by Karen Whiting @KarenHWhiting
I learned last year that really taking time to plan and be intentional pays off and is a great way to set some marketing groundwork for growth. I want to share my experience and guidelines on developing solid plans.
Choose a Plan
First, think of your strengths. I like to do video and create memes. I dislike regular newsletters, but enjoy writing articles.
So, I switched to Substack and stopped the old email newsletter service. I imported my contacts to Substack.com and can simply put out a short or long piece at any time. I simply write and send. Substack is free no matter how many emails you collect or how many times you email . They do not let me segment really, but I have that somewhere else now.
Create a Plan
With my strengths in mind, I thought of friends who run Christmas specials. Rather than just buy ‘my books’ I chose to offer a peace shop to promote books of friends plus my November release, Growing a Peaceful Heart.
- I chose to limit it to a dozen books including mine and one I co-authored with my older daughter. That’s a good start and would fill 12 days, but I wanted to run the shop for 4 weeks.
- I also believed the week of Thanksgiving would not be great to promote books, so I’d create a special video for that week and post it in several places. I’d create it in Canva where I could blend the memes with video.
- Then as I gave the authors an option to send in a digital freebie. I decided to use the last week before Christmas sharing the freebies and making memes for each one. That would bless the followers with free gifts.
- I created a meme for each book and live videos about each book.
Thus, I had a good plan. I gathered the info from the authors in a google spread sheet where they could give me a link to buy the book, a peace tip, book cover, and short description of the book.
It worked out well and everyone involved was happy. Some shared the posts more than others and some added the link and main meme about the store to their newsletters. I blessed friends who have blessed me over the years and also a few newer writers.
Lessons Learned:
- Create a timeline and plans to fill the days.
- Make allowance for a busy season or pre-post for times you will be away.
- Make it easy for everyone.
- RECYCLE: Think beyond the initial work. For the Christmas Peace Shop, I’ll post again for Christmas in July, but posts and videos are ready!
- EVALUATE how things went. My shop went well for doing this the first time. I plan to do it next year with a new theme, matching my 2023 release. I will use a little of the shop I did as a reminder of Christmas past and the fun we had. That will help launch the new shop. If it bombed I would probably choose to not repeat it. As I continued along I had more engagement and people mentioning they planned to buy a book when I did the FB live of one that connected with them.
Evergreen Plans
I like to know I’ll have marketing continually going and starting. Some things are my stable plans for new releases. I contacted media for interviews on the new book and wrote articles for a few places that have huge or large, loyal followings. Plus, I released a hidden Pinterest board on peace and continued to post to social medias I use.
Other New Plans
Behind the scenes I built a quiz and implemented in recently. People are starting to take the quiz, subscribe, and go through the sequences of automated emails. I’ll chat more about that next month.
I also decided to create a sequence since the original plan for a FB group launch would not work so close to the holidays. I’ll launch the new release sequence in the New Year. The spreads sheet is filling up and I’ll start working on creating the actual workflow of the emails soon.
I also chose to grow my Pinterest slowly this fall. I spent minutes each week adding new posts and sometimes reposting from other people’s posts. I grew my Pinterest from 700 views to 4300 views monthly. It’s good to have a marketing plan that takes minutes a week. It will be easy to continue and keep growing.
In addition, I had been contacted by someone who does a promo for an author tied to promoting more authors. They wanted to promote my historic NF of Stories of Faith and Courage from the Home Front. I had to recommend four other author’s books related to my topic (American History/military). I did that and it was easy. Now one of those authors has been asked to do the same thing for other authors. It’s a pass-it-on promotion. I simply promote it, to share about the people who run it and their products. I love these types of marketing plans where we simply slide in.
Always look to the future. I also took a little training on selling books through subscription services that companies and individuals run., That’s on my list to do in the New Year. I hope you will add something to your New Year’s list or choose to continue with a marketing project you already started.
TWEETABLE
Karen has a heart to grow tomorrow’s wholesome families today. She has written more than eight hundred articles for more than sixty publications and loves to let creativity splash over the pages of what she writes. She writes for Crosswalk. Connect with Karen on Twitter @KarenHWhiting Pinterest KarenWhiting FB KarenHWhiting.
Featured Image: Photo by Sergey Zolkin on Unsplash
Thank you for sharing your marketing expertise. And thank you for including me in the Christmas Peace Shop.
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome. I enjoyed doing the Peace Shop. It's fun to try new marketing campaigns.
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