How a New Author Was Able to Sell 2000 Books in One Week with (almost) Zero Ad Spend
This author is the founder of Heirloom Media, but these Facebook strategies for authors would work for anyone.
The Client
This author had a science book coming out in August, but no social presence for the book.
The Problem
This client had no social presence for the book and needed a way to get the word out fast, effectively, and with as little money as possible (because royalties for books aren’t that great!).
The Solution
This campaign ran from February of 2018 through August of 2018. These are the strategies employed to boost book sales.
AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION
The client knew her audience for the book already, as she had a website on a similar topic. However, there was more to be discovered.
We surveyed the existing audience to identify pain points. We used this information to target the audience in all page content and advertising (which there was very little of!).
SOCIAL STRATEGY
Social media strategy is all about finding the perfect audience, then delivering content that resonates with them and shows them that you love them and understand them. Once this happens, they love you back!
For this Facebook strategy, we offered targeted engagement, strategies that brought the page from 0 to 7k likes in about 3 months, all while spending less than $200.
ENGAGEMENT
Once the audience was identified, we ran small engagement ads to grow the page. We never spent more than $60 a month during the growth period, and we stopped paid advertising once the page reached 5k fans.
One of the videos became a true viral (reaching almost 800,000 people) when the page was just over 1k likes, and the page grew by almost 4k likes in a week.
LIVE VIDEOS
Facebook live videos were used to engage with the audience and generate value and connection with page fans.
VALUE-ADDED CONTENT
Every live video offered value and something unavailable elsewhere (in this case, it was science experiments in jars).
LIST BUILDING
The ability to remind people of a product or service is still important for social media marketing. We encouarge all clients to build lists off of social media when managing their pages.
For this Facebook marketing strategy, we used three list-building techniques.
MESSENGER OPT-INS
We delivered summaries of the live video experiments via messenger to grow the list. We also notified messenger subscribers of upcoming live videos via messenger.
LEAD MAGNET
A lead-magnet offering a generic science experiment worksheet was added to the website and promoted via Facebook to generate leads.
MESSENGER QUIZ
We created a messenger quiz that allowed people to determine if they were a science genius or newbie to further grow the messenger audience.
THE LAUNCH PROCESS
PRE-ORDER BONUSES
Anyone who pre-ordered the book from Amazon was given a digital bonus package.
5-DAY CHALLENGE
The week before the book was released, we ran a 5-day #jarringscience challenge that got fans talking about the brand and generated excitement for the book.
PAID ADS
We used a few targeted ads to run ads to the pre-order video, the release-day video, and to the challenge videos. Total ad spend was about $100.
The Results
Results from the campaign were dramatic.
- The book was the number 1 new release in two categories on Amazon for both the softcover and digital editions
- The messenger list grew to almost 1000
- The Facebook page grew to over 7000
- Traffic to the website increased by around 25%
- Email list grew by 50%
- Page content was seen by over 1,500,000 (yes, that’s one and a half million) people during the launch period
- Over 2,000 books sold in the first week
- One year later, the page consistently reaches over 50k people per week- WITH ZERO AD SPEND
Want results like these for your non-profit or business?
