There are only a couple of weeks left in the 2014 holiday shopping season. Typically, holiday sales drive more than 20 percent of a retailer’s annual sales volume. What can you do to increase your holiday book sales quickly?
Conduct a Holiday Countdown. Create a sense of urgency by counting down the number of days until Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanza. Human psychology shows that many holiday shoppers wait until the last minute. WordPress even has a plugin to install countdown clocks on your website. You can also include countdown messaging in posts and tweets about your books.
Donate to a Charity. According to PR Newswire, 71 percent of Americans expect companies to be charitable during the holidays. More importantly, consumers will purchase a product that supports a cause over one that does not. Announce that you will donate a portion of your book sales to your favorite charity. Make sure to let followers know the amount after you’ve made the donation.
Bundle Up. Offer a BOGO (buy one, get one free) sale. OR, if you’ve published a series, bundle it as one item. This gives readers purchase options at different price points. You can also team up with other authors in your genre to create bundles and special offers.
Offer Incentives. Ask loyal readers to share your book bubbles with ten friends who they think would be interested in your book(s). Explain that if they email or direct message you with the names or social handles of those people, you’ll give them a free book or some other exclusive gift. Follow these new readers to quickly grow your audience.
Holiday Hashtag It. Don’t miss the opportunity to make your posts more discoverable during the holidays by tagging your content with popular hashtags and keywords such as #holiday, #giftideas, #Christmas, #Hanukkah, #Kwanza and many, many more.
Promote a Limited-Time Offer. Make your promotion available for a limited time or number of books. Either way, this approach creates exclusivity and urgency.
Consistency and creativity are key to all successful marketing campaigns, so get out there and engage with new readers every day this holiday season…and don’t forget to create a new book bubble each week, so that Team Bublish can help spread the word. Our retweets and Reader Marathon events and Floating Bookstore are available to support your book marketing efforts every week. After all…’tis the season. Happy holidays everyone!
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