurveyMonkey.com can help you accomplish this easily. Once you receive the survey results, evaluate them and take action to make improvements. You will undoubtedly find themes in the answers such as, “It takes too long to get a call back.” Let your customers know that you heard them and share what improvements you are making as a result of their survey responses.

9. Keep an Eye on Capital
What goes down must come up and the economy will rebound, though it may be awhile. If business is slower than usual, form a plan for getting through this period. You might need to open a line of credit, visit your bank and apply for a loan, seek private funding or even bring in a partner. Running out of capital can quickly kill a business. Make sure you assess how much you may need before you need it and have a plan for forging ahead.

10. Get Help and Keep Your Eye on the Prize
Now is a great time to sharpen your own skills. Take classes, read books and network with others in your industry so you can learn from them. Get involved in your trade association and make sure you are on top of your game. Look for joint venture opportunities. Make yourself more efficient by outsourcing services that consume your valuable time. For example, if you are doing the bookkeeping for your business, hand that off to someone else so you can have more time to focus on what you do best. Also, determine your priorities. Where should you be spending your time? What can you do to make your company bigger, better and stronger? Leave the worrying to your competitors and instead seek out opportunities and stay positive. When you put the right energy and focus into your business—despite the economy—the results can extraordinary.

About the Author:
Stephanie Chandler is an author of several business and marketing books including “LEAP! 101 Ways to Grow Your Business” and “From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur.” She is also founder and CEO of http://AuthorityPublishing.com, which provides custom book publishing and author marketing services for business, self-help and other non-fiction books, and http://BusinessInfoGuide.com, a directory of resources for entrepreneurs. For author and speaker information, visit http://StephanieChandler.com.

http://www.brandyourbestlife.com
Click here to hear the show

AACM – The African American Christian Market and Pam Perry

Ministry Marketing Solutions Predicted The Gospel Boom In The African-American Community

By Dr. Gail Hayes

Pam Perry, founder of Ministry Marketing Solutions
(pictured here with T.D. Jakes)

Detroit, MI (BlackNews.com) – Post 9/11 days and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina have made most people in America stop and say a prayer. Books like The Prayer of Jabez, by Bruce Wilkenson, The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren and the first-time author Joel Osteen’s Live Your Best Life have toppled the prestigious New York Times best-seller lists and have paved the way for more Christian books.  

Christian information is at its peak and there is a great revival sweeping the land. In the African American community especially, where the spiritual heritage is deeply rooted in the culture, there are more gospel artists, plays, movies, television programs, radio ministries, magazines and books than any other time in history. The African American Christian community has produced some of the largest churches – noting that it is not church as usual – it is MEGA. National ministry leaders such as Bishop T.D. Jakes and Juanita Bynum have also become best-selling authors in the AACM (African American Christian market) opening the door for many more to come behind them.   Ministry Marketing Solutions, Inc. (MMS) was the vision of Pam Perry, of Detroit, because of her desire to market the message to the masses through the media. What message? “The Gospel of Jesus Christ,” says Perry. “The first two letters of the word gospel is G-O and that’s what I have been called to do. To go to the media to tell the story of Christian authors.” Perry’s public relations and advertising career spans over two decades. The first ten years she spent working in ad agencies and secular media. The last ten she has dedicated to ministry marketing. Her first ministry job was with The Salvation Army as P.R. Director. “Although I grew up Christian, my commitment to God really changed after I starting reading Christian books and was exposed more to Christian media. It was like an explosion in my soul and my purpose was clear,” says Perry. PRESS CONTACT: Pam Perry Ministry Marketing Solutions 248-426-2300 info@ministrymarketingsolutions.com www.ministrymarketingsolutions.com

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Book Marketing Budgeting

Budgeting for Your Book Marketing BY MARKETABILTY.COM CONSULTANTS

How Much to Invest in Your Book and What It Means to Your Workload

When you think of your budget for your book, start to think in terms of both time and money. You will be spending both on your book. There is no right or wrong budget as long as it works with your pocketbook, your daily calendar and your expectations.

The Blunt Bottom Line:

How much money you are ABLE to invest will tell youhow much time you will HAVE to invest. How much of each you DO invest will control how many books you sell.
We will assume that you want to effectively market your book over the course of ONE YEAR.

In that time you will accomplish all of the marketing for the initial launch of your book.
After the first year you can then decide whether to continue marketing this book or to move on to your next one. In the scenarios listed below you can adjust the time spent per week IF you also adjust how long it will take to finish your marketing.

If you have less than $1,000 to invest in marketing, you will be using only the low or no-cost marketing tools. Your time is your greatest asset, plan on investing it liberally. All aspects of strategy and implementation will fall into your hands. You should allocate at least 40 hours per week to handle all of the strategy and implementation.

If 40 hours per week is not possible to do, then adjust the length of time you will take to market your book. If you can put in 20 hours per week, then plan on taking TWO YEARS to finish your marketing.

If you have between $1,000 and $5,000 to invest in marketing, you will need to plan to do most of the marketing yourself. You’re going to be able to use some of the low-cost tools we’ve shown you but will not be able to hire on professionals to implement your campaign. Again, plan to allocate a significant portion of time towards strategizing and implementing your marketing.
In this case, allocate at least 30 hours per week.

If you have between $5,000 and $10,000 to invest in marketing, you can probably hire out one key component of your marketing implementation and reduce the amount of time you are required to put into the marketing efforts. You will still need to invest plenty of time strategizing and implementing your marketing. At this level of monetary investment you can expect to spend at least 20 hours per week with strategy and implementation.

If you have between $10,000 and $20,000 to invest in marketing, you can hire out a few more aspects of your marketing implementation. On the higher end of that budget you can get most implementation covered. You will still be investing time in the strategic coordination of your campaign. With this budget you can allocate 10 hours per week for strategic coordination of your marketing efforts.

If you have between $20,000 and $50,000 to invest in marketing, you can hire out almost all aspects of your marketing implementation. You should still plan on handling the strategic coordination of your campaign. Allocate at least 5 hours per week for strategy.

If you have more than $50,000 to invest in marketing, you can hire out everything, including the strategic coordination. Any amount less than $50,000 will not afford you to hire out the strategy as well as the implementation. With this investment you can hire professionals to do their job and go back to writing knowing you have everything covered.

Since the strategic coordination is obviously the last thing you can hire out, then it stands to reason it is the first thing you should learn, regardless of your budget. Whether or not you plan on handling the implementation of your book marketing you need to know what needs to be done and who can help you do it.

Ways to Fund Your Book Marketing
Ideally, you have money already set aside to fund your book marketing. It is allocated specifically for this function, sitting in an account ready to be put into action. However, if that is not the case you may be wondering how to fund your marketing. Here are some of the common ways that other authors and publishers do it.

Credit Card / Line of Credit The most common way we see authors funding their campaigns is with a credit card. It is probably the simplest way to do it. As always with credit cards, be aware of the interest rate you are being charged.
Home Equity LoanWhile it may be more paperwork upfront, it will certainly save on the interest rate. It is also likely to be a tax deduction personally. (But of course check with your accountant on that.)

Investors Finding someone else to fund the marketing is also something we see quite often. These investors can be family, friends or actual venture capitalists. Be aware that these folks will want to see a business plan including a full marketing plan and financial estimates. See our Book Marketing Profit System for a template book marketing plan. (WWW.MARKETABILILTY.COM)

Tapping into 401K / IRA / College FundFrankly, this source of funding is the one that makes us cringe. Not only are you betting your retirement or your kid’s college funding on the success of your book, you are also paying taxes on the money you take out, thereby substantially increasing the amount of money you are actually investing. Please consider very carefully before utilizing this option.

Using Book Sales to Pay for Marketing Sounds good in theory, but it simply will not work. You must invest something to get started. You can then re-invest your book sales revenue into more marketing, but the first sale will not happen without marketing. This is a classic which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg scenario.

A Word of Caution (or When NOT to Fund Your Marketing)
Over the years we have seen many books fail due to lack of funding. That is quite sad. We have also seen many books fail DESPITE having adequate funding. That is just plain horrible. We have met authors who are $20,000, $30,000, even $50,000 or more in debt from producing and trying to sell their book.

If you are in a situation where recouping an investment is critical to your financial security or not selling books will place you in serious financial hardship PLEASE do not invest more than you can afford to spend in your book.

We strongly suggest that you set a limit on your budget that is something you can live with, even if you do not sell a single book. If that amount is low or very low, don’t despair. As you’ve seen, there are plenty of low cost ways you can market your book.

Now, don’t think we are trying to talk you out of marketing your book ­ nothing could be further from the truth ­ we just want to make sure you are proceeding carefully. We do believe you can sell your book and we’ll do whatever we can to help you!

Allocation of Funds ­ How to Prioritize Your Investment
With any investment you want to invest wisely. (Especially for your book.) The last thing you would want to do is waste all the time you spent writing it. So how do you know what is the best use of your valuable time and your hard-earned money?

First of all prioritize your actions based on YOUR goals. You know what is most important to you about your book. Find the tools we’ve suggested that help you reach that goal and do those action items first.

If selling books is your primary goal then be sure to allocate equally in the areas of Awareness and Availability.

Awareness is anything that helps your customers find out your book is out there, such as:publicity, pay per click advertising, search engine, E-zines, reviews, testimonials, etc.

Availability is anything that makes your book available to purchase, such as:bookstores, your website, Amazon, libraries, book clubs, etc.

Don’t expect to pull demand with awareness only. You cannot simply tell people your book exists and expect sales to fall out of the sky. The book has got to be available to purchase – in a store, on a website, at AmazonŠ

Nor can you expect the product to sell itself with availability only. A book sitting on the bookstore shelf when no one knows it is there IS A BOOK ABOUT TO BE RETURNED. A website with no traffic is a site that is not selling any books.

Choose your actions based on creating awareness and facilitating availability. Do both.

FROM: WWW.MARKETABILITY.COM