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Offline Marketing: Why You Should Integrate This With Your Online Advertising

You’ve learned how to advertise and sell online. Shiny. But are you perhaps forgetting the 73 million Americans (potential clients) who don’t have access to or don’t bother shopping online? That is one huge untapped market, my friends. So here are a few online examples of established fellow artists marketing offline to inspire you to get in line with success.

  • Coca-Cola personalized name bottles. This worked because it got people (potential customers) sorting through bottles in displays to find their name. Even if they don’t find their name, they might choose someone else’s, for fun. TAKE HOME: interactive, personalized offline marketing works.
  • McDonald’s installing a light pole with the light being a coffee urn and the pole the stream of coffee, of course with their brand on the pot.
  • A roving tableau of pamphlets about your business (books, etc)
  • Truck billboard: Amazon provides customizable text decals. Advertise every time you drive
  • Hat billboard: Unameitcustom offers customizable caps. I bought one through affiliate marketing on Amazon, and was pleasantly surprised. Comfortable, solid embroidery, and cost-effective, only 22 bucks, which includes an extra $2 fee for the flames. That is a conversation piece. ‘Wow, that’s a unique hat. What’s Iconocop?‘ Well, it’s the title of the first book in my urban fantasy series, the Mythcorp Archives. Iconocops are the policing force for Mythcorp.’ Wow, tell me more, etc’

iconocop cap

  • Leave your branded products in key locations (wherever you think your customers might go). Brand pens or other small cost-effective products for this.

This is all about (1) Discoverability and (2) Being Unique. When done well, both should serve to make your product—and brand—memorable.

Simply by packaging or displaying your physical (paperback) books can enhance your selling point. This is why I designed and built these wood displays. My brother offered to sell my books at his Rest and Revive Float Center; I didn’t want to just have a pile of paperbacks lounging on a counter, so I researched single book displays.

Nothing came up! Apparently all that’s available are those metal wire el cheapo displays and the plastic jobbies, both of which look chincy. Since they come in only one size they don’t even properly support larger books; you’ll see the front cover and first 50 pages or so hanging down the front, twisting the spine. Not a good way to display your books. That forced me to get creative. If you’re not a carpenter and don’t wish to learn, commission custom work from a local cabinetmaker. We love customizing stuff.

Stand out.

B2B provides a relevant post HERE, listing 5 different offline marketing strategies for us. I hope this helps to guide you in the right direction. Let this be the year your book selling takes off. Own it!

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The 2 Reasons Your Books are Not Selling

book store bridge

This is why your books are not selling

Let’s lay it down quick and slick: If you’re e-books or online paperbacks are not selling well, 95% of the time the reason is poor discoverability and lack of reviews. Slam-bang!

You work and study and write for eons. You’ve learned to format, create decent book covers, and publish your manuscripts. You’ve enhanced your skills. You are now publishing quality work regularly—and yet for all that, no one seems to be buying your awesome books! What the flip is going on?

Perhaps you’ve followed the same path as I’m about to relate, or perhaps you are about to take it. Let me save you some time and hair-pulling (trichotillomania).

I performed an extensive—and exhaustive—study of book-selling; I’ve tried everything the ‘experts’ suggest. By experts I’m referring to online success stories, best-selling authors, and literary agents. While my writing improved greatly, the selling side of the business did not grow in a comparative manner. (There went a few more hairs.) So, following another round of studies, I finally latched onto the golden ticket: My books, good as they were becoming, were not being found by more than a handful of people. And that handful was not looking specifically for this book of mine or that one. Rather, they were stumbling on them–and not leaving reviews.

Sales trickled in. Hardly enough to support my coffee habit.

With help from Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur and my own slow gears beginning to churn, I finally realized not only the reason for my trickling sales (and hair loss), but how to rectify them.

YOU WILL NOT MAKE A LIVING SELLING BOOKS IF NO ONE FINDS THEM AND NO ONE REVIEWS THEM

What do you do to change things and start marketing like a champ? To get Reviews, award-winning marketer Rohit Bhargava suggests being:

  • Unique
  • Authentic
  • Talkable

If you transform your lazy-days marketing efforts through the above outlets, making all your work UAT, your trickling sales will surge.

To make your work discoverable, journeyman writer/editor/publisher S.R. Buckel suggests:

  • Being proactive in thinking of ways not to be like others in promoting your book.
  • Using your unique skill—completely unrelated to writing—to promote your writing
  • Enact bold endeavors to get word of your work out there.

pretty girl reading in a field

There may be 2 things keeping you from embracing these six winning tips. Likely they are the very same buggers that have kept me from breaking out like I should. Remember: we are on this journey together. I’ve made a lot of progress, and here at buckelsbooks I’m sharing what I’ve learned to save others right behind me on the same journey from struggling in the same ways. So don’t be a fool like me. Recognize and face these 2 failures instead of struggling. Face them like a beast:

  1. Fear of being rejected or of receiving negative reviews
  2. Refusing to set writing aside to focus on the other side of your business: Promotion

I hope this small contribution helps you in some way. There are so many resources out there, that we have to wade through to find the Right One, and it is my intention to save you the trouble. I’m not the brightest bulb in the pack, but I am one of those LED shiners, you know, those guys that never burn out but just keep on beaming. I learned how to write. So have you. Then we learned to publish. Now we’re learning to market our work.

It’s exciting—an exciting struggle that is worth it! I may not have the greatest resources here, but what I can provide is rare and invaluable: a unique perspective on the marketing side of our business, the psychological side. In their helpful writing and marketing tips, no one else seems to be showing us how to frame our minds and access the deep psychological reserves of strength needed to endure and thrive in this lonely business. That’s what I’m here for. That and providing the quickest, surest tips on writing instantly dynamic characters.

To Sum UP: Be Unique, Authentic, and Talkable, and employ your own unrelated skill to promote your writing. What do you love doing besides writing? Use that to promote your books.

If I can learn and master this marketing beast, then so can you!

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Marketing Cheaply Outside the Box

 

One of a Kind Marketing

There are countless posts and pages giving tips and guidance and advice on marketing, like:

So what freshness could I possibly share with you? One of the free keys, I believe.

Success in any endeavor requires devotion and razor-focus. You cannot dabble in writing.

The same rules apply to marketing: you can’t dabble in it. With the same creative attention I give to writing, I am now beginning to give to marketing. And for the first time, my melon is churning out creative marketing ideas. BAM!

Smarter peeps than myself may be able to do both simultaneously. But if you’re like me, you may have to separate the various aspects of your writing career to find the inspiration and focus you need to excel in each endeavor.

  • Writing
  • Editing/Revising
  • Submitting/Publishing
  • Marketing/Advertising

The same passion you apply to your writing, you should apply to these other aspects. You might be surprised to find your idea factory switching gears and churning out topping schemes.

As a carpenter, I’m gearing toward fine woodworking as a marketing pick-me-up. For example, my brother says he would display some of my paperbacks at his business. So I’m building a small unique book display for W.A.N.D., my YA fantasy. Made of wood, it will not simply support the novel, but I’ll have a pair of wands springing up either side of the book, with a curved wooden banner spanning the top, with the word WAND printed out. I’m hoping that will grab attention.

magic wand with arcane figures

What is your esoteric skill completely unrelated to writing? Whatever it is, use it. Your uniqueness will help you stand out. Don’t just think outside the box—make your own box!