Finding the Golden Nugget - Best Marketing Mix

You know how sometimes you start a project and it’s slow going and then inspiration strikes and you can’t stop writing? I had one such experience yesterday. I wrote up a storm and got all of two chapters written. Not a lot of words by some standards, but for someone who writes in dribs and drabs these days, anything over a thousand words is a major achievement.

I’ve been doing other stuff too as you’ll know if you’ve been following the posts over the last couple of weeks. I took out a Facebook ad this past week, but pulled the plug on that after a few days. I think advertising there works better for me when I’m just after ‘likes’. 

As I’ve said before, that worked well for Contraband. However, this time around, I was looking more toward sales then simple awareness. I didn’t see any movement in sales, so that was a non-starter. I think for product awareness, an interactive author page will do the job on Facebook. Contests do much to have people clicking on the page—that is, making a Facebook ‘like’ an added point to win a book, etc.

I’m getting a few more clicks on Goodreads, but as someone (I think it was Susan Kaye Quinn) commented, once you spend there, the leftover funds can carry over to another project. One of my aims is not to lose hard-earned money, so knowing when to switch tactics is key.

Something I’ve found interesting is that Twitter isn’t the place for a hard sell and yet when I do mention books on there, I get a response. However, that’s not to say I’m going to be tweeting ‘buy my book’ everyday. I have mixed feelings about that (like many of you, I’m sure). Yes, there are ways to sell without saying ‘buy this’, but it does feel vulgar and there’s no getting around that for me. It seemed to work for the freebie Don’t Get Mad…but still.

The most important lesson I’ve learned from this experiment is that it takes patience to find the right mix aka the Golden Nugget. Needless to say, I haven’t found it yet, but I’m persistent, so stay tuned.

I will be going ahead with the blog tour (as you can tell by my shiny, new badge) and have added information on that to Distraction’s page. This is going to be the most labour-intensive activity of everything I’ve done to date, but it might also be the thing that works best. Who knows? 

I’ve tried to come up with something different for the tour and will be using the theme of friendship. Why? I’ve noticed that with the reviews to date on Amazon and Goodreads, people have remarked on the strong bond these female characters share. That convinced me to make friendship the heart of the tour, rather than just doing interviews and telling people what the book is about. I believe that will make a difference because friendship is something all of us can relate to.

As to what I’ve read - How to Make a Killing on Kindle: (Without Blogging, Facebook Or Twitter). The Guerilla Marketer's Guide To Selling Ebooks On Amazon. Now there was some info in there that’s standard (good book/good cover, etc.) and then there is some other stuff that I can only remark on when I try them and see how they work. Some of the recommendations make good sense. And then there’s one thing the writer recommends that I think is unethical (from a personal point of view anyway), so I won’t go there. I’ll say more about the value the book offers when I’ve tried some of what Mr. Alvear suggests. 

So what new thing will you be trying this week – genre, hobby, story or marketing mix?

Carol Kilgore's romantic suspense novel, In Name Only, will be released today. Hop on over to her blog to catch come excitement or check out the book on Amazon.