Thread by @mdeziel

When a pandemic kills your book launch plans, you’ve got to get creative.

Here’s the guerrilla marketing tactic I used to get hundreds of thousands of impressions for very little effort.

/THREAD 🧵

Background: I spent much of 2019 writing my first book, "The Content Fuel Framework: How to Generate Unlimited Story Ideas."

I was pregnant. It was hard. I had actual nightmares that I would have to finish the manuscript while in labor 🤦‍♀️

I planned to launch in the new year to make a splash just as I was returning from maternity leave.

Here’s me holding a print copy for the first time, having absolutely no clue what 2020 had in store for. (Look at all the hope in those eyes).

The book launched on Feb. 24th, and the world went into lockdown days later. 🦠

Amazon was only shipping COVID essentials, resulting in 2-8 week delivery estimates in the days following the launch.

Book signings: cancelled.
Keynotes: cancelled.
Bulk orders: cancelled.

My marketing plan clearly needed to change.

🎙 I did a ton of podcast interviews

🎥 I joined FB Live shows

👍 I asked my reviewers to share on social media & in email newsletters

You know, the usual stuff.

But I wanted to try some new tactics, get creative & experiment...

As part of my original plan, I had a photographer friend take stock-style photos of my book:

My book being read in a cafe, put in a bag, next to a notebook, paired with a tablet, camera, headphones.

I figured I’d use them on my website, social & other promotions.

The photos weren’t just random. They were strategic.

The ideal audience for the book is marketers and creators, so I wanted photos that would appeal to them.

The photos reflect their working style, workspaces and tools.

But I also didn’t want it to be tacky. We made sure that they weren’t all aggressively or obviously branded.

In some photos, the book is:
• Out of focus
• Partially obscured
• Partially out of frame
• Open or flipped over

So I had this treasure trove of photos, and was thinking of unexpected ways to use them...

On August 28th, I uploaded 10 as a collection of free downloads on @unsplash.

I carefully tagged and wrote descriptions of each photo.

And I waited...

unsplash.com/@storyfuel

It’s been ~45 days.
Here’s the results:

👁 332,000+ total impressions/views on the photos with my book

🧑‍💻 1,500+ total downloads of the photos with my book

Given the cost of the photo shoot, this is roughly a $1 CPM. 🎉

The receipts:

And all of that would be great on its own, but many of those downloads will, presumably, be USED somewhere.

They’ll continue to get more uncounted impressions on people’s blogs, articles, websites, social posts and more. 🎉 🎉

Can I directly tie any of this to book sales? Nope.

But like many marketing campaigns, I was focused on increasing awareness.

I definitely achieved that. ✅

Plus, I used the photos elsewhere, so worst case, I only wasted the time I spent uploading, captioning & tagging. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I also tried uploading natural photos that featured my book to cafes on restaurant search apps and map sites. 📍

COVID obviously limited my ability to do this at scale, but the few I safely uploaded earned ~1000 views each.

I’ll take it. 👍

Lessons learned:

💡 COVID forced me to think differently & discover an opportunity

🗺 Marketing can be effective anywhere, if you’re willing to do the work to make it fit the expectations of the audience there.

😏 Launching a book in a pandemic is still hard.

If you’d like to check out the book, here’s the details:

"The Content Fuel Framework: How to Generate Unlimited Story Ideas"

Learn more: contentfuelframework.com

But on Amazon: amzn.to/32u7Isc

Companion Workbook: contentfuelframework.com/workbook

📸 Here’s the fabulous Allison Hopkins who took these photos:
allisonhopkins.com

⭐️ She’s also the artist behind Wander Plant Pots:
etsy.com/shop/wanderpla…

Since folks are asking, here’s some other things I tried with varying degrees of success:

⭐️ A @BookBub promo in Canada helped me reach the #1 spot for marketing books there.

The ads I ran with them were less effective but that could be user error. I’m not an ad strategist 🤷🏻‍♀️

I made a companion PDF workbook for the book, which I mentioned IN the book.

The workbook is only available on my site, so I get emails of readers.

✉️ I also made branded postcards and sent handwritten thank yous to some who ordered, which earned some social posts.

Of course, I sent copies out to reviewers, influencers and others who might share photos.

This did generate social posts but it’s hard to attribute the impact on sales directly. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I included a section at the back of the book with suggestions of how to support the book.

I’ve actually had people email and DM to let me know they took action on these.

🎙 5+ podcast interviews have come from this, with untold impressions from those.

I dropped the price of the ebook to 99c on my birthday and treated it like a second launch.

I promoted it over social, sent emails, asked reviewers to share, and bought cheap email newsletter sponsorships that day.

🎉 Generated hundreds of sales that day.

This also included a really cool free preview of the intro in my Instagram stories.

I truthfully forgot to check how many people clicked that bio link before I updated it. Oops.