Black Friday… some people love it and some people hate it.
My own personal Black Friday experiences were not that great, but I can definitely understand the appeal it has to people.
Whether you like it or not, the fact that it is the single biggest day in retail all year cannot be ignored, and there are some principles and concepts that anyone who is in the business of selling something can learn from Black Friday.
Here are 4 marketing principles that self-published authors can learn from the Black Friday craziness:
Deep Discounts Are Attractive
What gets people to stand outside in crazy weather for many hours or even days? The chance to get a great discount! While the store that discounts some products to extremely low prices for Black Friday may not make any money on that specific product, it gets someone to come to their store who otherwise wouldn’t have come, and getting someone to be a customer is the first step.
If you discount your book to $1.99, $0.99, or even free, it is attractive to people who may not want to take a chance on your book at a higher price level, but the discounted price is attractive to some people and will get them to buy your book, even if they previously did not want to take a chance on your book.
So, consider discounting your book in order to get new readers to learn about your brand and your books.
Running a free or bargain book promo? Submit your book to ReadingDeals.com on your next promotion.
Have Other Products To Sell
As I mentioned above, the key is to get the customer in the door, so that they will hopefully buy other products. The major retailers hope that when you come to the store, you will buy other products as well, and those are the products the companies make money with on Black Friday.
As an author, when you discount a book, you need to let readers know about your other books too! Once a reader has read a book of yours, they will want to buy other books so they should know how to find those books. You should promote your other books in the back of every single one of your books. You should advertise your website so that readers can find you and connect with you in various ways (such as a mailing list or social media profiles) so that they can learn about future books from you.
The key is to get people connected with your brand and having a discounted book is one way to get people to learn about (and hopefully buy) your other books!
It Generates Publicity
My wife was watching our local morning news show this morning. On the show, they were interviewing people who were waiting outside in these Black Friday lines and they were talking to people as they came out of the stores with their deals. This was free advertising for the business. Why? Because they had a popular sale going on and people wanted to talk about it!
That is why free and bargain ebook sites exist and are so popular, because people want to hear about great discounts. Utilize these resources and notify them when you discount your book or make it free. They want to feature your books when it is discounted.
Discounts can definitely generate good publicity for your books if you let people know that it is going to be discounted.
Coordinating Promotional Efforts
Black Friday wouldn’t be as big of a deal if it was something that just one store did. It’s a big deal because most every single retail outlet is participating in one way or another. This communal effort helps to maximize the promotion for everyone.
As an author, you can utilize this concept in an effective way. Find other authors that have books similar to yours and coordinate your marketing efforts with them. If you coordinate your discounts and deals, then you can each cross-promote your books and multiply your efforts and your audience and it is a win-win for everyone, especially the readers because they get to learn about new authors!
Reach out to other authors and benefit from creating a larger, coordinated promotional effort.
Final Thoughts
Black Friday is an exciting and crazy time, but it is also a time when businesses can make a lot of money even if they are discounting products! By learning from their efforts and methods, you can improve your own book marketing strategies with the goal of selling more books.
Use deep discounts, be sure to promote the other books you have for sale, generate publicity from your discounts, and coordinate your promotional efforts with other authors to maximize sales!
The best part is, you don’t have to wait for one specific day of the year. You can utilize these strategies all year long to create a continual stream of book sales coming in!
Leave a comment below telling us what steps you’re going to take to implement these Black Friday inspired book marketing ideas.
Happy marketing!