Guerrilla marketing. Have you heard of this?
Like guerrilla warfare, which just means, non-standard military tactics, guerrilla marketing means thinking outside of the box when you market your book.
For indie authors, and even those authors published by small trade publishers and hybrid publishers, knowing how to think outside of the box when marketing your book is really important. I learned this with my book, Sunshine After the Storm: A Survival Guide for the Grieving Mother. It was critical for me to find partner organizations to get the word out about my book.
Using Guerilla Marketing as an Author
We're using a blend of traditional and guerrilla marketing tactics for my client Valerie's new children’s book, Padapillo. (If you love kids books and have been looking to ensure more disability representation on your bookshelves at home, you’ll want to grab this one! Look for Padapillo on Amazon!)
When Valerie sat down to write this book, she wanted to teach families about what it's like when your child receives a diagnosis of hearing loss. Her own daughter had been through this experience, and as a mom, she’d seen how few books there were about it. They didn't know what to do or where to turn, so Valerie wanted to create a resource that would be helpful to families in the same situation. But we knew this book would really soar if we used OUTSIDE OF THE BOX MARKETING to partner with other organizations and agencies with a similar mission!
If you’re looking for more advice on launching your book, be sure and join us for our premium workshop on launching your book using promos next Tuesday.
Using Community to Market Your Book
When it came to marketing the book, we knew that serving this mission needed to be central. Together we determined that the ideal reader was the family of a child who had recently been identified as having hearing loss. The challenge was that those families don’t live in one region or frequent one social media platform over another or have a particular income level or any of those typical marketing segmentations. Hearing loss can impact any family, all over the world.
However, one thing Valerie knew from her lived experience was that the hearing loss community does spend a lot of time with audiologists. They also tend to receive communication from community and national hearing loss groups and deaf advocacy organizations, particularly schools. So these became prime targets for our marketing outreach. She pursued – and got! – positive reviews from prominent organizational leaders and audiologists, partnered with two different organizations for launch day events and earned social media placements from a number of organizations sharing her book to their wider community.
Not every book has an obvious community or nonprofit partnership. But more do than you’d think. I’ve helped clients connect with HR professional organizations for books on supporting those who have lost children. I’ve also helped find partnerships between the author of historical fiction and veterans’ groups. You don’t need to be writing an advocacy book to try this, and there are lots of creative ways to find connections that are mutually beneficial.
How to Approach Partner Organizations
When you’re looking to partner with community organizations and nonprofits for your book launch, you need to approach them with an eye to their mission. If the group’s mission isn’t truly aligned with your book’s message, it’s not going to be a fruitful partnership. Advocacy and nonprofits take their membership’s privacy seriously, and they’re mindful of their reputation as an honest broker to the community. So it’s vital to explain from the get-go that your book is an amplification of their message. It's a resource their community will want to have. You can offer to share copies of your books with their members, ask them for reviews and praise blurbs, and even host events with to build a partnership that elevates both your book and their organization. Also, consider offering them bulk sales of your book at a discounted rate, to provide to their audience as a resource.
That’s exactly what Valerie did. Her true connection with the people in the hearing loss community, the authenticity of her book’s message and the care with which she made this approach built this launch beautifully. We can’t wait to help her send this book out into the world tomorrow!
And if you’re looking for more advice on launching your book, be sure and join us for our premium workshop on launching your book using promos next Tuesday. All of the details are included below!
How To Leverage Promo Sites for a Successful Launch
Tuesday, May 11, 2021 | 1PM EST
Recording & supplemental materials provided
In this workshop, authors will learn what book promotional sites are, when they make sense for authors, pricing concerns and specific requirements, the timing of using them, and what you can realistically expect with returns.
Authors will receive a cheatsheet of 16 promotional sites they can use to support their launch or to re-invigorate an already-published book. Attendees will receive the slides as well.
Laura Briggs is a teacher turned speaker, entrepreneur, and writer. As a freelancer, she's worked with over 400 clients and has delivered two TEDx talks. She's sold four books to a traditional publisher and is self publishing a short book a month in 2021. Her first book, How to Start Your Own Freelance Business, was entirely self-marketed and led to the next two book deals. That book was also the winner of the 2019 Author Elite Awards “Best in Business” prize.
Register here to join us for this resource-packed premium workshop!
